Three of us will be attending and presenting at the 2026 Charleston Conference from 2-6 November in Charleston, North Carolina. We’re talking a lot about bots, structured data, accessibility, and other infrastructural challenges our community faces this year. Here’s a run-down of where you can catch us:

Bot Taxonomy: Do we need one and what could it look like?

Michelle will lead this virtual discussion on how a bot taxonomy can play a role in managing the growing scale of bot activity and efficiently automating access decisions in real time. Joining her in conversation are David Bietila (University of Chicago), Rikki Gracia (IEEE), and Jeremy Morse (University of Michigan Press). Drawing from our hands-on experiences dealing with robotic traffic, this session will introduce attendees to the different types of bots accessing our content and services, what bots are looking for, and then proposes an approach to a bot taxonomy for managing them.

Access, Authentication, and Security in an MCP Environment

Tim will participate in an open conversation about the role of bots in blocking or enabling access to AI services, as part of a satellite event organised by OCLC on Monday afternoon.  The event explores the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and what it means for libraries and publishers, and Gary Price (consultant) will moderate a discussion between Tim and Bart Murphy (Chief Technology and Information Officer at OCLC).

Ask the Technology Providers: Guest Bloggers in The Scholarly Kitchen Take Your Questions

Michelle will join a panel of technology providers ready to answer attendee questions and share their latest thinking on technologies that support the discovery, access, and use of scholarly content. Lettie, in her editorial role with The Scholarly Kitchen, will moderate this panel discussion that includes Amanda Ferrante (Identity & Access Management, EBSCO) and Josh Dahl (SVP, Product and General Manager, Silverchair). The group will discuss trends such as agentic search and zero-click usage; single sign-on and federated authentication; measuring value in a time of high-volume robotic usage; and the article of the future.

The Researcher Has Left the Building: Bots, AI Crawlers, and the Research Journey Libraries Need to Understand

Tim will contribute to this panel discussion about how AI has fundamentally altered the research journey. Alongside John Felts (AUL for Information Technology and Collections Coastal Carolina University) and Todd Toler (Ithaka S+R, Practice Lead, AI in Scholarly Communication), this session will discuss the impact for libraries through three distinct pathways: human access, robotic access, and access via Model Context Protocol.

Content First, Metadata Second: A Repository-Centered Approach to Accessibility Remediation

Lettie will moderate this panel discussion highlighting the divide between well-supported publishing pipelines and the “long tail” of non-traditional content with minimal standards support. The panel will include Claire Holloway (Senior Manager, OCLC), Bill Kasdorf (consultant), and Christee Pascal (Head of Acquisitions and Scholarly Communications, University of South Carolina). They will explore how content remediation leads to metadata remediation, and how this updated metadata can enable both discovery and user self-advocacy.

We look forward to seeing you at the 2026 Charleston Conference!