The 75th Annual World Library and Information Congress wrapped up last Thursday in Milan, Italy and I was thrilled to be able to attend for the second time. This year, with all the first timer anxieties out of the way the conference for me personally was an exciting and successful one. This year as well as last, I participated as a member of IFLA’s staff so my attendance involves updating various IFLA units on activities, making (often swift) progress on projects, and meeting many, many people I’ve exchanged emails with over the preceding months. We talk a lot in our profession about moving communication online, but I still find the opportunity to talk to people in person incredibly valuable, especially when I work with people across the globe and the Congress is the only way to talk to many of them in the one place!

A highlight for me this year was attending all of the meetings of IFLA’s Regional Sections in Africa, Asia & Oceania, and Latin America and the Caribbean. There is a lot going on – workshops, projects, scholarships and many other important initiatives. Almost all of IFLA’s meetings are open and they are a great place to find out what is happening, and to find out about ways to participate in IFLA. ALIA members can nominate through ALIA for positions on sections of which ALIA is a member, but there are other ways to get involved – presenting a paper or poster, working with a Special Interest Group, being a volunteer (many volunteers this year were from outside Italy, some even attended for the second time from Canada after volunteering in Québec).

In addition to meetings and presentations, I managed to get to a couple of sessions this year including the showcase hosted by the Web 2.0 and Libraries special interest group, this topic continues to be hugely popular with librarians and will be in need of a bigger room next year. Other highlights included a panel from CLM/FAIFE discussing the impact of the Google Books Settlement, and a diverse panel the following day discussing copyright including librarians, lawyers and industry representatives. A fascinating question and answer session followed, covering topics from EU law to implications for privacy if the library becomes an ISP. The President’s session on libraries and the financial crisis was close to the end of the Congress, and gave some insights into how the financial crisis has affected libraries in different countries from not at all to severely, and representatives from ALA and CILIP talked about the impact it has had on them as well as the opportunities it presents to advocate for libraries and to refocus priorities in associations.

For me, it was a great conference, a lot of hard work but enjoyable, and we managed to see some of the beautiful sights of Milan including La Scala, the Galleria, and Lake Como (we didn’t quite manage to spot George Clooney’s house).

Fellow Libraries Interact contributor snail attended this year, stay tuned for his report from a delegate perspective.

Fun, engaging, and useful – Mash Oop North, held today at the University of Huddersfield managed to combine all three. Originally aimed at librarians exploring mashups in the UK’s North, the event sold out in 24 hours (world record?) and attracted around 70 librarians and affiliated types from around the country. As one does, I managed to bump into the other Australians living in the UK within about 2 seconds of arriving.

Dave Pattern, who did a superb job of organising the event, talked about making library data work harder. 20% of keyword searches fail, so you need to guide students through the catalogue. Providing suggestions based on data becomes more powerful over time, as the data builds up. It is also possible to build good recommendation systems, using the data you already collect but don’t exploit. Reading lists and personal suggestions can also be valuable.

Interaction Brendan Dawes gave a fascinating talk about some of the small ideas he’s built and turned into larger projects. He emphasised importance of design, of simplicity and stripping away unimportant information. He showed a few examples of his work, including projects where people have been asked to create their own interface, sketching, and innovative ways to show connections between information.

Iman Moradi talked about gaming and a topic I’m very interested in, data visualisation. He was backdropped by one of the best slidedecks I have seen. There was a lot of deck envy in the room! There is real potential for involving design students in helping libraries to bring our data to life.

A Yahoo Pipes cookalong was disrupted by technology issues, but it was still good to get stuck into it again. It really is a useful tool and can be scaffolded from basic feeds to complex inputs in a fairly gentle way.

Informal discussions around a series of topics were presented runaround style, from information literacy to mobile devices and the Semantic Web, which these days is really more a discussion about Linked Data. Lightning talks followed, Owen Stephens discussed the history of interactive fiction, and discussed whether it could be a tool for information literacy. Joss Winn and Paul Stanthorp discussed a concept for using WordPress, Scriblio and Triplify to extract catalogue data and present it in new and interesting ways.

Prizes were on offer for suggesting ideas, and a team prize. It was really valuable to be able to spend an hour or so working with other librarians on building a mashup. Often learning can be so abstract, especially if you are trying to learn on your own, and I learnt more about Regex in an hour today than I have in trying to read about it previously.

This was really a great event – I came away enthused, looking forward to trying out new things, and having met some fantastic people. Onwards to the next Mash Oop, crisps and all!

More than 40 Australians attended the annual IFLA Congress which wrapped up in Quebec City, Canada, on Thursday. I was thrilled to be able to attend for the first time and see what happens when more than 3300 librarians from around 150 countries get together. As a member of IFLA’s staff, I worked behind the scenes away from the sessions, but was able to attend a couple of sessions other than the 6 meetings I spoke at, so I’ll add a few links to what others were seeing and doing.

