5th International Library and Information Practice Conference

The 5th International Library and Information Practice Conference is being held in Stockholm, Sweden in June-July 2009. I am on the International Program Committee for this conference and we have just started considering themes, possible guest speakers and possible topics for workshops. I co-wrote a presentation that my colleagues Lisa Cotter and Ingrid Tonnison presented at the 3rd EBLIP conference in Brisbane in 2005, and Lisa and I had a poster accepted for the 4th conference (North Carolina, USA, 2007) but were unable to get funding to attend. I don't know if I will be able to attend the 5th conference either but being on the Program Committee is a good way of getting involved remotely.

The conference blog is at http://blogs.kib.ki.se/eblip5/ for those who are interested.

A Change of Direction

Its been quite a while since I posted to this blog and lots has happened. I've taken 6 months' leave from my position at the hospital library and am working at the nearby University of Newcastle campus library. After 10 years at the hospital I thought it was time to broaden my horizons, not to mention take a break from full-time work and management. At the University library I am doing mainly reference work across a large range of subject areas - not just health but subjects waaaaaay outside my comfort zone such as business, history, etc. Its great professional development and I'm enjoying it immensely.

Just before I left the hospital library I attended the Beyond the Hype symposium held at QUT in Brisbane and sponsored by ALIA. The theme was Web 2.0 and together with my colleagues Lisa Cotter (University of Newcastle) and Gillian Wood (NSW Health Department), I presented a paper on the initial findings of the Web 2.0 and Australian Health Librarians survey we undertook at the end of 2007. Links to the presentation and paper can be found on this blog and other information about Beyond the Hype can be found at http://beyondthehype.ning.com . Lisa has also blogged about the symposium at http://librariesusingevidence.blogspot.com .

Recent Library Reads

I have read a few interesting books lately about libraries. The first is Double Fold by Nicholson Baker. In this book Baker, a novelist, charts the destruction of many of the hard copy holdings of books and newspapers in US libraries as a result of an evangelical drive to microfilm and digitise in the 1960s to 1990s. He alleges that the destruction arose not from a need to preserve crumbling paper but a hidden agenda to save space, and he laments the loss of unique and rare titles. This quote from the blurb says it all: "The players include the British Library, the Library of Congress, the CIA, NASA, microfilm lobbyists, newspaper dealers and a colourful array of librarians, collectors and digital futurists, as well as Baker himself - who eventually discovers that the only way to save one important newspaper archive being disposed of is to buy it himself."

The second is Creating the Customer-Driven Library: Building on the Bookstore Model by Jeanette A. Woodward. Woodward is a librarian who encourages us all to take a long, hard look at our libraries - their physical layout and appearance, services, presentation and so on - and compare these to the book chains such as Borders. What are the retailers doing right and how can libraries copy or adapt the bookstores' successful strategies? I found this book very useful in preparing the presentation on enhancing the usability of libraries I gave recently at the Management Strategies for Libraries and Information Service Centres Conference, Sydney, 19-20 September 2007. My presentation is on Slideshare.

Currently I am reading Phil Bradley's How to Use Web 2.0 in Your Library in preparation for the NSW Health Libraries Forum 2007, of which I am co-convenor. The Forum is to be held at Gosford Hospital Conference Centre in New South Wales, Australia, on 8-9 November 2007. The focus of the Forum is on using Web 2.0 tools and technologies to enhance the library user's environment so this book is very timely. We actually have two donated copies of the book to give away at the Forum. The chaper on RSS feeds is great - very clear and well-written, not requiring any tech knowledge but with enough detail for those who want to know the "how" as well as the "why". I am really enjoying dipping into this book and filling in a lot of detail, as well as getting inspired about ways I can use Web 2.0 in my library.

Web 3.0 - The Semantic Web

I'm still trying to get my head around Web 2.0 and Tim Berners-Lee is on YouTube talking about Web 3.0 or the Semantic Web. Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVFY52CH6Bc
I am totally in awe of people like him who can make conceptual leaps to not just visualising the future but creating it.

Some Library-Related You-Tube Videos

There are a few great You-Tube videos out there featuring libraries. These are just three. The first one features one of the old card catalogues which will bring back happy memories for some people (and not-so-happy ones for others):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK0GmiSMNGI
The second is an hilarious medieval IT HelpDesk skit in Norwegian. Bear with it - its worthwhile.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ
The third is Cookie Monster in the Sesame Street Library:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJlkplvYdgA

My delicious links

I have added a link to my del.icio.us favourites to have them handy. For anyone who has not yet discovered del.icio.us, it is a wonderful Web 2.0 technology that allows you to build up a library of links to favourites and access them anywhere. Yes - you don't have to be sitting at your own PC to access your favourites this way. You can also share favourites with others and tag them, organise them into groups, and generally take charge of all the great web pages you find.

Starting a Blog

I've not really been interested in starting a blog previously. However now I'd like to get one going to gather all my librarian "stuff" together in one place. So I'm not expecting anyone other than me to read this. However if someone does stumble across it, here's some information about me. I'm a librarian, I live in Australian, I work in health, and my professional interests include evidence based librarianship, collection development and library management.