conferences

conferences - library

Bursting the bubble

September 26, 2012 by 0 Comments

I had the pleasure of being invited to speak at the Ontario Library Services North (OLSN) conference in Sudbury. One of the reasons I was excited to accept the invitation is that it took me out of my normal presentation audience. I love working in academia, but it often feels like a bubble. We’re so busy looking at our own issues that we don’t get to think about our colleagues in public libraries and the issues they face. This conference offered me a chance to try to think a little differently and, because it isn’t my area of expertise, I’ve been able to learn a lot so far, like working with First Nations clients and engaging your community. The latter is something I think academic libraries should be working towards: both our own university community but also partnering with public libraries to reach out to our greater community. Universities are very insular, but partnerships between the university, academic and public libraries can help open up the institution and engage their community in new and exciting ways.

I’ve really enjoyed breaking out of my norm and learning so much from my public library colleagues. It’s been a refreshing to look at librarianship through a new lens and I highly recommend taking the chance to learn something outside of your own field.

 

 

conferences

Code4Lib Great Eastern

April 9, 2012 by 0 Comments

I’ve been posting this on Facebook and Twitter – it’s time I said something here too. I’m really excited to be working with colleagues to bring the first Code4Lib Great Eastern conference together! I’ve attended Code4Lib North and thought it’s time to bring together the techy folk on the east coast for a similar experience.

Code4Lib Great Eastern will run May 26-27 at the Killam Library at Dalhousie University in Halifax. It is rather unconferencey in feel and definitely in price. You should come – it’s free – just sign up here! The first day will be a mix of short presentations (20 minutes) and lightening talks (5 minutes) and the second day is Hackfest. You can find details here. Tell us about neat projects you’re working on or want to work on – simply put your topic on the wiki. The day really relies on participation, so be sure to sign up.

As the first get-together, I’m hoping we can get people interested in keeping this moving forward. Come with ideas on how you’d like to see Code4Lib Great Eastern grow into a thriving community!

conferences

Super Conference Roundup/Libday8

February 7, 2012 by 0 Comments

I usually participate in Libday postings and was looking forward to sharing things from my new job but this year’s round ended up during OLA Super Conference, so it’s a two for one posting.

  • Day 1 was spent travelling to the conference. Nothing exciting there.
  • Day 2 was spent doing final touches for the conference. I had a packed schedule and a number of responsibilities to prepare for.
  • Day 3 was a combination of fun and responsibility. As always, the best part of the conference is networking and I started by networking over high tea. This should be the start to all conferences. The networking continued throughout the night. The evening was filled with my last dinner as part of the OLA board. This was followed by duties as OLITA President 2011 to partake in the Art of Networking event (always a fun time). Then the first plenary and more networking at the party. Did  I mention I like networking?
  • Day 4 was the first full day of the conference. My major responsibility was my presentation on QR codes (slides are already up). Then, learning in sessions and more networking.
  • Day 5 I convened a session and ran the OLITA AGM – and guess what, more networking. I am now officially past-president/treasurer of OLITA. We had an awesome year at OLITA and did some amazing things, including the technology lending library, Planet OLITA, appetizers (small intros into tech on our blog) and an amazing Digital Odyssey. I worked with a  mind-blowing council and it’s been great working with my council. I’ll be posting more on OLITA in another post.
  • I don’t usually include a Day 6, but as the conference went into the weekend, here it is. The highlight of this day was the OLITA Spotlight, which I convened. I also was a human book for the first time. My title was The Accidental Techy and I had a good time answering some questions. Needless to say, after all of this, I was exhausted. I’m still recuperating!

Needless to day, this was not my typical week and in fact I’m still trying to figure out my “typical” week. As always, Super Conference was great and I’m looking forward to catching sessions I missed through the virtual stream. 

conferences

TEDxLibrariansTO roundup

June 26, 2011 by 0 Comments

Well, it finally happened. I’ve been looking forward to this conference for a while and it lived up to expectations. The theme for TEDxLibrariansTO was thought leaders. This was the first conference in a long time that I didn’t tweet as I wanted to fully immerse myself in the conversations in the room.

Amy Buckland started the day with a call to revolution. Thought leaders should take radical action, help move the profession forward and not be afraid of failure. Failure can be a good thing and it should be done quickly – don’t let a project linger if it isn’t working, kill it quickly. According to Amy, the revolution is coming. Librarians wanted. I want to be part of this revolution. Updated: here are the slides for Amy’s talk – read it and be inspired.

Amy’s call for revolutionaries tied nicely with Eric Boyd‘s talk on Maker Culture and hackerspaces. Eric gave a great introduction into something I’ve only heard about (and now I want to know more about both maker culture and hacker spaces). While the work that Eric’s been doing is neat (ex. North Paw), what struck me was that librarians can and probably should be makers. This rose from Eric’s comment that maker culture is about trying all sorts of crazy ideas – librarians need to do this. I saw direct links between Amy’s revolutionaries and makers. I’m still mulling on this idea and I know I’m not the only one thinking about this.

