SWIB25 – 17th Semantic Web in Libraries Conference

17 – 19 November 2025, online

Call for Proposals

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 23 May 2025

The SWIB (Semantic Web in Libraries) conference is an annual event,
this year taking place for the 17th time. SWIB25 will happen online to ensure
inclusion of as many participants as possible while minimizing
the ecological footprint of the conference.

SWIB focuses on Linked Open Data (LOD) in libraries and related organizations.
It is well established as an event where IT staff, developers, librarians, and
researchers from all over the world meet and mingle and learn from each other.
The topics of talks and workshops at SWIB revolve around opening data, linking
data and creating tools and software for LOD production scenarios. These areas
of focus are supplemented by presentations of research projects in applied
sciences, industry applications, and LOD activities in other areas.

SWIB25 is organized by ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics
and the North Rhine-Westphalian Library Service Centre (hbz).
The conference language is English.

We are accepting proposals for two formats:

- presentations (20 minutes plus 5 q&a)
- practical workshops or tutorials (maximum 4h, including breaks),
introductory tutorials are very welcome

The presentations will be held on each conference day in the time slot from 14:00 to 17:00 UTC.
Note that we will support three different time slots for workshops to accommodate
workshop facilitators and participants from different time zones
(East Asia/Australia, Europe/Africa, Americas).

We appreciate proposals on the following or related topics:

Projects & Applications

* integration of LOD into productive library applications
* re-use of LOD (from libraries, Wikidata and other sources)
* presenting & visualizing LOD
* graphical user interfaces for interaction with LOD (e.g. editing or annotation)
* (other) applications in the context of open science

Technology & Tools (focus on Open Source software)

* data transformation/integration/cleansing/enhancement/mapping/interlinking/validation
* data flow management, read/write linked data, providing updates & syncing data sources
* machine learning applications in/for libraries
* integration of symbolic and subsymbolic approaches

Standards & Best Practices

* implementation of FAIR data principles, interoperability
* open web standards relevant for libraries, data models, usable APIs
* application profiles & provenance information
* working with controlled vocabularies & knowledge organization systems
* preservation, maintenance & sustainability

Culture

* decentralization, federated structures
* consolidating open source projects
* collaboration, crowdsourcing, community building and empowerment
* diversity sensitivity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility
* the role of open information infrastructures in sustaining democracy

We are looking forward to receiving your proposals for presentations
or workshops by 23 May 2025. Please submit an abstract of 1000–1500
characters using our conference system
https://www.conftool.org/swib25.
If you intend to present a specific software solution, please include links
to the source code repository and make sure it is openly licensed.

SWIB programme committee

Proposals will be reviewed by the programme committee:

* Julia Beck (University of Gothenburg, Sweden)
* Uldis Bojars (National Library of Latvia)
* Nuno Freire (Europeana Foundation, Netherlands)
* Argie Kasprzik (ZBW, Germany – Chair)
* Huda Khan (Stanford University, USA)
* Niklas Lindström (National Library of Sweden)
* Devika Madalli (Indian Statistical Institute)
* Adrian Pohl (hbz, Germany – Chair)
* Dorothea Salo (UW-Madison, USA)
* Jodi Schneider (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA)
* MJ Suhonos (Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada)
* Osma Suominen (National Library of Finland)
* Katherine Thornton (Yale University Library, USA)
* Jakob Voß (GBV Common Library Network, Germany)

Website: https://swib.org/swib25
Hashtag: #swib25
Mastodon: @swib@openbiblio.social

Take a look at previous SWIB conferences at https://forum.swib.org/t/swib25-history/923.

Please do not hesitate to ask if you have any questions:

Argie Kasprzik
ZBW
Tel. +49-(0)173 3986387
E-mail: a.kasprzik(at)zbw.eu

or

Adrian Pohl
hbz
Tel. +49-(0)221-40075235
E-mail: swib(at)hbz-nrw.de