At the moment, I'm relaxing in my hotel room in Kensington, and decided to sum up this year's ILI while it's still fresh in my mind. I'll try to be as short as possible, but summing up a two-day conference in a few sentences isn't easy!
First of all, congratulations to ILI for giving us two very good keynote speakers, Cory Doctorow and Peter Murray-Rust. Both of them was thought provoking and excellent speakers. They gave two very different presentations, but copyright was a keyword for both of them.
After the opening keynote, I went to a session on Invisible libraries, with presentations from Tony Hirst and Amanda Richardson. Hirst talked quite interestingly on the issue of invisible libraries in general, whereas Richardson talked about the process of making the Hewlett Packard library virtual and thus 'invisible'.
After lunch it was time for Frode's and my own presentation. I think it went well, but have no idea really. I think I forgot to listen. But we got quite a few questions afterwards, which is always good. After us, Davina Omar and Angela Horrocks talked about their library surveys. Then came Joanne Dunham and Rajen Munoo. I've met Rajen several times at ILI now, and really liked his talk about information literacy in Singapore.
The last presentations of the day introduced two very different worlds. Mark Douglas Frier talked about the challenges facing library instructors in South Africa. Then Jenny Evans and Lawrence Jones presented their 23 things process at Imperial College in London. I noticed that they ended up with many of the same conclusion we in Tromsø had last year. A good presentation, I think.
On Friday I mostly stayed on Track B: Search. Rurik Greenall from UBiT did a very good talk on mobile technologies. He was a good speaker, as always, but I must admit I'm a bit of a mobile phone illiterate ... (Don't even have an iPhone!!!)
Karen Blakeman was next. As always a very clear and enthusiastic presentation from her about social search. After Karen followed two more presentations, one by Carrie Forbes & Robert Monge, and one by Eamonn Neylon.
New this year was a so-called unconference where we, the delegates, got to set the agenda and decide what to discuss. More or less successfull, I'd say. We're not used to this kind of forum, and quite a few didn't say anyhting at all. Fortunately, my group on Web 2.0 had a handfull of people who weren't afraid to speak up. But the group was a bit too big, I think.
The last two presentations on Friday were refereshing and interesting, much thanks to the enthusiasm of the presenters, Helle Lauridsen and Lisa Charnock. The topic was user behaviour, which I hope we'll hear more about next year at ILI. (And other library conferences.) Not that they presented anyhting revolutionary new, but it's good to know that other libraries have the same experiences as us. To sum up their results: library web pages are too difficult (and thus irrelevant), everyone uses Google, and students don't want personalization, they want EASY!
To round off the conference, a panel consisting of Thomas Brevik, Åke Nygren, Phil Bradley and Brian Kelly, amongst others, talked about their top technology trends for libraries. What will the future bring? Who knows? Personally, I think the important thing is that libraries hire staff that are able to face whatever waits for us in ten years time or even next year. Or tomorrow!
ILI always has loads of interesting presentations - and a few boring ones, of course. AND librarians attending ILI are always fun to be with. Especially at the pub afterwards. This year I had the pleasure of spending Thursday evening with some of the Swedish and Norwegian delegates. (Only the Norwegians stayed all evening, by the way!) Had a lot of fun - even though the DJ played terribly awful music.
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