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Wednesday, December 2, 2026. 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm eastern. (On Demand – Access for a year post event)
Agenda
- 1:00 pm – 1:05 pm. Introduction
- 1:05 pm – 1:50 pm. Practical AI for Alma
- 1:50 pm – 2:00 pm. Break
- 2:00 pm – 2:45 pm. Reimagining the Library Front Door with Agentic Workflows and MCP
- 2:45 pm – 3:00 pm. Break
- 3:00 pm – 3:45 pm. Post-Migration Cleanup Strategies Using AI Tools
Note, schedule times are approximate. Schedule may shift slightly during the event.
Practical AI for Alma. Alvin Stockdale, Serials Processing and Library Services Platform Team Lead, National Library of Medicine.
Libraries are increasingly expected to adapt to emerging technologies, even when staff have limited technical backgrounds. This session presents a practical case study of how a metadata librarian with no prior coding experience developed NLM’s Metadata Toolkit, a suite of Python-based tools that extend Alma workflows by automating local bibliographic and authority validation and targeted metadata updates through the Alma API.
Attendees will learn how easy it is to connect to their own Alma API and begin experimenting with automation. Rather than focusing on opaque or experimental AI systems, this presentation emphasizes transparent, maintainable tools built with AI-assisted development and a strong human-in-the-loop approach.
All code demonstrated will be available in a public GitHub repository and, in many cases, can be adapted locally by supplying an institution’s own Alma API key.
Reimagining the Library Front Door with Agentic Workflows and MCP. Allen Jones, Senior Director, Digital Library and Technical Services, The New School; Christine Stohn, Senior Director, Academic AI, Strategy & Innovation, Clarivate.
In this session, we discuss the use of Library OpenWorkflows to build and experiment with AI-powered library front-door services. We discuss workflow design, integration with library and external services, and the privacy and security considerations encountered when working with n8n.
The session will share lessons learned from both failed and successful approaches, including the limitations of screen scraping and the benefits of standards-based integrations with MCP. We will discuss practical ways to connect agents with library resources and services using MCP connectors and indexed content, and explore how libraries can extend their presence into emerging AI-driven research workflows.
Post-Migration Cleanup Strategies Using AI Tools. Jason Cabaniss, Library Systems & Emerging Technologies Librarian, Seattle University; Douglas Eriksen, Director of Library Systems, Access, and Making, Seattle University.
From August 2025 to June 2026, Cornish College of the Arts’ library catalog was migrated from ByWater’s Koha into Seattle University’s Alma instance. In the wake of the record migration, cleanup and spot-checking was initiated via the Alma and Koha APIs combined with Claude Code applications.
This allowed staff to identify and separate records into categories that were matches between the two ILSs, records that were missed, potential mismatches, and items needing additional attention. The use of Claude allowed the team to move quickly and accomplish cleanup in several days that otherwise would have taken weeks of building and testing Python queries and manipulating Excel spreadsheets.
The presentation will demonstrate how AI-assisted tools accelerated post-migration analysis and cleanup while maintaining oversight and data quality.