Like many other groups attending, the Australians got together at a dinner organised by ALIA to catch up with colleagues and to hear how preparations for Brisbane in 2010 are progressing. It was wonderful to see so many other Australians in one room after living away from home this year!

American Libraries Direct reported on the first few days, including the opening ceremony and some of the major award winners this year.

Bob McKee, a member of IFLA’s Executive Committee, reported daily on his experience at the Congress. He gives a great insight to the responsibilities that IFLA’s governing groups have throughout the year.

Ivan Chew from Singapore is a member of the Children and Young Adults Section standing committtee. He also provided a daily report on meetings, sessions, and the Congress in general at his blog, Rambling Librarian. I’ve been following Ivan’s IFLA reports for a couple of years, so it was great to finally meet him there!

Other bloggers on the scene include Epist, Information Access Avenger, The Cataloguing Librarian, and ALIA Executive Director, Sue Hutley at the ALIA Board Blog.

From the sessions

In addition to the sessions, meetings, committee meetings and other events, there were well over 100 posters at this year’s Congress. The posters are a great way to see at a glance some of the hot topics in libraries around the world. Some of them took at look at blogging, community, and professional development, such as “A Librarians’ community in search of self on the web” [PDF] which took a look at use of technology in Romania.

One of the sessions I was able to attend (though briefly) was the Web 2.0 Discussion Group’s session on freeing data, and bibliographic data exchange moderated by the group’s chair, Patrick Danowski of Germany. The group assembled an excellent panel to discuss some of the issues including cost, ownership, formats, and interoperability. Although a little too North America-focused at times, this was actually one of the best ’2.0′ discussions I’ve attended at any conference – it didn’t shy away from asking the difficult questions about how to make data portability happen. The input from Patrick Pfeiffer from Creative Commons Luxembourg was excellent – he challenged us to have more of these discussions and make them more sophisticated. Karen Calhoun was one of the panelists and reported on the session with a link to her slides from the presentation.

Another session I went to briefly was the New Professionals Discussion Group’s session on how to benefit from being involved with associations. Jesus Lau, Mexico Library Association president and member of IFLA’s Governing Board, discussed how some of the structures in associations can limit participation by new professionals and described how they seek to change that. Robyn Ellard described the many things ALIA is doing to help new graduates develop their career, such as the New Librarians Symposia and the New Graduates Group.

Milan 2009 and Brisbane 2010

After the Congress I left enthused and honoured to have had the opportunity to talk to so many librarians from around the world. Some are dealing with problems that may seem simple to us, others are developing very forward-thinking services, but all are willing to spend time to talk about it. Attending the Congress is a wonderful experience and I urge you to think about attending Milan next year or closer to home, IFLA will be in Brisbane in 2010.

Look for ways you can get involved with organising Brisbane soon! Quebec had some 270 volunteers and no doubt Brisbane would love to hear from you when the call for volunteers goes out.

A few months ago, I wrote about taking off for a fantastic adventure and moving overseas to take up a short-term role in the Netherlands. My time in Europe is nearly over and I will be returning to librarianship in Australia in a few weeks. Whether you are returning from time in another sector, country, or a break to travel or care for family, there’s many things you can do to get back into the swing of things.

You’ve been keeping up all this time, right?

Perhaps you’ve been in touch with colleagues or other librarians in Australia while you’ve been away, or you’ve been reading blogs and InCite to keep up with local news. Great! Do be prepared to hear about big news you somehow missed that will affect your work practice, or a major change to resources you rely on, but try not to be preoccupied by change.

If you haven’t been able to keep in touch or read, it may take a little longer to catch up but take it as a good opportunity to read conference papers that were published in 2008, like those from the VALA conference and Beyond the Hype. Check back through the archives here on LINT and other blogs. Take part in a 23 Things program if you want to brush up your web skills.

Get out and about

Take the time to attend social events to network with your colleagues when you return. Many cities now have semi-regular social events organised by mentoring and new graduate groups within ALIA. For example, Mentoring NSW runs a monthly gathering in a Sydney pub. Check ALIA’s events listing to find out what’s happening around the country. Nothing near you? Join an email list or a Facebook group and organise something!

Move right

If you’re moving home, after all the hassles with moving in the first place, it’s daunting to have to do it all again to come back. But it is important to do it right to save yourself stress and cost. In addition to moving your belongings, make sure you get all the documents you need for tax, superannuation and service in both countries.

Spread the word!

Be prepared for two things: some people will want to know every detail of your time away, others won’t ever ask. It’s a great position to be in to be able to encourage others to take the leap and consider moving overseas, taking off time to travel or other types of breaks, but if others aren’t that interested that’s perfectly fine, too.

