Next Up in the Solutions Showcase Series
Arran Griffith
Hi All,
We are excited to share details about the next two Solutions Showcases in our series. This will make the 13th and 14th Solutions Showcases in the Series, and we couldn’t be more excited.
If you’re new to this event, The Solutions Showcase Series is a regular virtual event, bringing together individuals and institutions from across the cultural heritage sector to demo practical solutions they've implemented to mitigate the negative impacts of AI bot activity and harvesting on their systems, including repositories, websites, catalogues, and more.
Details:
Solutions Showcase #13 - How VuFind® Users are Blocking the Bots
Date: Tuesday, November 3rd, 2026
Time: 10:00am Eastern
Location: Zoom - https://lyrasis.zoom.us/meeting/register/yobnJhWUSMOraw0JTebWUQ
-
This session will feature a live demo and time for Q&A.
-
Demos will span a diverse range of technical approaches, including open and non-open-source solutions.
The session will bring three VuFind® community users together to share how they are individually tackling aggressive bot traffic on their VuFind® instances at their institutions.
Demian Katz, Falvey Library - Falvey Library hosts multiple VuFind® instances (as well as various other PHP applications). They have built a custom PHP application-level firewall which can be included into the bootstrapper of any PHP application to perform checks to block bots. This tool allows us to quickly respond to changing behavior and implement custom solutions to urgent problems.
Maccabee Levine, Lehigh University Library - The library is using VuFind's built-in Rate Limiter including its integration with Cloudflare Turnstile. A brief overview explanation can be found here: https://vufind.org/wiki/administration:rate_limiting
Megan Schanz, Michigan State Library - Here, the library is making use of a layered approach for bot detection and blocking. They deploy the open-source tool go-away, which issues automated challenges that require no user interaction, alongside custom Traefik and Apache rules that filter out known bad URL patterns and checking against aggregated blocklists before requests hit our application layer.
Solutions Showcase #14 - Anubis Update with Xe Iaso
Date: Wednesday, December 2nd, 2026
Time: 1:00pm Eastern
Location: Zoom - https://lyrasis.zoom.us/meeting/register/PLCXoYLNRlKKJcaZFRWqbA
We are excited to bring Anubis back to the Solutions Showcase Series! Xe Iaso returns to provide an update what's new with the tool, and to talk openly about the hard parts of raising the bar for "bad" traffic without blocking the good. Xe will discuss the complications around detection, the dilemma of deploying tools that can become targets, and why accessibility tools and scrapers increasingly look alike.
To read more about the presenters, and see information about previous Solutions Showcases, check out our wiki space: https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/cmtygp/Solutions+Showcase
The Solutions Showcase Series is organized by the AI Discussions Group, a collaborative initiative that emerged from shared concerns about the impact of AI-driven web harvesting on academic institutions. While our initial focus was on academic repositories, we’ve since expanded our scope to include all corners of the GLAM sector.
Read more about some of our working group here: https://wiki.lyrasis.org/spaces/cmtygp/pages/364743611/Community+AI+Discussions+Working+Group
Have a solution to share?
We’re actively looking for additional presenters! If your institution has addressed AI bot scraping in a creative or effective way, we’d love
to feature your work. Please reach out to Arran Griffith
at arran.g...@lyrasis.org
to book a presentation slot.
Cheers,
Arran Griffith, on behalf of The AI Discussions Group
Arran Griffith
Solutions Showcase #12 - How VuFind® Users are Blocking the Bots
Date: Tuesday, November 3rd, 2026
Time: 10:00am Eastern
Location: Zoom - https://lyrasis.zoom.us/meeting/register/yobnJhWUSMOraw0JTebWUQ
Solutions Showcase #13 - Anubis Update with Xe Iaso
Date: Wednesday, December 2nd, 2026
Time: 1:00pm Eastern
Location: Zoom - https://lyrasis.zoom.us/meeting/register/PLCXoYLNRlKKJcaZFRWqbA
Date: Tuesday, October 6, 2026 at 3:50 PM
To: Fedora Tech <fedor...@googlegroups.com>; Fedora Community <fedora-c...@googlegroups.com>; samvera-...@googlegroups.com <samvera-...@googlegroups.com>; samver...@googlegroups.com <samver...@googlegroups.com>; isla...@googlegroups.com <isla...@googlegroups.com>; fedor...@jiscmail.ac.uk <fedor...@jiscmail.ac.uk>; Digital-Preservation Announcement and Information List <digital-pr...@jiscmail.ac.uk>; Digital Learning Network DLNet <dl...@jiscmail.ac.uk>; Code for Libraries <code...@lists.clir.org>; DLF-AN...@LISTS.CLIR.ORG <dlf-an...@lists.clir.org>; dspace-c...@googlegroups.com <dspace-c...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Next Up in the Solutions Showcase Series
Hi All,
We are excited to share details about the next two Solutions Showcases in our series. This will make the 13th and 14th Solutions Showcases in the Series, and we couldn’t be more excited.
If you’re new to this event, The Solutions Showcase Series is a regular virtual event, bringing together individuals and institutions from across the cultural heritage sector to demo practical solutions they've implemented to mitigate the negative impacts of AI bot activity and harvesting on their systems, including repositories, websites, catalogues, and more.
Details:
Solutions Showcase #12 - How VuFind® Users are Blocking the Bots