Last week saw a horde of librarians descend on Brisbane for ALIAAccess. This is the conference you have when you are not having an IFLA conference. Some of us were unable to attend, although we enjoyed the tweets, or had a left-behind party to console ourselves.

The tweets were great, but I’m ready for some more substantial reflections on the event. I put out a tweet this morning and got a few links which led to:

• ADHD Librarian — My (first) library camp reflections and ALIA Access day one part one session one part one one one and ALIA Access tour day
• Bruce’s Friday Distractions Bulletin — My take on ALIAAccess – Librarycats
• the-Story Space — #ALIAAccess 2010 Brisbane

And of course Kim Tairi posted here at Libraries Interact on Day 1 on Information Literacy session.

• Information literacy and Web 2.0 a paradox

Please add a link to your blog post in the comments when you publish your blog posts. I’m looking forward to reading them.

On a side note, it was interesting revisiting the comments back when the Brisbane IFLA event was cancelled. A call out to those who commented back then, and attended ALIAAccess2010. How did the alternative event measure up to some of the ideas that were floated back then?

Over on the Twittersphere we are discussing have a meeting of twitter library folk just prior to #ALIAAccess / @ALIAAccess.

@flexnib rightly tweets:

#aliaaccess will be one big tweet up

However as the conference dinner is Dine-Around, the conference is multi-streamed and we come from all walks of LibraryLand, we may not all get a chance to meet at the social events organised, so I’m organising a #tweetup.

#ALIAAccess #TweetUp

The Brisbane Twitter User Brigade #BTUB meets monthly at Greystone Bar which is conveniently located at South Bank very close to the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre.

When: Tuesday 31 August

From:  6pm

Where: http://foursquare.com/venue/307181

RSVP: Tweet @naomidoessel to let me know if you’re coming so I can book us an area.

New Grads at the Pub

Additionally after the Welcome Reception 5-6pm on Wednesday 1 September, due to popular demand New Grads at the Pub is back!

Yes, the event made so popular as NLS4 in Melbourne is being revived, with a special after-drinks dinner & drinks (self-funded) at Brisbane’s historic Plough Inn, also at South Bank and only a short walk from the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre.

Not a new grad? No worries! While this event is targeted at those attending the What Next! New Graduates Stream at ALIA Access and is a chance for those in the profession less than ten years to get together and have a relaxed dinner, if you’re laid back and friendly and want to chat to the up-and-comers in LibraryLand then come along!

When: Wednesday 1  September

From:  6.30pm

Where: http://foursquare.com/venue/279834

RSVP: Tweet @naomidoessel or email naomidoessel at gmail dot com so we can book.

Please use the hashtags #ALIAAccess and #tweetup.

Cheers

@naomidoessel

ALIA Access 2010 is taking place at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre from 1 – 3 September 2010.

The 2010 event will challenge the traditional format of ALIA conferences with a focus on making the conference more ‘accessible’ for delegates and vendors. More will be revealed as the planning progresses……

The 3-day multi-sector conference will feature library tours, video streaming, a conference dinner and an associated exhibition with library industry suppliers.

ALIA Access will also feature a rich online component.

Conference website – the first and last word on official conference news and information

Conference blog (RSS feed) -  The blog will feature speaker profiles, list the companies which will be sponsoring and exhibiting at the conference, highlight changes to the conference program as well as sharing the best things to do and places to visit in Brisbane.  Feel free to use the comments sections in the blog to ask questions and discuss the conference.

Twitter – members of the conference committee will be using this account to keep you up to date with conference planning, as well as highlighting changes to the conference website and blog

Facebook – another place to watch for breaking conference news, along with space to share conference stories, photos and more.

For those of you who like to blog, tweet, photoshare and slideshare, there is also a conference tag – #aliaaccess. Please add the tag to your posts, photos, tweets etc. so your colleagues from around the world can follow the conference through your reports, discussions, debates and images.

I look forward to meeting you in Brisbane in September.

Warren Cheetham
Digital Coordinator, ALIA Access 2010 Conference Committee

2012 is the National Year of Reading and will be celebrated year round with events, competitions and much more, organised and sponsored by diverse partners, including libraries, educators, writers, publishers, booksellers, professional associations, politicians and other associated organisations.

ALIA is a sponsor and will be launching the National Year of Reading 2012 website – Love 2 Read, on Wednesday 14th July at the IMPACT 2010 public library conference in Albury.

In the meantime, you can join in the preparations by becoming a Fan of the Facebook page. Check out all the news at Facebook, or read how it came about at the Cities of Lit website.

Be inspired and start thinking about how you and your library can join in this significant event.

Live coverage of VALA2010 continues here…

Libraries Interact writers and friends will be covering VALA 2010 using CoveritLive. Prior to the main event, is the OCLC mashathon. A few of us are attending and our tweets and comments can be viewed here, so you can follow along as we discover a variety of OCLC-provided APIs, including the WorldCat Search API, led by Roy Tennant. Each day of VALA2010 will have a new post here at Libraries Interact. If you are attending VALA2010 and would like to contribute your tweets to the coverage – leave a comment here or send dm to @petahopkins.

Due to popular demand, we are doing it all over again!  Some of the Libraries Interact team will be in Melbourne for the VALA 2010 conference and are getting together for dinner. We are keen to catch up with each other and with you, our fellow blog readers, bloggers and tweeters..

So it is with great pleasure that the team from Libraries Interact invite you all to share dinner with us on Monday 8th February from 6.30pm. (night before first day of conference). (Thanks to Sue for her twitter poll which settled the weighty issue of when)

We will be enjoying fine food, great scenery and awesome company at Berth at Melbourne’s Docklands. (45 New Quay Promenade Tel: +9670 0199) Resting right over the water at Docklands, Berth comes recommended to me by my sister. The menu looks good, with hopefully enough to suit all tastes and dietary requirements.

