Dr. Chengxiang Zhai

Donald Biggar Willett Professor in Engineering, ACM SIGIR Gerard Salton Award Winner (2021), University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Title: The Future of Digital Libraries: From Repositories to Intelligent Knowledge Assistants

Abstract: To be announced.

Bio: To be announced.

Dr. Nicholas Belkin

Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Library and Information Science, ACM SIGIR Gerard Salton Award Winner (2015), Rutgers University

Title: Digital Libraries and Their Technologies: A Look Back and a Peek Forward

Abstract: The basic ideal underlying digital libraries; that is, of universal, remote, access to the contents of the libraries of the world, has long been a goal of librarians and information scientists, among distinguished others. But the dream only began to become realized when the required technologies began to become available. And, as the relevant technologies have progressed, the field of digital libraries has responded (or, one might say, reacted) accordingly. Until quite recently, this response has been pretty much as one would expect; expansion of the materials in the libraries, increased and better methods of access to their contents, and better interaction between the libraries and their users. But with the appearance of Generative LLMs, there now appears to be some question as to whether digital libraries can continue in this same path. In this talk, I look back at the beginnings of the current digital library movement and how digital libraries have responded to technological advances, and consider some possibilities for their future in the face of ubiquitous general access to Generative LLMs.

Bio: Dr. Nicholas J. Belkin is Distinguished Professor of Information Science Emeritus at Rutgers University and Adjunct Professor at the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology. He is widely recognized for his contributions to information science and interactive information retrieval, especially as one of the founders of the “cognitive viewpoint” in information science. He co-authored one of the first books to examine interactive information retrieval as a process, and has published more than 200 journal articles, conference papers, and book chapters. His research has addressed information behavior, personalization, search interaction, and whole-session search evaluation, including twelve years of work in the TREC Interactive Track. Dr. Belkin has served as Chair of ACM SIGIR and President of ASIS&T, and received the ASIS&T Award of Merit and ACM SIGIR Gerard Salton Award. He also chaired the organizing committee that combined ACM and IEEE-CS Digital Library conferences into the one JCDL.

Dr. Leif Azzopardi

Title: Design for Information Farmers: Digital Libraries as Seeds for Cultivating Knowledge

Abstract: For decades, digital libraries have focused on helping users discover, access, and assemble information from large collections. Yet emerging generative and agentic technologies are changing how people satisfy their information needs. Recent work introduced the concept of Information Farming to describe this shift. Rather than finding information that exists “out there,” users are increasingly cultivating information through their interaction with generative systems. If users are becoming farmers rather than foragers, then what does this mean for Digital Libraries?

This talk explores the implications of Information Farming for the future of Digital Libraries. I argue that digital libraries need to evolve from repositories of information artifacts into seeds for cultivating knowledge: infrastructures that preserve, structure, and expose knowledge in forms that can be cultivated by human/agent teams. In such a future, the value of a digital library may lie not only in what it contains, but in what can be grown from it.

This perspective raises a multitude of questions. What should digital libraries preserve when documents are no longer the primary unit of interaction? How should provenance and trust be maintained when information is increasingly farmed rather than foraged? Should digital libraries provide content for agents to consume, or become generative environments in their own right? I do not argue that foraging will disappear. Rather, I argue that Digital Libraries must be designed for a world in which foraging is no longer the dominant mode of knowledge work.

Bio: To be announced.