Dance On!

Dance On!
Last night's gala dinner & DANCE reached a roar early and only accelerated! Good on us all -- I loved every minute and bet the band will be talking about librarians for sometime to come! -- Paula Garrett, Chicago

Emerging Technologies & Service Delivery

Emerging Technologies & Service Delivery
Mary Kajewski took us on a tour of blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, pod/vodcasts... with good practical tips as well as examples of these technologies applied in a variety of libraries. Also some further reading leads.

1001 Australian Nights

My Thanks to all those contributors to this blog who have been brave enough to respond to my paper, by posting some of their own stories, and also to all those who have way-layed me in corridors and vendor stands, to tell me their own wee wee's stories.

As a teller of stories, it is perhaps one of the most rewarding aspects of my work to see colleagues generating their own stories. The stories published on this blog have touched me, just as my story touched others.

This is a wonderful illustration of the power of stories to connect us as individuals and as communities.
I hope the Library community will continue to join in celebrating our unique stories. Including the wonderfully short story about spilt coffee that appeared in a previous Blog.

Regards
Andy Wright

On blogging - from the new grad...

I've not long left the 2 sessions from Constance on wikis and blogs. Wow!

In the face of all the 'stuff' Constance talked about, the rumours of the death of email may not be so greatly exaggerated. The collaboration theme continues...

Clare

Thursday at Click06

Thursday was the only day that I got to attend the conference - after one very long, full-on day I don't know how other delegates have the stamina to do all three days, plus any tours or satellite events!

The day began with the meet the leaders session, where Alex Byrne (IFLA President) and Dagmar Schmidmaier (ALIA President) each spoke about their organisations, where they stand now and vision for the future, as well as how they came to be in those positions. Both reminded the audience that the real value of getting involved in the activites of your professional organisation is in the participation and knowing that you are making a difference - things like conference discounts and it looking good on your CV are a nice bonus.

After morning tea, I went to sessions on the results of an OPAC transaction log study in Germany, issues surrounding RFID and the Wave Riders HSC support programme being run by a co-op of Sydney libraries. As at first-timer to a really big conference with parallel sessions, I found that all the presentations were too short, particularly the RFID one, so I'll certainly be reading the papers when they are published online. I thought that Australian libraries could take note of the findings from the German study that OR and NOT were used much more when they were presented as radio button options on the catalogue, instead of as a drop-down menu where the other options aren't immediately visible.

After lunch, I was one of the new grads in the wake up session, the coaches gold medal ceremony. We were able to present certificates of recognition and medals to more than a dozen librarians who had been nominated by new grads as great mentors. After hours of preparation and lots of teleconferences it was great that it went so well.

Penny Carnaby was up next was a keynote session, where she took us on a whirlwind journey through NZ's new digital strategy and how recent library developments have made this possible. Talking to other delegates after the session, we agreed that Australia can learn a lot from our library colleagues across the Tasman with the aim of establishing a similar strategy in this country. I then went to a concurrent session on AskNow - I'm an AskNow operator so didn't really learn too much, but the stats and future of the service were definitely food for thought.

After afternoon tea (where I eventually found some food - necessary even after a very nice berry milkshake) I decided to just stay in the one room for the 3 concurrent papers. I heard papers on university library reference and info lit services, SMS reference and print vs electronic reference sources. The latter was definitely food for thought, particularly in light of Dagmar's earlier observation of how library education needs an overhaul to make it relevant to librarianship in the 21st century.

The dinner was great! I had no idea that a bunch (catalogue... whatever the collective nouns for librarians is) of librarians could party so hard! The food was delicious (especially the salmon appetisers... YUM), the lighting was fantastic and Darren Reid and the Soul City Groove had most of us out of our seats and dancing within a couple of numbers. The Social Committee did an awesome job - it was just a shame that we all had to work the following day or we'd have kept going to the wee small hours.

Kylie Smith (State Library of WA)

Print Vs Electronic

Yesterday afternoon I attended a paper delivered by Ann Ritchie and Dr Paul Genoni entitled Print V Electronic Reference Sources: Implications of an Australian Study. The paper was discussing a case study conducted at the Northern Territory Library where they audited the data in their RefTracker reference query database to determine the usage of the print and electronic (including the free web) resources.

There were a couple of points that Paul made at the end of the presentation which I thought were quite interesting:

- Paul seemed to be arguing against the rapid increase of e-resources as a replacement for print.

- He noted that there is a 'generational shift' and a lack of familiarity with print resources by new graduates of LIS.

- He also noted that libraries are good at measuring the quantity of reference enquiries, but we can't easily measure the quality of responses. Our use of electronic reference resources may be increasing, but there was a danger in just measuring the quantity of enquiries rather than also looking at quality. (There was an interesting discussion in question time about this, and whether anecdotal feedback or analysis of responses in a reference database was sufficient to determine the quality of the service being provided.)

I have to admit I am one of those 'young managers' cancelling hardcopy reference resources, and moving us full steam ahead to the electronic. I am one of those reasonably new LIS grads who can remember using the print at some stage, but I have to admit I'm more familiar with the online. The fact of the matter is that in my library if the hardcopy isn't being used I just can't justify keeping it. There was a question at the end of the session which was what could reference staff do to convince their managers that the hardcopy was needed?

The session was a bit of a wake-up call to me. Does anyone else have a manager like me who is moving full steam ahead to electronic? Are we really so unreasonable?

And I would also be interested to hear whether anyone has done any research into the quality of their reference/research service.

Cheers from WA - it's been a great conference so far. Well done to the organising Committee!

Good morning from the new grad....

Good morning all! To the friendly local blogger who recommended Rosso for coffee, can I say thank you, thank you, thank you! Found it this morning on my way to conference - I only wish I had looked harder earlier in the week. In return, can I say if you are ever in the suburb of Kogarah in Sydney, be sure to get your coffee from Kamaiki - terrific Greek cafe with a lot of similarities to Rosso.

I learned yesterday that I can continue to call myself a new grad for 5 years! Thanks to those who organised yesterday's gold medal ceremony recognising coaches and mentors - the value of those we work with is often overlooked in the day to day pressure of the workplace. I started out thinking 'what a shame' that so many of those nominated weren't there in person to receive their medals, but in the end it was quite funny that they weren't - it certainly kept the ceremony light hearted!

I said I would talk about colour and atmosphere at Click06 - allow me to digress a little and describe the city streets this morning. They are full of people in business suits wearing footy scarves. Seriously. With both the Dockers and the Eagles playing finals this weekend - footy fever has reached quite a scary pitch here - it's almost like being in Melbourne. I caught a bus yesterday that had blue and yellow streamers tied to every handrail in the bus - I dread to think what all the sweaty hands had done to those by the end of peak half-hour. Being a Swans supporter myself, I think tonight might be a good time to get on a plane and head out of the West....

Ciao

Clare