Conferences

VALA 2008 14th Biennial Conference and Exhibition

VALA 2008 14th Biennial Conference and Exhibition continues to draw participation from many librarians across the states of Australia and even many nations worldwide. The theme for this conference is Libraries / changing spaces, virtual places, which is related to the Australian’s developments on the use of technology in libraries. This year’s keynote speakers were Professor Schubert Foo (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore), Professor Michael Geist (University of Ottawa, Canada), Professor Peter Lor (University of Pretoria, South Africa), Andy Powell (Eduserv Foundation, UK), Stuart Weibel (OCLC Programs and Research, USA) and Luke Wroblewski (Yahoo! Inc & LukeW Interface Designs, USA) The keynotes speakers have shared and covered their interesting insight from a wide range of perspective on the library and information science industry from a legal perspective to a business and community edge. Each keynote has its own coverage on every aspect of an innovation, initiative and experiences in the implementation on today’s competitive area of development that related to the changing spaces and virtual places. Overall the conference focused more on the innovative and initiative development areas in the exploration of libraries/changing spaces, virtual places that has given a slight impact on the social and public policy in each library.

The Keynotes Speakers
Andy Powell: Setting a high standard on the technical discussion, which is not often in Australia, Powell share the insight on FRBR (Functional requirements for Bibliographic Records) and gives a pondering statement to the general librarians on regards to an institutional based repository model allows for a global community of scholars. The focus is advised to be from the concept of enabling storage in a repository to designing an architecture that maximizes discoverability on the Web. Three issues is being discussed by Powell such as (i) the right terminology, (ii) service oriented versus resource oriented, (iii) national versus global. He also furthers his presentation into the impact o Web 2.0, where (i) what would a web 2.0 repository look like and (ii) the potential impact of the semantic web on repositories.

With relevant to these two questions and the issues, the platform on designing a unique repository is still in an open market for libraries to venture into. System librarians could still venture into this area of research and development to make a web 2.0 repository to be a global service, where the concentration is an enabler of a social interaction. Model like SWAP and FRBR could be used into this as the architecture for the development’s reflection

Luke Wroblewski: A unique perspective, but in reality, Luke has shared the human behavior pattern on how a reader would read and scan a basic webpage with the librarians. This presentation leads to the factors that contributed to the design considerations in designing and presenting simple basic information on the internet avenue using webpage. He quickly elaborated and share on the (i) usefulness (what is this?), (ii) usability (How do I use it?) and (iii) desirability (why should I care?). These three factors are usefully tip and pointers for librarians designing for their social application and rich interaction interface for their users. A recent shift from locomotion to services, pages to rich interaction, sites to content experience and webmasters to everyone are the following element that the development from the traditional web into a web 2.0’s environment.

In particular, as Luke elobrated on his site, “… the trend from locomotion to manipulation and conversation (how to deal with crowded shelf space and purely digital services); the trend from sites to content experiences (how do we design when search, content aggregators, and display surfaces rule the Web); the trend from page-level interactions to micro-interactions (how can we explain available actions and their state); the move from only webmasters making content to everyone making content (what does this do to creative control)…”

With the relevant of Luke’s presentation, the shift of content holders (stakeholders), can be observed moving towards to the users centric. Libraries will cut the manpower (efforts and roles) of webmaster’s talent. Leaving the webmaster’s more on development and research for a unique, rich development. But, the content holder (subject libraries) will now play a bigger role in put first hand materials into the systems. But, a number of issues such as the workflow (corporate information), someone need to address this area.
Professor Schubert Foo: Sharing the developments of Singapore’s National Library effort on “Going virtual for enhanced library experience: a case study of the National Library of Singapore” is one of the remarkable and impressive to illustrate the advent of technologies used to streamline into an intuitive process in engaging the users via the internet medium.

“How does NLB address this gap on finding solutions to reach the majority (information seekers) and bring them back to the physical and virtual libraries?”
Prof Schubert has shared that library as an info-concierge; individual info object is a self sustaining, self contained node unit, can be content or service, in any format. The connectivity can also be attained by many ways and not necessarily in a single way such as evolving a mesh (web) of information. This example can is illustrated on BookJetty.com, where libraries such as NTU, NUS and NLB have integrated the connectivity for users discovered contents. On top, library can evolved into a network of true collaborators, physical exhibition rendered into virtual exhibitions, and to meet users’ changing expectations and consumer lifestyles, which lead to a collaborative reference network.

With the relevant to Prof Schubert’s presentation, library can turn into a centralized catalyst that initiate and collaborate with other notes. Not only the public libraries should share this innovative, but as far as academic libraries too has the resources and expertise to venture and share out this with the industry.

Professor Michael Geist: Sharing the development in the early days of web (as early as in the 90s), the government and policy have been a part of the internet, at least for Canada. Prof Geist has shared with the librarians on the development of internet from a simple application into a platform which is enabling people to create, speak out and making their voices heard. And these are becoming a growing exponentially.

And, in 2018, the internet will be strongly pillars based on these four factors (i) connectivity, (ii) enhance participation, (iii) copyright, and (iv) content. This is due to the price of admission for participation, lifelong learning, self expression is accesses as there are primarily related to open source development software.

