About the 2019 LYRASIS Member Summit

Don’t miss this year’s LYRASIS Member Summit October 3-4 in Chicago. The theme is “From Local to Global” and it promises to be a fast-paced, two-day experience that pairs imagination with innovation and discussion with action. Sitting beside you in Chicago will be senior leadership from forward thinking research, public and academic libraries, museums and archives.

We need your active voice for the discussions on Day 1 – our “Innovation with Imagination” day – to critique, add value, and help set direction for the LYRASIS $1M+ FY 2020 Research and Development budget. Our Day 1 keynote will be Kaitlin Thaney, Director of Wikimedia’s Endowment, previously at Mozilla, Digital Science and Creative Commons. She will discuss the imperative to “innovate or perish” and how to create innovative programs that leverage and create community. Shift into high gear for Day 2 – our “Discussion with Action” day. Our Day 2 keynote will be Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC and recognized open access advocate. She will frame content and publishing for us with new eyes, and how to do more with less in our ever changing landscape. This year’s summit will feature another challenging keynote, to be announced here soon! Breakouts will include ScholComm 2.0, how to change the patron/user experience as it relates to content, scalable technology and platforms, and leveraging non-profit platforms.

Our first Member Summit featured a keynote by Rob Cartolano, Associate Vice President of Technology and Preservation at Columbia University, who launched a rallying cry for the importance of innovation that leads to programs and services offered by non-profits. To rise to that cry, in less than a year, LYRASIS launched our Leaders Circle and the $100,000 Catalyst Fund. Summit year two we welcomed Deanna Marcum, the previous second in command at the Library of Congress and currently working with Ithaka S+R, who talked about the importance of consolidation of smaller siloed non-profits, the benefits of scale, and how common visions develop better solutions. Her keynote was the inspiration for LYRASIS and DuraSpace’s merger, completed in June of this year. Last year’s keynote was John Bracken, Executive Director of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) and formerly an active change leader in the world of funding/foundations, who spoke to our members about using technologies with communities to transform libraries, both public and academic. This spawned a double – triple partnership between LYRASIS and DPLA; and between NYPL, DPLA and LYRASIS.

This year’s summit will feature another challenge put forth by two keynote speakers.

Scholarly Communications/Library Publishing

Whether you are a public library, academic library, special collection or other, locally managed, but globally linked scholarly communications is now within our grasp. Be part of creating, sharing, or consuming content. Inform and drive your patrons, researchers, or local experts to lead the way.

User/Patron Experience, whether through audio, video, text, or data

Delivering the best possible research, analysis or reading experience is at the heart of what libraries do on a daily basis. This track will dig into topics like using data to improve the experience of your users, facilitating and supporting community initiatives like literacy, and getting the most out of your collections through new technologies.

Community Supported Programs (CSP)

LYRASIS has the largest collection of CSP’s in the world with over 1,733 institutions that contribute fiscally to their operation. Learn from what works (and doesn’t work). How the It Takes a Village framework increases the chances for sustainable success and lowers the risk of setbacks.

Member Summit – Register Now

Draft agenda

Check back for more updates and speakers, to be announced soon.