IFDIK 2025

The International Conference on Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries (ICADL 2025) recognised three excellent works, awarding Best Student Paper, Best Short Paper, and Best Full Paper. This year's ICADL awards were generously sponsored by the Wee Kim Wee School of communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

The 2025 ICADL Best Student Paper was awarded to the paper titled "Safe Spaces Online: Usability Testing of a Virtual Space to Foster Digital Resilience among LGBTQI+ Youth" by Nattharat Samoh, Songphan Choemprayong, Jintaves Khlaisang and Thomas E. Guadamuz

The 2025 ICADL Best Short Paper award was given to Sei-Ching Joanna Sin for the paper titled "Does Trustworthy AI Motivate Generative AI Usage?"

The 2025 ICADL Best Full Paper was "Automatic Subject Indexing: How Has It Evolved and Where Is AI Taking It?" by Yi-Shual Xu, Yanti Idaya Aspura Mohd Khalid, and Muhammad Shahreeza Safiruz Kassim

The paper titled "Exploring Knowledge Concealment Through the Lens of Social Exchange Theory" by Suhaila Osman, Norhatati Hussin, and Mohd Sazili received the Best Paper Award for the Asia-Pacific Library and Information Education and Practice Conference (ALIEP 2025) as part of the International Forum on Data, Information, and Knowledge for Sustainable and Ethical Societies 2025 (IFDIK 2025).

Because of the quality of submissions, two papers received honourable mentions:
"Factors Influencing the Formation of Adult Reading Habits" by Yukako Murakami and Masaki Takeda, and
"Theory Engagement Among Filipino-Authored Library and Information Science Scholarly Work" by Adrian Philip Luna

This year's award was sponsored by Prof. Brendan Luyt and Prof. Chris Khoo.

The paper titled "The Ethics of Labor in Archives: Archival Ethnography, Memory Work, and Seeing the Unseen" by James Kevin De Jesus and Iyra Buenrostro-Cabbab received the Best Paper Award for the Asia-Pacific iConference 2025 (AP-iConference 2025) as part of the International Forum on Data, Information, and Knowledge for Sustainable and Ethical Societies 2025.

Four posters received awards at the International Forum on Data, Information, and Knowledge for Sustainable and Ethical Societies (IFDIK 2025).

In no particular order, the posters are:

Mapping Data Quality in Generative AI: A PRISMA-Based Systematic Review by Di Wang, Shanshan Gu, Yutong Ye, Qianyu Mou, and Ruiyang Chen

Personal Archiving Practices and Motivations of Ordinary Individuals by Jasmine James E. Cortez and Jonathan Isip

In or Out: Perspectives on the Inclusivity of LIS programs in the Philippines by Kayla Erika Juanzo

Connecting LIS Research and Bioethics: A Critical Review of Health Information Behavior Studies in LIS and Engagement with Bioethics Review in the Philippines by Simon Philip Sacramento, Miriam Charmigrace Salcedo, and Arthur Bryan Mariano

The refereed proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries (ICADL 2025) and the Asia-Pacific iConference 2025 are now available through Springer at https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-95-4861-3

The proceedings feature 12 full papers, 26 short papers, 5 demo/poster papers, and 3 practice papers.

83 presentations, 12 posters, 161 authors, 68 institutions, 20 countries.

Thank you for taking part in the International Forum on Data, Information, and Knowledge for Sustainable and Ethical Societies - IFDIK 2025!

Your insights, questions, and dance moves made the event a success. We hope you enjoy the rest of your stay in Manila and we look forward to seeing you at the next ICADL, ALIEP, and AP-iConference.

Love, the Philippines.

Day 3 of the International Forum on Data, Information, and Knowledge for Sustainable and Ethical Societies (IFDIK 2025) began with a keynote on infrastructures from Geoff Bowker, Professor Emeritus of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine.

Dr. Bowker talked of the need to understand infrastructures not just as an artificial process but as a natural one.

"Ants don’t choose to build bridges, but they keep producing this infrastructure naturally. You can’t design infrastructure, it’s a natural thing that grows organically."

He also discussed the difficulties of changing or decommissioning infrastructure. “Changing infrastructure, creating new kinds of infrastructure, is extremely difficult. Infrastructures have fixed cost.”

“…social and political issues are all the way down the stack, but until we change the ways we pigeonhole, analyse, and use knowledge, we won’t be able to recognise that and we won’t be able to build a more just and fair society.”

"Something can be meaningful without being serious or skill-based, it means something to you but you don't pursue the skill too seriously.

One can be serious about something without it being existentially meaningful, like it's not emotionally deep, just cool for you.
But when personal meaning enters a leisure activity, it changes how a person engages with it."

Anne Frances Calceta. An Information Full Combo: A Sensory Autoethnography of the Information Experience of Pump It Up. Student Ideathon. ALIEP 2025

"Trust shapes what I was allowed to witness... our positionality mattered... care was required of me as well... Most of the insights emerged not from formal interviews but information moments: lunch conversations, quiet moments, and after meetings. Care is not supplementary to archival work, it is archival work. If we care about archives, then we must also care for the people who keep them alive."

James Kevin De Jesus and Iyra Buenrostro-Cabbab, The Ethics of Labor in Archives: Archival Ethnography, Memory Work, and Seeing the Unseen. Archival Ethics, Information Practices, and Lived Experience Session. AP-iConference

"What may be bias to me may not be so to you. When bias becomes harmful, this is where we draw the line. The increase of AI usage these days...it's everyone's main form for looking up information...people use it more than Google...Initially, one may not see the results as harmful, but these harmful ideas are reinforced."

Shirin Shujaa, How LLMs Handle Cultural Bias: Reactions to Asian Minority Historical Narratives. Large Language Models and Generative AI Session. ICADL

Day 2 of started strong with a keynote on Data, Democracy, and the University by Dr. Fidel R. Nemenzo, Professor of Mathematics and former Chancellor of the University of the Philippines Diliman.

Dr. Nemenzo emphasised how “the systems that can empower can also manipulate or exclude… When data and algorithms are controlled by the few, they deepen inequalities and silence communities… This is not an accident or a technical problem. It is a political choice embedded in how we design and deploy these systems.”

The keynote had six key messages:
1) Data must serve the public good and we must make it work for everyone
2) Policy needs evidence, not anecdotes
3) Solutions to our problems require collaboration across disciplines, not siloed thinking
4) Open, participatory, trustworthy systems enable citizens to question, verify, and co-create solutions
5) Universities need to be independent, interdisciplinary, public-minded institutions that don’t just ask “can we?” but “should we?” and “for whom?”
6) Algorithms do not decide - people do. We need transparency, accountability, and equity at every step of transforming data into information and knowledge that serves sustainable and ethical societies.