Sarah Grimes gave a passionate talk on the value of games in libraries, asking why we don’t rally around censorship, challenges and ratings of games, the way we do so readily with books.

Siobhan Stevenson talked about labour issues in public libraries – primarily the devaluing and disappearance of librarian work and the rise of users as producers of information. Part of this can be traced to the rise of services that no longer need librarians and a move towards consumer trends (libraries as bookstores and cafes). Sadly, this is not limited to public libraries – academic libraries are going through similar pains. Unfortunately, no solutions were offered.

Mita Williams was both passionate and inspiring with her talk on community engagement. By hosting collaborative events, we can host conversations and initiate change. Mita gave powerful examples of unconferences bringing people together and influencing people. Once we invite such conversations and establish events, it is essential that we continue to support the conversation. An easy way to do this is to mentor others as you plan events so they can lead in the future.

Melanie McBride gave a moving talk on creating heros in the library by supporting gaming in the library. She spoke on the importance of voluntary participation, emphasizing that voluntary is key as it is about choices, freedom and autonomy.

John Miedema spoke of his research into slow reading. He questioned rather technology really allows for slow reading. Needless to say, I’ve added his book Slow Reading to my list of things to read.

Discussions throughout the day were intriguing. Some of us talked about our profession’s tendency towards being insular. We need to stop talking to ourselves, preaching to the converted, and move to influence those around us. Another conversation raised the point that librarians are more than their institutions. We don’t stop being a librarian when we go home – the passion that drove us to this profession continues when we are not at work. The question was raised as to why we don’t do more, collaborate more, outside of work. And of course, there was discussion around what a thought leader actually is. One person suggested that it is the thought that leads, people work to bring the thought to reality. Another suggested that thought leaders may simply give voice to the idea and work as a team to accomplish it – it isn’t always about one person.

Needless to say, I left with my brain full of ideas. I was lucky enough to volunteer for the event, but I want to give a huge congratulations to Fiacre O’Duinn and Shelley Archibald, the event organizers, on pulling together a great group of speakers and participants and for making the day a huge success.

conferences - OLITA

Digital Odyssey 2011

June 18, 2011 by 0 Comments

As OLITA president for a second time, I was again heavily in involved in this year’s Digital Odyssey: Ebook (r)Evolution. The theme seemed perfectly timed and interest in the event was overwhelming – so much so that we increased our registration to capacity and still sold out! Even the days before the conference seemed to be working with our theme, with multiple news reports on ebook use and even the launching of the new Kobo on the conference day. Eric Hellman set the tone of the day with his talk “Why Libraries Exist: Transitioning from print to ebooks”.  Talks from the day will soon be available on the Digital Odyssey website.

The great thing about this year’s event was the mix of public, academic and school librarians who attended. Ebooks are having an incredible, and still not completely understood, impact on libraries. Public libraries are dealing with Overdrive, lending limits, and an increasing number of ebook devices. Universities still seem to be concerned primarily with books in browsers, though that may change in the future. Despite the differences in delivery, the event allowed librarians from all sectors to come together and consider how the move to ebooks will affect our patrons, our libraries and out profession.

I’d like to extend huge thanks to everyone who helped make the day such a success: the OLITA council, the OLA office, the student volunteers, and especially the Digital Odyssey Committee – Sally Wilson and Michelle Arbuckle.

 

conferences - tech

Code4Lib North convert

May 10, 2011 by 0 Comments

I attended my first Code4Lib North conference last week. The first day was Hackfest – I love the notion of getting a bunch of people together, people who have not worked together before, to solve agreed upon problems. I would love to see more of this happen within the library world and wonder if it could work within an institution. One day a week or month, get everyone together, decide on a problem or two, and spend the day actually trying to solve it. I want to try this (I’m pretty sure this occurs in other industries – has anyone done it in their library?).

The second day was full of short presentations on all of the neat projects programmers and web folk were working on – be sure to check out the wiki and here for content from the day (video link coming soon). The group was small – great for meeting and talking with a bunch of interesting folk. This was one of the first conferences in a while where I went away with really exciting new tech ideas – I felt I learned a ton but also left excited to learn a heck of a lot more!

conferences

IL 2010

November 4, 2010 by 0 Comments

It’s been a crazy fall term – instruction and research consultations are at an all time high, which while great, means there is little time for anything else, include this little blog.

I did manage to fit in Internet Librarian 2010 though. I do enjoy going to this conference – great location, great people, great ideas. I have all sorts of ideas I’d like to try now (many involving QR codes, which kind of surprises me). I did manage to do 2 presentations – one on the videos we created last summer and some preliminary survey results (more to come) and I was lucky enough to be part of the first Failcamp panel.

