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ADM+S Research Fellow shares research on libraries and public values at international conferences
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Date 15 April 2025
In April 2025, ADM+S Research Fellow Dr Kieran Hegarty visited the Netherlands and United Kingdom to present his research on how changing publishing and distribution markets are reshaping how cultural institutions, particularly libraries, fulfil their mandates and serve their users. Libraries are long-standing public institutions that remain key social and cultural infrastructure, but like other civil society actors and public institutions, they face significant challenges in an age of AI and automated decision-making (ADM).
Funded by ADM+S Research Training Support Funds, Dr Hegarty presented his research at the inaugural Born-Digital Collections, Archives and Memory (BDCAM) Conference. The conference was organised by the Digital Humanities Research Hub in the School of Advanced Study at the University of London from 2-4 April 2025 and brought together leading academics and professionals developing and researching digital collections and archives across the world.
In a panel session on how large commercial digital platforms have reshaped the work of building and studying cultural collections, Dr Hegarty presented findings from his PhD research on how the twin forces of automation and commercialisation have changed how major public library collections are formed and studied. He drew on his ethnographic and historical fieldwork at the National Library of Australia and the State Library of New South Wales to detail how libraries negotiate an environment where access to information of long-term public interest is increasingly controlled by commercial platforms.
In the Q&A, Dr Hegarty signalled to the data donation approach—taken by ADM+S researchers in signature projects such as the Australian Ad Observatory and the Australian Search Experience—as a possible alternative or supplement to platform-controlled access to social media data for libraries, as well the associated challenges of ethics, privacy, and inclusion. Dr Hegarty’s talk was raised in the final plenary, where leading researchers from across Europe and America reflected on the themes and highlights of the conference.
The BDCAM conference was held at the historic Senate House in London. The 1930s building housed the British Ministry of Information during the Second World War, responsible for censorship and propaganda, and was purportedly the inspiration for the ‘Ministry of Truth’ in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Given ongoing commercial and state control over what and how knowledge is produced, disseminated, and authorised continue to be critical issues, the building was a fitting site to explore how power over archives has operated and continues to operate.
Dr Hegarty then joined ADM+S Centre Director, Distinguished Professor Julian Thomas, at the inaugural AlgoSoc Conference, held at the historic Felix Meritis building in Amsterdam from 10-11 April.
Also at the AlgoSoc Conference, Distinguished Prof Julian Thomas presented at the opening panel discussion on ‘Rethinking public values and AI governance in the algorithmic age’ and Laura Gartry, ADM+S Research Student presented her poster ‘Implementing editorial values in audio recommendations’.
Funded by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, AlgoSoc is a major ten-year research program that explores how to ensure public values like fairness, accountability, and transparency are protected in a society where more and more decisions are made by algorithms and AI systems.
AlgoSoc shares many affinities with ADM+S. Both research programs have a mutual interest not just in the technical design of automated systems, but in the institutional, social, and political arrangements that shape them, and how these arrangements are reshaped as sectors of public interest increasingly engage in a shifting constellation of actors and interests surrounding AI and ADM systems.
Dr Hegarty presented his paper, “Public libraries in the algorithmic society: An evolving site for the negotiation of public values”, co-authored with Professor Thomas and ADM+S Chief Investigator Professor Anthony McCosker, as part of a panel on “Sociotechnical infrastructures” chaired by Professor José van Dijck from Utrecht University.
The paper focused on how changing publishing and distribution markets over the past three decades have led to a renegotiation and rearticulation of the public values associated with libraries, particularly their commitment to ongoing and inclusive public access to published material. Other panellists shared similar challenges in relation to education, urban planning, and welfare provision across Europe, illustrating the cross-cutting issues affecting a range of sectors of public interest in different parts of the world.
“My attendance at BDCAM and AlgoSoc allowed me to share research from ADM+S with an international network of scholars, practitioners, and policymakers working at the intersection of technology and society,” said Dr Hegarty. “It also provided valuable opportunities to build and strengthen connections with leading research centres and explore future collaborations around how public values are being rearticulated as sectors of public interest engage with automated decision-making systems and AI and, in doing so, become increasingly entangled in the cultures and politics that surround these technologies”.
These events highlighted the growing global interest in understanding how public interest and values-led institutions are negotiating their roles, responsibilities, and the values they’re expected to uphold in an age of ADM, particularly when increasingly reliant on actors with very different interests, priorities, and resources.
The issues raised also underscored the importance of interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral work like that undertaken by ADM+S in ensuring that public values are not only considered but actively embedded in the design, governance, and operation of automated systems.
Dr Hegarty’s participation in these conferences reflects the ADM+S’s ongoing commitment to supporting early career researchers to develop international partnerships and contribute to global conversations about digital futures grounded in equity, inclusion, and the public good.