For those visiting our fine city or locals wanting to get in early, feel free to meet us at 5.45pm (after both Boot Camp and LPlate have finished) at the VALA registration desk at the Melbourne Convention Centre. We will work our way down to Docklands, using the free City Circle Tram and our feet! (City Circle tram finishes running at 6pm – hence the rush) For those wanting to make their own way there, here’s the map.

And most importantly, please let me know if you are coming, so that I can ensure that everyone gets a seat. Email me at tango65 at gmail dot com by Friday 5th February.

We would love to have you join us!

On top of the VALATech Boot Camp, VALA will also be holding the L-Plate Series, the details of which have just been announced.

This year it will only be 1/2 day long, to be held on Monday afternoon, 8th February, before VALA commences.

The program will comprise a series of 1/2 hour overviews, intended to give some background to the type of content that will be discussed in paper’s presented at the Conference proper.

Topics to be covered include Open Source Library Systems, presented by our own lovely Kathryn Greenhill, as well as sessions on Library Mashups and APIs, Semantic Web, Cloud Computing, Discovery Layer Interfaces, Social Web apps for libraries and eBooks.

Registration is free for VALA attendees, but places are limited, so please check out L-Plate Series for more details and to book your place.

Its on again, Library Day in the Life will begin on Monday 25th January.  This will be round 4 of this project.

To recap, the Library Day in the Life Project aims to document a day (or week) in the working life of a librarian.  In previous rounds, this has taken the form of blog posts, twitters, photos and video.  No restrictions are placed on how a librarian’s day is documented.

It is the inspiration of Bobbi L Newman, who blogs as Librarian by Day. The Library Day in the Life wiki tracks who is planning to participate in the project, as well as links to the end results of the documentation.  It is quite interesting to check out how librarians from around the world, spend their day in library world.

If you are interested in participating, input your details into the Library Day in the Life wiki  and from Monday 25th January, get to it!

If you would like to know more about how the project came about, get it straight from Bobbi in her post – Library Day in the Life Round 4, January 2010.  Of even more interest, you can go to the Library Day in the Life wiki and check out librarians’ contributions from the previous 3 rounds, to find out what its all about.

There have been a few Aussie librarians participating in the past and hopefully will be again this year.  So why not join in the fun and learn something about yourself and your colleagues worldwide.

Just in case you have missed them, whilst you are busy preparing to attend VALA in Melbourne in just over a month, the call for papers for the other two big library conferences in Australia is open.

ALIA’s 2010 biennial conference was going to be IFLA Brisbane, but with the global financial crisis seeing that event moved back to Europe, they have returned to an ALIA conference, still to be held in Brisbane.

The call is out for papers for Access 2010 – to be submitted by 11th February (whilst you’re recovering from VALA).

Submissions are being sought on:

• Information literacy and web 2.0
• New Graduates – What next?
• Hidden Treasure: Finding the GOLD in Professional Development
• Public Libraries: A Surprise on Every Page
• Collective Wealth… Global Sharing, Global Resources

More details are available at the Access 2010 Call for Abstracts.

Information Online 2011

The call has also gone out for papers for the Online Conference, to be held in Sydney in 2011.   They are seeking abstracts on the following topic areas:

1. Library Spaces – Physical & virtual, collaborative learning commons, revitalising special collections, designing spaces to suit the needs of the client/customers, children and young adult collections
2. Knowledge Services and Enterprise Content Management – knowledge systems; communities of practice; enabling knowledge throughout an organisation; virtual communities; knowledge brokerage; ERAMS; intellectual capital; intranets
3. Digital Assets & Rights Management – Intellectual property protection; risk management; copyright; litigation information management; managing rich media; automated publishing systems ; being compliance; licensing; managing the information life cycle; authentication and information security; online identity
4. E-literacy – Learning management systems; Online learning environments; online gaming and problem solving; convergence of literacies – text, visual, multimedia & information; using social networking tools new technologies; CMC Tools; online assessment
5. Information Architecture – Tagging; taxonomies; folksonomies, classification; mesh networks, location aware technologies, social software, portals, SOAs, web bridges, websites, extranets, metadata, usability and interoperability; cloud computing; APIs; open platforms; semantics
6. Measuring our services – Now more important than ever?; measuring techniques, how to ensure quality & integrity, teaching end-users about quality/integrity, implementing quality initiatives; information audits, ROI on information services.
7. Emerging Technologies – Social media and networking tools; disruptive & converging technologies; multiple online environments; what to invest; smart cards; RFID; utilising mobile telephony; e-books
8. Professional Development – Doing more with less, professional education; succession planning & attracting talent; skills base needed for the profession; sustainability/future of the industry; skills shortages; future roles for the information professional
9. Search Tools & Techniques – Techniques for searching the social web; federated search, single search interfaces, training our clients; discovery vs supply – library role?
10. Publishing – Repositories/data warehousing; publishing trends & models; open access publishing; vendor/library partnerships; promotion of institutional research; pricing models; federated communities of researchers; curation & preservation of digital environments and data sets.
11. Information Management – Branding, data mining, globalization, information governance, sharing of resources, managing a hybrid collection, new trends and future directions, records & document management; business analysis.
12. How we deliver our services – Enhancing reference services; Utilising new technologies to deliver services; outsourcing; client management; collaborations and partnerships; hybrid service models; future models for Gen Y & Z clients; service architectures, customising services for clients.

Abstracts need to be submitted by 31st March 2010.

More details are available from the Information Online 2011 website.

Looking forward to what Libraries Interact readers will come up for these two significant events.