Below is a summary-of-the-summary of some of the LIANZA 2017 sessions I attended (some others were too participatory to allow live-blogging, or I ran out of brain) with key points and highlighting of things I particularly want to remember for some reason; no value judgements to be implied by the lack thereof!
Sunday
- The dangerous myth about librarians – libraries are powerful and words have power so stop with the ‘save our libraries’ rhetoric. Stop relying on how ‘obvious’ our value is; stop being lazy about biculturalism; value ourselves, have courage, be visible.
Monday
- Open your mind – magic show with some inspirational takeaways 🙂
- Open your arms (and mind) – best practice for creating programmes with culturally and linguistically diverse communities
- Te haerenga o Koha (te reo) – history/journey of the Koha library platform
- (Plus my presentation on open access to conference proceedings, and Rebecca Dames’ presentation on our virtual reference service AskLive .)
Tuesday
- Huakina te whare ki te ao – background and examples of Ngā Upoko Tukutuku (Māori subject headings)
- What’s going on with ebook usage? – public library context, did lots of work extracting usage data and combining with patron data, plus surveying satisfaction
- Games for learning – focusing on the learning around making games rather than playing them, and particularly using the presenter’s Gamefroot platform
- Opening up licensing agreements – the kinds of terms we should be clarifying with database vendors, and how we convey this to users (particularly in Alma – we could be doing this a bit on the journal level now, though not on the article level)
- The Future of the Commons – looking at Creative Commons (and the commons in general) from the point of view of the social systems supporting the commons, and in relation to the state and the market.
- Enhancing library services with a journey mapping approach – a user experience methodology with a focus on the user’s emotions. Looking at what the user does and how they feel at each stage of carrying out a particular task/heading towards a particular goal.
Wednesday
- The development of a digital atlas of Ngāi Tahu history – background and development of the project mapping placenames and attached history for the whole of the South Island – a massive (and massively important) project. Call for institutions with relevant content to share it with the project.
- Engaging the student community through work placements in the AUT university library makerspace – 2 projects done with student work experience placement from non-LIS students – talked about getting creative with what non-LIS skills have to offer the library
- The summer boutique library – closing the library but keeping the doors open – process around creating a temporary library while closed for refurbishment over the summer trimester.
- Finding our happy place at work – approaches taken by a new manager to improve staff morale. A favourite: cut back on number of events – and as a result number of events went up as the pressure was off and staff enjoyed doing them again.
- Learnt it on the grapevine – a “Chinese Whispers” approach to staff training – solved timetabling issues but more importantly increased staff engagement and retention of information.
- Open data? Perceptions of barriers to research data-sharing – Librarians don’t always know what researchers’ real reasons for not sharing data are. Important to listen to your own researchers so you don’t focus on the wrong issue.
- The Anthropologist’s Tale – a caution not to be the ‘colonising library’. “We may think we’re powerless, but have so much more power than our users, so have a responsibility to be careful.”
- (Plus my presentation on javascript bookmarklets and the power of copy and paste – slides here, and the code is at gitHub.)
Nice round-up, Deborah. Thanks for doing all the work here!