Professional Development for Academic Libraries

A filterable directory of conferences and professional development for academic library and higher-education workers, with every event rated for its AI content (ratings informed by the ACRL AI Competencies). Compiled by Yulia Brusova.

Live: https://libprofdevelopment.vercel.app

What's in it

130 conferences, webinars and events (in-person, virtual and hybrid). The page opens on upcoming events.

• Closing soon: every proposal, registration and early-bird deadline in the next 30 days, at the top of the page
• At a glance: upcoming events, events starting in the next 30 days, deadlines in the next 30 days, and events that are 100% about AI
• On each card: dates, location, format, organizer, a short description, the next deadline with a countdown, the date the organizer's site was last checked, a Sources button that shows the line of the organizer's site each date was taken from, an Add to calendar button (.ics) and a link to the official site
• AI focus label: 100% AI Focus, Major AI Track, or "AI varies" for general conferences
• Search by name, organizer or topic, and filter in the side panel by date (Upcoming, Past, All), audience, AI focus (100% AI, Major AI track, AI varies), virtual/hybrid and outside the U.S., with live counts; sort by event date or next deadline

Events move from "Upcoming" to "Past" on their own once their end date passes.

How it's built

One self-contained index.html file: plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript, with no build step and no dependencies apart from Google Fonts. All conference data lives in the CONFERENCES array inside the file.

To view it, open index.html in a browser. To host it, deploy the repo to any static host (Vercel, GitHub Pages, Netlify).

Updating the list

Edit the CONFERENCES array in index.html. Each entry looks like this:

{
  id: "unique-id",
  name: "Conference Name",
  organizer: "Organization",
  dates: "March 3–6, 2027",      // shown to readers
  dateSort: "2027-03-03",        // start date, used for sorting
  dateEnd: "2027-03-06",         // optional: keeps multi-day events "Upcoming" until they end
  location: "City, State",
  format: "inperson",            // inperson | virtual | hybrid
  url: "https://...",
  urlVerified: true,
  urlNote: "...",                // optional: shown when urlVerified is false
  category: "lib",               // lib (academic libraries) | edu (higher education)
  aiFocus: "ai100",              // ai100 (all AI) | aibig (major AI track) | aisig (included for completeness)
  international: false,
  description: "...",
  deadline: "Registration open",  // optional free-text status note
  deadlines: [                    // optional dated deadlines: drive "Closing soon" and the card countdown
    { date: "2026-11-30", what: "Proposals due" }
  ],
  checked: "2026-10-22",          // set by the refresh script when the organizer's site was confirmed
  sources: [                      // set by the refresh script: the organizer's own words behind the dates
    { about: "deadline", date: "2026-11-30", quote: "Proposals due November 30, 2026", url: "https://...", seen: "2026-10-22" }
  ]
}

After editing, update both "Last updated" dates (under the heading and in the footer).

The scripts/ folder holds the refresh tooling (conf-lib, conf-dedupe, conf-audit, conf-apply, the evidence pipeline conf-run, the local approval page conf-report (each proposed change beside the line of the organizer's page it came from; approved changes go through conf-apply), and conf-seo, which regenerates sitemap.xml, robots.txt, llms.txt and the crawler-readable copy after every data change). It is kept out of the live site by .vercelignore.

License

© 2026 Iuliia Brusova. Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.