Failcamp started with 3 panelists talking about their failures and what they learned. I talked about the lack of pickup in our reference pilot in Second Life. I tried to talk about how sometimes projects happen out of opportunities and that these can snowball, for good or bad. I also wanted to stress that just because a project doesn’t work at my institution (which has no distance education or other institutional presence in SL), it doesn’t mean that it will be a failure at all institutions. It’s essential that we know who we’re trying to reach and whether what we are doing is desired by them.

Despite all of the great ideas I took away, I’d have to say, the discussion of our failures was the most enlightening and I took some good advice/ideas home with me. Let’s face it, we all fail. Why don’t we talk about it? Why are we constantly recreating the wheel? Yes, it’s great to hear how well things worked, but what didn’t? What should I avoid if I try a similar project – or maybe I should avoid the project all together? I’m hoping that Failcamp and the other sessions in the Fail stream, will start a revolution. Admit your failures! Learn from them! To help this revolution along, share your fail stories at failbrary.org.

conferences - Uncategorized

More conferencing

April 28, 2010 by 0 Comments

Another late conference post. I recently attended and presented at Computers in Libraries. It was another great conference (despite the fact that my laptop died while I was there). Mobile was one of the hot topics – so hot in fact, that I didn’t get to one of the sessions because the room was so packed. I’m particularly interested in hearing about what people are saying about mobile as OLITA’s Digital Odyssey theme is Going Mobile (June 11 at Ryerson). There were also great sessions on ebooks, infolit and too many others to remember. There was so much good stuff that at one point, I wanted to attend 4 out of the 5 sessions in one time slot. There were great conversations, in the lobby and in via twitter. One of the more interesting conversations I had with people (virtual and real) revolved around gen X leaders. While I have my own issues with stereotyping generations, there does seem to be a trend where people around my age aren’t stepping into the management roles. We’ve got lots of great leaders but people seem to be shunning management in a lot of cases and I haven’t pinned down why exactly. I’m a full believer that leadership and management aren’t necessarily exclusive, but what will this apparent apprehension to take leadership roles mean for the future of librarianship?

So, one conference down, four more to go (and a bunch of others I wish I was going to, like LOEX and STHLE). Up next week is a talk at the Ontario Association of Library Technicians conference. I teach a distance course for Library Techs and I’m looking forward to seeing them and their conference. Then, we’re hosting WILU at Mac May 12-14. This will be followed by the CACAL great debate at CLA in June and finally OLITA’s Digital Odyssey which I’ve been planning. Then vacation – I’ll need a rest after all of this!

conferences - ola - OLITA

Superconference 2010

March 8, 2010 by 0 Comments

A very late post for OLA’s 2010 Superconference. This year was a little bit different for me. I didn’t get to attend too many sessions this year and that’s because I took my new role as OLITA President. This meant a little more behind the scenes activity, more talking with vendors and meeting all sorts of great people. We’ve got a great OLITA council this year and I look forward to working with them as we re-examine our strategic priorities and make sure they’re aligned with OLA’s new strategic plan. Digital Odyssey is also quickly coming! This year it’s Going Mobile and will be held at Ryerson June 11. We’ve invited Jason Griffey to be our keynote – it’s going to be great! Be sure to keep an eye on the OLITA website for details. Ok, well, I’ve slipped into talking about OLITA rather than the conference, so back to the conference. As always, it was a great conference (complete with obligatory snow storm) and a big congrats to all the people who put so much work and effort into making it a wonderful conference!

Academic Librarianship - conferences - presentations

Roundup

October 30, 2009 by 0 Comments

Again, far too much time has passed since my last posting and far too much has happened. Here’s a roundup of just some of the things that are happening.

OLA is undergoing some strategic planning discussions at the moment. I love being able to take time to stop and look at the big picture, to figure out what it really is that we want to accomplish as individuals, an association, as a profession. We rarely have the chance to stop the daily routine to see where we are going. This scares a lot of people, or at least makes them uncomfortable but this isn’t a bad thing. Some of this comes down to a fear of change but that could be a whole blog post for another time. You can take part in the OLA discussion on  the ola site, facebook and twitter.

We launched the big project I was part of this summer. We made a series of 6 short, humourous videos promoting library services to new students. You can check them out on our youtube channel. One even made a top 5 list!

I just came back from presenting at Internet Librarian. This is one of my favourite conferences – amazing people with great ideas. You can find my presentation here – feel free to contact me with any questions. One of the highlights of the conference was the launch of Michael Porter and David Lee King’s video Library 101 – be sure to check it out!  I attended the unconference and my first preconference (on digital natives and digital immigrants) – both great events with amazing discussion. One of my favourite things about conferences is the chance to sit around with smart people and discuss the issues we all face as librarians. As usual, I came back from the conference full of ideas and energy – something I was in great need of. It feels like it’s been busier than usual with instruction this year, which is a sign of liaison success I suppose.

I recall thinking “ooh, I should blog about this” in the past few months but in the busy-ness of life, they have gotten lost. At least you’re a little more up-to-date on the state of things though!