Dates: October 6-7, 2025
Location: Hybrid (Pyle Center at UW-Madison & Online)
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Join us in Madison, WI, October 6-7, 2025, for Upgrade: Enhancing Library Services with Technology, a dynamic two-day conference dedicated to exploring the intersection of libraries and technology. Hear from leading experts, share best practices, and network with peers. This conference will include topics such as artificial intelligence applications in libraries, effective use of social media for community engagement, best practices for digital collections, and the crucial importance of cybersecurity in protecting our digital resources. Don’t miss this chance to learn, connect, and inspire at Upgrade: Enhancing Library Services with Technology 2025!
Can’t join us in Madison for the full conference experience? Register for our virtual track and hear from both keynote presenters along with six additional hybrid sessions.
Opening Keynote – Dr. Brandy McNeil
Dr. Brandy McNeil is the President of the Public Library Association and a nationally recognized leader in digital equity and public library innovation. As Deputy Director of Branch Programs and Services at The New York Public Library, she has transformed access to technology, knowledge, and opportunity across the system’s 89 branches. Under her visionary leadership, Dr. McNeil has spearheaded groundbreaking partnerships with tech giants such as Apple, Spotify, and Google, and created TechConnect, a nationally recognized model for digital literacy in libraries.
She was honored with the 2017 Library Journal Movers & Shakers award and is a contributing writer for Public Libraries Magazine as well as a contributor to the book Libraryland: It’s All About the Story (2020). Dr. McNeil previously served on the Executive Board of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Her expertise extends beyond the library world—she holds a Doctorate in Business and an MBA in Entrepreneurship, with past roles at several Fortune 500 companies.
Closing Keynote – Dr. Alex Hanna, Ph.D.
Dr. Alex Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR). A sociologist by training, her work centers on the data used in new computational technologies, and the ways in which these data exacerbate racial, gender, and class inequality. She also works in the area of social movements, focusing on the dynamics of anti-racist campus protest in the US and Canada. She holds a BS in Computer Science and Mathematics and a BA in Sociology from Purdue University, and an MS and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Dr. Hanna has published widely in top-tier venues across the social sciences, including the journals Mobilization, American Behavioral Scientist, and Big Data & Society, and top-tier computer science conferences such as CSCW, FAccT, and NeurIPS. Dr. Hanna serves as a Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies, and sits on the advisory board for the Human Rights Data Analysis Group and the Scholars Council for the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry.
She is a receipient of the Wisconsin Alumni Association’s Forward Award, has been included on FastCompany’s Queer 50 and Go Magazine’s Women We Love lists, and has been featured in the Cal Academy of Sciences New Science exhibit, which highlights queer and trans scientists of color.
With Dr. Emily M. Bender, Alex is working on The AI Con (Forthcoming Spring 2025, Harper Books), a book about AI and the hype around it. The two also run the Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 series, playfully and wickedly tearing apart AI hype for a live audience online on Twitch and on their podcast.
Sunday Pre-Conference Workshop
CANCELED – OpenAI? Open Pedagogy: How to Keep Humanity in Higher Ed
with Mariah A. Knowles, Curriculum Lead at Tiny Earth
Sunday, October 5, 1:00-4:30 PM CST
UW-Madison Pyle Center | $125
What impacts will emerging AI tools have on student critical thinking? How should teachers and libraries respond? And how do we include students—meaningfully—in this process? Today’s students’ experience of going through college and entering the workforce will look so much different from our own. So, we will need to trust them in new ways to make sure the future of Education is both effective and in their best interest.
In this workshop we will unpack, discuss, and explore the state of the research on AI and learning. Then we will leverage this research to create, revise, practice, recommend, and critique ways to center students in our teaching and service.
Participants will be able to:
- describe the state of the research on AI and learning, and be familiar with the major actors conducting this research.
- understand what’s at stake when education, critical thinking, and information systems go through change.
- create, revise, practice, recommend, and/or critique student-centered resources and activities.
- involve students meaningfully in shaping their own education.
Mariah A. Knowles is the Curriculum Lead for Tiny Earth at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A self-proclaimed “academic Swiss army knife,” she uses open pedagogy and mixed methods to understand expressivism and human flourishing—and vice versa. Her curiosity extends beyond her degree areas, Computer Science, English Rhetoric, Education Policy Studies, and Information Science. And in 2025 she received her Ph.D. from UW-Madison, where she called for a “radical unnarrowing” for belonging and inclusion in the Tech industry, in her dissertation “Doing Evil for Money”. Like her background, her teaching is versatile and highly-regarded by learners, with a dedication to open, equitable, and human-centered pedagogy. She has presented talks and workshops on evidenced-based teaching practices, interpreting high-dimensional data, defining fairness in AI, and telling transgender stories.