It’s wonderful to see that so many librarians from Queensland and nearby regions are so keen to learn about the use of emerging technologies to communicate with their clients. Following last year’s sell-out seminar “New Communication Technologies in Libraries”, the QULOC ICT working party arranged a reprise ” Communicating With Clients Using New Technologies”. This too had a waiting list.

The format for the seminar was a morning session of presentations, lunch, afternoon hands-on workshops on using an RSS aggregator, contributing to a wiki and a demonstration session of Voice Over IP and Optical Character Recognition to text. The seminar was then rounded off with a lively panel session reviewing some of the themes and issues discussed during the day.

 The flier (pdf) is available if you are interested in the full program.

 The presentations included:

Chelsea Harper and Kate Watson’s research into the use of blogs and wikis by libraries. Kate and Chelsea have a wiki they are using to support their research project and invite libraries to contribute stories about their success stories in the use of these technologies. There are some very useful links to practical examples.

Cathy Slaven of QUT talked about designing web resources for mobile phones and other handheld devices. If your clientele has a high level of ownership and use of web-enabled phones and PDAs (most of us) then Cathy’s presentation will get you started thinking about some of the difficulties and principles to consider before you launch into a website redesign.

Crystal Plowman of UNE covered the issues arising from a project to podcast for special client groups. Some of the myths about podcasting were dispelled and some thought provoking ideas about the psychology of different user groups arose. It was suggested that for indigenous students, they would prefer to listen to a voice of the same gender. Librarian Kathryn attended this seminar too - she wondered whether that was something that also affected the majority of the population. That got me pondering if that is something I’d subconsciously be tuned into as well, my conscious voice tells me I don’t really have a preference one way or the other. Or maybe it would depend on the topic.

Anna Raunik (Queensland State Library) shared a shorter version of her VALA paper on webcasting and web conferencing. It’s great that these opportunities come up for those who often find it difficult to attend interstate conferences. Anna’s presentation covered the experience of using these technologies in libraries in the US and museums and local councils in the UK.

One of the great things about these ICT seminars is that they focus on the client perspective rather than the technology itself and how they are used in libraries and allied organisations specifically.

“Sound” bites with apologies if not transcribed exactly as spoken…

“The real value was in having the archives available” — Anna Raunik on web conferencing

“We are taking a popular medium and using it to feed them a message they don’t want to eat” — Crystal Plowman on podcasting

“Find out where your students are and deliver there” — Chelsea Harper on library 2.0

“Core competencies over time become core rigidities” — Andrew Bennett on sticking to your knitting.

“If a site doesn’t provide an RSS feed, I can hardly be bothered with it any more” — Me on keeping current.

Link to presentations - more will be added in the next couple of days.

Were you there? What did you think?