SWIB26 – 18th Semantic Web in Libraries Conference

16 – 18 November 2026, online

Call for Proposals

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 17 May 2026

SWIB conference (Semantic Web in Libraries) is an annual conference, being held for the 18th time. SWIB26 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.

SWIB26 is organized by the North Rhine-Westphalian Library Service Centre (hbz) and ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics. 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 in the time 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
• utilisation of LLMs and SLMs (with a focus on open source or open weight models)
• agentic AI in 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
• reducing reliance on proprietary solutions through open approaches
• 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 17 May 2026. Please submit an abstract of 1000–1500 characters using our conference system https://www.conftool.org/swib26.
Note: Submissions that are wholly or partially LLM-generated will be immediately rejected.
If you intend to present a specific software solution and/or generative AI approach, please include links to the source code repository and make sure the code and models are openly licensed.

SWIB programme committee

Proposals will be reviewed by the programme committee:

• Stacy Allison-Cassin (Dalhousie University, Canada)
• 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)
• Osma Suominen (National Library of Finland)
• Katherine Thornton (Yale University Library, USA)
• Jakob Voß (GBV Common Library Network, Germany)

Website: https://swib.org/swib26
Hashtag: #swib26
Mastodon: @swib@openbiblio.social

Take a look at previous SWIB conferences at https://swib.org/history.

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

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

or

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