MWDL has been here, there, and everywhere in the last couple months! As we move into the final weeks of 2025 (HOW?!), here’s a brief recap of what we’ve been doing in Fall 2025.

Preservation West Symposium

The LDS Church History Library hosted the inaugural Preservation West Symposium in mid-October in Salt Lake City. This local event drew a broad cross-section of regional professionals for two days of networking, presentations, and behind-the-scenes tours related to all aspects of cultural heritage preservation work. MWDL was well represented with attendees hailing from Brigham Young University, Utah Valley University, University of Utah, Weber State University, Utah Historical Society, and more. We look forward to next year’s event!

DPLA Network Summit

DPLA held a Network Summit hosted at Temple University’s Charles Library in Philadelphia, PA on October 28-29. Representatives from MWDL and fellow DPLA hubs all across the country gathered in person and virtually for two days of networking and planning DPLA’s future. In case you haven’t seen it, please have a look at the most recent news on DPLA’s Cultural Heritage Project transition page. DPLA is now in early phases of exploring Cleveland Public Library as a new home/lead institution for the cultural heritage aggregation project.  Here are a few photos around Charles Library and Philadelphia:

DLF Forum

We came together again at this week’s Digital Library Foundation (DLF) Forum in Denver, CO. Presenters from throughout the network included Sarah Berry & Darcy Pumphrey (Utah State University), Rachel Wittman (University of Utah-Marriott Library), and Challen Wright (University of Nevada, Reno) – congrats to everyone on being selected and for all your work! If you couldn’t attend this year, presentation slides are available in the DLF Zenodo repository. We also met up Monday for a night out in downtown Denver with attendees from over half of MWDL’s members: Brigham Young University, University of Nevada Las Vegas, University of Nevada Reno, University of Oregon, University of Utah, and Utah State University. Thanks to all who attended the dinner and it was great to continue this DLF-MWDL tradition!

Outreach

MWDL provided sponsorship at this year’s Western History Association conference (October in Albuquerque, NM) that supported the general conference scholarship fund. Next year’s conference will be held in Portland, OR. Keep your eyes on their site if you’re interested in attending or participating. The 2026 conference theme will be Unsettled: New Wests, New Lessons; the Call for Proposals (CFP) closes December 5, 2025.

We will once again be an Online Exhibitor for RootsTech 2026! The event will be held March 5-7, 2026 in Salt Lake City, UT.

Finally… drumroll, please… 2026 marks MWDL’s 25th year of operation!! Stay tuned as we plan our 2026 virtual winter meeting and celebrate our 25th birthday.

Until then, Happy Holidays to everyone and we look forward to more in 2026!