Data Speculations has been in development since 2023, and work has been ongoing for over a year to organize the National Forum. The Project Team is presenting at various academic conferences in the field to raise awareness and solicit feedback.

In 2025, the National Forum will take place, with a week-long series of events with practitioners in the field. Additional convenings with relevant stakeholders will take place over the year at Temple University Libraries and other venues.

Recent Presentations on Data Speculations

“Emerging Legal Pathways for Digital Humanities Research on Copyrighted Literature” Alex Wermer-Colan, Sarah Potvin, Peter Jaszi, Quinn Dombrowski, and Mark Algee-Hewitt Association for Computers and the Humanities (2024)

“Data Speculations: Expanding Access to Copyrighted Collections as Data” Alex Wermer-Colan, Sarah Potvin, Rachael Samberg, and Brandon Butler Digital Library Federation Forum (2024)

“Digital Humanities Data Speculations.” Sarah Potvin and Alex Wermer-Colan Lightning Talk (10 minutes) Texas Conference of Digital Libraries ( May 2024), Austin, TX.

“Copyrighted Collections as Data.” Sarah Potvin and Alex Wermer-Colan. Idea Lab (60 minutes). Texas Conference of Digital Libraries (May 2024), Austin, TX.

Relevant Scholarship and Resources

Relevant scholarship to the National Forum includes recent work in copyright law, digital humanities, and related fields in GLAM.

A running list of relevant references can be found on our Zotero library

For resources around building a science fiction corpus, see sfnexus.io/scholarship.

Past Presentations on SF Nexus

Association of Digital Humanities Organization Annual Conference, 2024
“Toxic Water: Modeling Eco-Poetics and Eco-Politics in 20th Century Anglophone Climate Fiction” Slides Alex Wermer-Colan, Dez Miller, Megan Kane, SaraGrace Stefan

HathiTrust Community Week, 2022
“Digitizing and Exhibiting Copyrighted Science Fiction” Slides Video Alex Wermer-Colan

Code4Lib, 2022
Inna Kouper and Alex Wermer-Colan

The Association for Computers and the Humanities (“ACH”), 2019
“The SF Nexus: A Comprehensive Corpus of Speculative Fiction for Non-Consumptive Research” Alex Wermer-Colan and Rikk Mulligan

American Philosophical Society, “The Past, Present, and Future of Libraries,” 2019
“The New Wave of Digital Collections: On Digitizing Science Fiction” Alex Wermer-Colan and James Kopaczewski