With the relevant to Prof. Geist’s presentation, library could start venturing into the open source development to develop a balance approach in deployment of technologies. Partially, to remain and sustain a competitive edge in terms of unlocking access: in support of a hands-on Internet policy. This also would question the active participatory by librarians In the contribution of content development where legal matters.
Professor Peter Lor: International Librarianship 2.0: some international dimensions of Web 2.0 and Library 2.0, has given us the insight ponder to the changes in the knowledge and skill of librarianship today and even down in the road to come. This is due to the nature of information today, where once it is a digital form and now, it able to travel by itself. Yet, it does not need someone to direct it. Prof Lor stated, “Libraries have entered a period of disruptive innovation. Everything is changing too quickly.”

“What is the implication?”

Google search instead of LISA – due to curiosity, serendipity, fun. And, there are other more as elaborated in the long tail by Anderson (2006). This actually led to the merge of Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 as manifestations of Information Society/Knowledge Society/Information Economy. At IFLA, 3 main themes such as (i) freedom, (ii) equity and (iii) inclusion lead to the global voice of librarians and libraries. This led to the respond to the profession’s concerns - established an advocacy unit, to raise awareness, preparing ammunition, empowering professionals, coordinating. However, it is an important role of all IFLA members.

Stuart Weibel: Could library label as a brand? What about the Equity of it? Weibel discuess that we need a strong visible brand on the web as currently libraries are in a monotone presence. Worst it is located in a colorful, flashy web world. These are the number of issues that Weibel has raised to build an intuitive space on top of the business model. In short, libraries have to be a part of new electronic environments that dominate social, educational and work environments.

This model could be delivering on top of the social networking applications. Identifiers are keys to fulfilling the mission of libraries in a digital future, to compete on the open web for recognition of the brand, to integrate the traditional bibliographic values with social networking content, to provide services and access to the digital tribe - the future constituency.

The Concurrent Sessions
As the objective of this Conference is to support library, cultural and information organizations as they drive innovation and growth through the use of technology to meet the needs of their users. The concurrent session gives the insight and experience of each Australians’ library on virtually all aspects of technology in library and information management services deployed in their organization. It reflects the impact on the nature of libraries, changes that affect the way libraries and cultural organizations relate to their communities and in the networks of partnerships and relationships that they must build in order to provide relevant services for those communities. An impressive range of local and overseas speakers reporting on innovative projects and topics of current importance, the conference will not only reflect on the current reality of libraries, but provide pointers as to the direction of future changes.

The proceeding papers of each concurrent session presented can be found on this URL: http://www.vala.org.au/vala2008/auth2008.htm  

Experiences Learnt From the Conference
The keynotes sessions are a reality check for development to progress further in depth. These are due to a couple of reason such the current environment scanning and the implication that will be facing when a social tools is launched out. Thus, librarians can use these notes to keep track and retain sustainability competitiveness in the development in introducing such systems. While the concurrent session shared the experiences of each Australia librarians and information on their journey in the venture of such technologies, that others can learnt from their experience or follow their milestone.

On the other hand, Singaporeans libraries also should share their initiatives on the efforts to make library a better space in the virtual world. Perhaps, through the blogosphere like on the topic presented by Kathryn Greenhill, Fiona Bradley and Constance Wiebrands on Libraries interact: collaboration and community in the Australian library blogosphere (URL: http://librariesinteract.info/). With the matter of fact, a Google Group for Librarians in Singapore has been introduced by one of the local NLB librarians. The information can be located on this URL: http://librarians.in.singapore.googlepages.com/home.  

This initiative actually has been further initiative into Facebook environment. The idea share here is, even it is a simple development, but it leaves a huge collaboration impact, in terms of professionalism. And, Singaporeans should share this with the community.
There are other elements from the concurrent session that librarians could pick up and learnt. The use of social tools in outreach their users, as well into the development of library portal to be as intuitive as can be. Never less, tools providers by Google, Facebook, and other prominent online information providers, the library should not forget. Instead, they should merge this as an info-concierge. This is due to the nature of the target audience. At the same time, librarians too have to equip and embrace their knowledge in using this tools and a shelf of new wave will be coming. If not, this will lead to a competitive disadvantage.

Conclusion
In conclusion, VALA 2008 has given a window of opportunities for libraries to share and initiate social space projects to embark within the context of Australia. This includes usability, open standards and novel interactions, etc. It was also apparent that the subject of evaluation methods remains something of a ‘hot potato’. It will be interesting to see in which directions the field of social spaces and development moves over the next few years. Some of the projects still continued as an open research. In order to stay in tune and update, librarians are encouraged to stay in touch through the current social sphere network that the Australians have developed.

Notes
Lastly, I would like to thanks to a couple of presented and the blogosphere to keep the information on VALA 2008 intact and updated.

Luke Wroblewski – Information and update can be found on his url: http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?615 & http://www.lukew.com/ff/index.asp

Andy Powell – For put his slide on Slideshare:
http://www.slideshare.net/eduservfoundation/repositories-thru-the-looking-glass

Kathryn Greenhill – For putting daily updates on her Librarians Matters:
http://librariansmatter.com/blog/2008/02/07/vala-session-summaries/

Michelle McLean – For putting daily updates on her Connecting Librarians:
http://connectinglibrarian.com/category/vala-2008/

All the speakers proceeding papers:
http://www.vala.org.au/vala2008/auth2008.htm

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