Report on VALA2008 14th Biennial Conference and Exhibition

2008

Report on VALA2008, 14th Biennial Conference and Exhibition

Melbourne Convention Centre, Melbourne, Australia
February 5th to Thursday 7th, 2008.

Nurhazman Abdul Aziz

Librarian (Library Technology & Systems)
Business Librarian (IT & Operations Management)
Nanyang Technological University Library

Introduction

The VALA 2008, 14th Biennial Conference and Exhibition drew participation from many librarians across
Australia and worldwide. The theme for this year’s conference was on Libraries / changing spaces,
virtual places. The 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). They shared and
covered interesting insights from a wide range of perspective in the library and information science
industry, from a legal perspective to a business and community edge. Each keynote had its perspective
regarding innovation, initiative and experiences in the implementation on today’s competitive area of
development related to changing spaces and virtual places.

The Concurrent Sessions

The concurrent sessions provided insight and practical experiences of the Australian libraries on virtually
all aspects of technology in library and information management services deployed in their
organizations. It touched on the impact of the changing nature of libraries, and the network of
partnerships and relationships that they must build in order to provide relevant services for user
communities.

The proceeding papers of each concurrent session presented can be found at

http://www.vala.org.au/vala2008/auth2008.htm

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2008

Learning points from the Conference

The keynotes sessions were a reality check on the progress of development in social networking tools by
libraries. The concurrent sessions were useful as they focused on practical experiences of Australian
librarians in their journey of exploring new technologies so that others can learn from their experience
and compare their developments in this area.

I feel that Singapore libraries should also share their initiatives on the efforts to make libraries a better
and more relevant space for users in the virtual world. Perhaps, we can learn from the blogosphere
such as the topic presented by Kathryn Greenhill, Fiona Bradley and Constance Wiebrands on Libraries
interact: collaboration and community in the Australian library blogosphere at
http://librariesinteract.info/. In fact, a Google Group for Librarians in Singapore has been introduced by
one of the NLB librarians. The information can be located at
http://librarians.in.singapore.googlepages.com/home. This is actually an initiative in the Facebook
environment. Other collaborative efforts include a local initiative called BookJetty.com, a book portal
where users can contribute their reviews on books, link to booksellers and to the library catalogues of
NTU, NUS and NLB for users to search and see at one glance the holdings of these participating libraries.
The idea to share here is, although it is a simple development, it has provided a space for impactful
collaboration in our profession.

There are other elements from the concurrent sessions that librarians could pick up and learn from, for
example, the use of social tools in outreach activities as well into the development of library portals to
be as intuitive as possible. Using tools provided by Google, Facebook, and other prominent online
information providers, libraries can become more relevant by making an effort towards achieving the
role of an “information concierge” for a variety of users on the Web. Therefore librarians need to be
quick to equip and embrace knowledge in using these tools as a new wave will be coming. If not, this will
lead to a competitive disadvantage for libraries.

Conclusion

In conclusion, VALA 2008 has given a window of opportunities for libraries to share and initiate social
space projects 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 direction the field of social spaces and development
moves over the next few years. Some of the projects are still continued as open research. In order to
stay in tune and updated, librarians are encouraged to stay in touch through the current social sphere
network that the Australians have developed.

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2008

References

Here are a couple of presentations and the blogospheres to keep you updated.

Luke Wroblewski – Information and updates at http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?615 &

http://www.lukew.com/ff/index.asp

Andy Powell – Powerpoint slides on Slideshare

http://www.slideshare.net/eduservfoundation/repositories-thru-the-looking-glass

Kathryn Greenhill –daily updates on her Library developments

http://librariansmatter.com/blog/2008/02/07/vala-session-summaries/

Michelle McLean –daily updates on Connecting Librarians

http://connectinglibrarian.com/category/vala-2008/

Conference Papers
http://www.vala.org.au/vala2008/auth2008.htm