Scholars Portal Days are a mix of lightning talks, keynote presentations and panels featuring experts from across the academic library and information services sectors.
These online events bring together Canadian academic library workforce members and students enrolled in library school programs to learn more about Scholars Portal and topics in libraries, technology and collaboration.
Scholars Portal Days 2026
Theme: The Common Thread
We are experiencing a time of transition in libraries as we endeavour to keep pace with technical innovation, changing access to resources, and a broadening scope of user needs. As libraries navigate capacity constraints and increasingly finite resources, many of us are feeling worn thin.
Our communal efforts as library workers drive our ability to cultivate resilience in the current environment. Our strengths lie in our collective expertise and our shared tapestry of resources. At Scholars Portal we understand that the process is just as important as the end product and that quality supports longevity. How do we encourage curiosity and exploration in the face of burnout? How do we decide what we can mend and what we should create anew? What does it mean to be stewards of tomorrow for Canadian academic libraries in this current landscape?
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Scholars Portal Days 2025
Theme: Building with Intention
For Scholars Portal Days 2025 we want to discuss building with intention, both locally and consortially. The information and technology landscape continues to rapidly expand, with increasing pressure to match its pace. As new tools and access models are developed by vendors, how does Scholars Portal stand apart? What are the core values and priorities that form the foundations of our work, and how do we design services and infrastructure built on these foundations to support libraries for the long term?
Now more than ever we understand the importance of investing intentionally - not just financially, but also with time, expertise, and care. Together we can harness our commitment to evidence-based practices, data privacy, open source technologies and ongoing maintenance in order to build capacity and safeguard control over our own resources.
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Scholars Portal Days 2024
Theme: Collaborative Intelligence
As information landscapes and technologies continue to shift rapidly around us, we are taking the plunge into the ever-evolving world of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AIML). Along the way we’ve felt excitement, anticipation, and promise, alongside concern, frustration, and apprehension. For 2024, Scholars Portal Days aims to leverage our knowledge, insights, and skills as information professionals to invest in our collective, collaborative intelligence as we look to the future of AIML in libraries.
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Scholars Portal Days 2023
Theme: Refresh / Reframe / Renew
Library infrastructure is dynamic, and so are the collaborations that support it. Each moment of change represents an opportunity to reflect on what we do and how we do it, to learn from what’s come before and consider how we can improve going forward. We rethink the framing and structures that support our work, revitalize the user interfaces we rely on, and sunset software and service models to make room to sunrise something new. Nothing is set in stone. Scholars Portal Days 2023 focuses on the areas where we’re refreshing, reframing, or renewing our technologies, our service models, and our collaborations.
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Scholars Portal Days 2022
Theme: Currents of Change
The Scholars Portal Journals platform first launched as an OCUL service in 2002. In the intervening two decades, the landscapes of collections, scholarly publishing, library technology, and consortial collaboration have all evolved significantly. This Scholars Portal Days event explores the current environment, the currents of change that brought us to where we are today, and those that are pulling us ever forward.
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For More Information
Presentation slides and earlier Scholars Portal Days recordings are available on SPOTDocs.
Questions about Scholars Portal Days can be emailed to help@scholarsportal.info.