From Paper to Practice: Workflow Modeling for Digital Libraries

Whether carefully planned or mostly haphazard, our daily workflows directly impact how resources find their way into our digital collections. Well-designed workflows facilitate effective communication, ensure efficient processing, and contribute to sustainable collection management practices. In this interactive Learning Lab session, participants will explore how workflow modeling—the visual representation of an action or decision—can help identify potential areas of improvement. Through a hands-on, guided activity, attendees will sketch workflow diagrams reflective of their own practices and consider ways to streamline or otherwise reduce manual inputs. Using Metavus, an open source digital collections platform, presenters will then demonstrate practical examples of leveraging automation to implement these streamlined workflows and minimize the manual efforts required for collection development and maintenance. This session is ideal for collection administrators, catalogers, and other librarians seeking to optimize their digital library operations, and may also be of interest to those who implement and support digital library technologies.