IGeLU 2026

Conference

This talk will delve into how crises can be the best medicine for workflows that have gone stale or unimagined. Like everyone else in U.S. libraries, we were scrambling to get our materials and services into ship shape for Title II compliance, while remaining daunted by the sheer enormity of the task.
Title II Compliance for accessibility under ADA guidelines requires accessible versions of all digital documents, with an exception for archival materials. However, this exception has hard and fast rules: 1) archival materials must be retained separately (have their own location) AND 2) must be a closed collection (no new added materials). In anticipation of this, we leveraged local fields to designate the accessibility status of our ETDs and our Archive & Special Collections assets and created separate scopes (high-level containers) for these materials. In addition, we had to rethink already existing collections that relied on a metadata strategy that would no longer work for us. We then used this work to put in place several changes in how assets would flow into Esploro, eliminating an overreliance on staff mediation and putting some of the burden on students.
I knew we would be leveraging local fields for some of this work, and I can admit that at the outset I thought: how can an outlier strategy help us on such a grand scale? Would it come out right on the other end (front-end search)? As a librarian, I’m used to using tools for reasons other than what they might be originally purposed for – but would this be just another temporary fix?
The outcome of this was a rethinking not only of how we could leverage local fields, but of how specific workflows put in place early on were functioning in the first place. This was a win-win and it feels miles ahead of where we could be as a small staff tasked with a huge lift.

Zoom presenter session (available to physical and virtual attendees)

IGeLU 2026 theme: "Pearls of Technology: Think deeply, explore widely"
Practical Applications
Strategy

Accessibility
Esploro / Converis