Librarianship is a portable profession, make the most of it! Living in Europe has been a wonderful opportunity to travel, and compare differences and similarities in the profession across the world. If you’re interested to know more about some of the cultural issues take a look at the presentation I put together for ALA Annual in Anaheim, international opportunities for new librarians: with (or without) leaving home.

With possibly a record contingent of Australians in Anaheim (about 20!), this year’s ALA Annual was a great one to attend. My last ALA was in New Orleans in 2006, so it was great to attend for a second time and not be so overwhelmed by the largeness of everything.

ALA is notoriously difficult to get around, and it did seem that everything was on at the same time in hotels several miles apart this year. Apart from my own session that I spoke at with fellow Australians, Alyson Dalby and Andrew Spencer, it seemed like we didn’t actually attend many talks. Despite this, highlights for me were Top Tech Trends and a session on the AMPAS library.

BIGWIG

After my talk I ran over to BIGWIG which was still in full swing. I missed the presentation part of the session but joining in the informal discussions and the video streaming was fun.

Top Tech Trends

So does TTT live up to the hype? It sure does! In addition to the panel of trend watchers, we were joined virtually by Karen Coombs and Sarah Houghton-Jan, and we could watch and participate in the toptech Meebo chat room. It was great fun to be able to interact with some of the audience and the panel through Meebo in real time. But backchanneling for me did have the downside of being terribly distracting from, you know, the actual discussion.

Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences library

On Monday I decided to go to a session just for fun, one that has nothing to do with my work – a talk on the AMPAS library. The challenges of maintaining a major film archive were discussed – everything from preserving billboard posters to photographs and handwritten screenplays. The session was accompanied by a fantastic video showing how they restored a billboard poster for the film King of Kings. Definitely a highlight.

Bookcart Drill

I was really looking forward to the Bookcart Drill Championships after missing the inaugural championship in New Orleans in 2006 and it did not disappoint. Such coordination and creativity! A lot of fun to watch. There will surely be plenty of videos on YouTube soon.

Blog Salon

Like most conferences, the socials are the most interesting and useful for networking and meeting people you’ve only ever met online. Blog Salon is always a fantastic place to do that.

The International Librarians Reception is another excellent place to meet people attending ALA from all over the world. It was great to put a name to many faces and catch up with others. This year the reception was held at Muzeo. It was formerly the Anaheim Public Library, built in 1905 and is the only remaining Carnegie library in Orange County.

Anaheim

Unlike most of ALA’s conferences, Anaheim is not a major city, and entertainment and food options other than Disney were limited. It’s similar to conferencing on the Gold Coast.

Overall ALA Annual 2008 was again a good, if tiring and overwhelming experience. If you’ve never been, it’s worth going just once to experience the largest library conference in the world.

The Sydney Morning Herald is today reporting that Leichhardt Public Library, located in Sydney’s Inner West, has cancelled a planned exhibition about Israel and Palestine -

“Al-Nakba”, a pictorial exhibition about Palestine and Israel,  should have  opened at Leichhardt municipal library last Friday.

But after the police visit on Thursday night, it was suddenly cancelled the next morning.

The exhibition was coordinated by the Friends of Hebron, a group external to the library.

I would be interested to know if other libraries have exhibitions coordinated by groups outside the library. Universities and school libraries often take student works for exhbitions, but is the development of exhibitions by groups in public libraries common? What policies do public libraries (and other libraries) have about exhibitions?

Librarians in research and academia are keeping a close eye on changes to Research Assessment under the new Government. Michael Jubb from the UK based Research Information Blog has a post about how the new Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA), replacing the Research Quality Framework (RQF) compares to what’s happening in the UK -

What’s interesting here is the explicit statement that the new system “will assess research quality using a combination of metrics and expert review by committees comprising experienced, internationally-recognised experts”. This is precisely what several organisations, including RCUK, have been urging in the UK. So there is clearly going to be considerable interest in the UK in how the new initiative works out in Australia.

What’s even more interesting is the turnabout from just a couple of ago. Then, when the Research Quality Framework was ramping up, we heard how the UK had abandoned their very similar Research Assessment Exercise in favour of the Research Assessment Framework. It seemed quite likely then that the RQF wouldn’t last, but it’s intriguing that it’s replacement is being looked at closely by the UK which has been looking at metrics and research quality for a few years longer than Australia. How times change!

Moving overseas for work is something many Australian librarians want to do. It’s a wonderful chance to learn about libraries overseas and to be immersed in another culture. Whether for a few months or a year or more, there’s a few steps you can take to make your the moving process easier.

Get your qualifications in order

Not all library degrees are recognised at the same level in other countries. If you are interested in moving to the UK or the US for instance, make sure your qualification is covered under ALIA’s reciprocal agreements. If you are moving elsewhere, there may be less concern about degrees and more emphasis on experience. You will need to research this well in advance if you think it will be an issue – if you have to upgrade your qualifications that’s going to take some time!

You should also make sure you have a complete set of your degrees and transcripts.

Get your other documents organised

The little things can be the most stressful in this kind of move – make sure you’ve got your important documents sorted out like tax records. You’ll also need birth certificates, an up to date passport, and maybe a work visa. Sort out what you can before you arrive as you may need some of these documents almost as soon as you get there. Then it’s one less thing to think about.

Research the library scene

What kind of work do you like to do? What is the job outlook like in your favoured country? Can you live on the salaries there? You may even want to check out the local library association to get a feel for the local issues and to make contacts.

Work out why you want to go, and in what circumstances you will go in

Would you feel comfortable flying off at a moment’s notice if you got a job offer? Or would you rather spend a year planning every last detail? If you have a partner, would you go without them to fulfil your dream? Will you go anywhere, or do you have a shortlist of places you would consider?

Importantly, you should think about what will happen when you get back, especially if you will be away for two years or less. This is not enough time to set up a real home overseas, or to really transition away from the library scene in Australia. You’ll need to stay in touch with colleagues and events at home. You might do this by remaining a virtual member of a committee, or making plans to talk about what’s happening at your workplace or in the profession with colleagues regularly.

Settling in

You might be lucky enough to know a few people in the place you’re moving to (especially if moving to somewhere popular with Australian librarians, like London!) or you might not know anyone. Facebook and other social networking sites can be really great at shrinking the world – putting you in touch with friends of friends who live in the city you are moving to. Whatever the situation, it’s important to get out and meet new people. Meeting new people will also give you the opportunity to experience some of the best things about being in a new country – a level of immersion and understanding that’s hard to get as a tourist.

Read, read, read

There’s lots of great articles about librarians abroad, Robin Kear lived in Kenya, and Nancy Fawley in Qatar. More generally, books like Expert Expat are a great overview of the practical aspects of moving, and the highs and lows of an experience abroad.

It’s a privilege to be a guest in someone else’s country and to get to spend an extended period of time there, make the most of it!

It’s election season for ALIA, with votes for directors and president-elect to the board of elections due by April 9. Time to update your address if you haven’t already! There’s a number of good candidates running this year, and in a change from the past there’s more opportunity for candidates to lay out their goals and plans in a statement and most have started blogs to expand upon this and answer questions from members.

ALIA have also unveiled a new design for their website, if you haven’t been to their site for a while it’s worth a look.

Recently, I mentioned that one of the nifty things you can do with Yahoo! Pipes is auto-translate blogs and I’ve talked a bit before about finding Japanese blogs. This is really handy if you want to subscribe to non-English blogs.

Not only will this give you a different perspective on the news we are all reading and commenting on, but it may also help you to stay in touch with developments that may not be covered in the English-language library world. It can work in reverse too, helping those in countries where English is not their first language and there are fewer local blogs to subscribe to the major English-language blogs.

Find new blogs

The first step is to find them. I discovered the following translations for our blog genre -

English – biblioblogger
French – biblioblogueur
German – biblioblogosphäre
Japanese – ﾌﾞﾛｸﾞ(図書館) blog library (library blogger)

Search for the translated word and you’ll find many blogs in each of these languages.

Yahoo! Pipes

Note: The next step is to either create or clone a pipe in Yahoo! Pipes. Working with Yahoo! Pipes can be a little bit technical, so you might feel more comfortable just subscribing to a translated feed that has already been created.

So, what exactly is Yahoo! Pipes? It’s basically a visual mashup generator, you put in RSS or other feeds, add images, translate, or other transformations, and it gives you a new feed at the end. It is extremely versatile and because it has a visual interface, and you can copy feeds (or Pipes) made by others, this makes it easy to start to use.

First steps

Take a look at a Pipe that I created to translate the Bibliobsession 2.0 blog from French to English. You’ll probably notice one thing right away, that the translation is not very good, but machine translation is generally problemmatic, especially when dealing with technical or specialised topics. However, if you click on each article, the translations are generally better.

You can either subscribe to the translated blog as is, or you can clone the Pipe to add subscriptions to other blogs, or choose other languages.

Modifying the Pipe

If you want to have a go at modifying the Pipe, choose clone. You can then edit the source to look at the parts that make up the translation. As you can see below, there’s not a lot to it. Feed goes in, gets mashed up a bit, translated, and comes out -

To make your own, either change the feed address to another blog, or try changing the selected languages.

And voilà, you have a translated feed. Have you used Yahoo! Pipes for an interesting project? Are there blogs you would like to see translated? Does anyone want to read this blog in another language? Tell us about it in the comments!