I am keynoting Day Two of the V Congreso Nacional de Bibliotecas Públicas on 4 November 2010.

Here is the abstract:

HACKING THE PUBLIC LIBRARY: from print curators to digital content creators.

Public library staff worldwide are embracing the spirit of hackerdom by taking matters into their own hands and creating their own digital platforms, tools and content to better connect people and information. Libraries are creating online environments that connect the stories of their local communities. They are creating social layers in their catalogues. They are exposing their data to remix and repurposing.

Hacking is a nimble, creative act of using existing elements to better serve a new purpose. Hacking includes the following practices – finding new uses and combinations for existing elements; exhibiting high technical skill and going beyond expectations; playing creatively; building freely on the efforts of others; and, finally, working collaboratively in community

In this keynote, Kathryn Greenhill examines what public librarians can learn from four of our colleagues who are already hacking the public library, and how these hacking  principles can be used to repurpose our public libraries as we move from curation and access of content to collaborations with our local communities to produce local digital content.

I will post here my written paper and presentation slideset.

I will also include some movie clips. During the presentation I will show clips of about one and a half minutes each from four library leaders who inspire me and who were involved in projects that I consider show the hacker spirit . Interviewees are:

• Jo Ransom, from Horowhenua Library Trust in New Zealand who was involved in developing the Open Source Library Management System, Koha and also the Open Source community social repository, Kete.
• John Blyberg, from Darien Library in Connecticut who developed the Open Source Discovery Layer, SOPAC2
• Kris De Winter from Provinciaal Bibliotheekcentrum Vrieselhof, Belgium who oversaw the modification of Open Source WordPress blogging software so that it could create different local home pages for several regional libraries that shared a library catalogue
• Paul Hagon from the National Library of Australia, who is automating geocoding of historical photographs in the library’s collection and exposing them for remix via Flickr.

SLIDESET

Here are my slides for the presentation:

SHORT VIDEOS
Here are the very short movies that I will show during the presentation:

LONG VIDEOS
Here are the longer, 8 minute, movies where each person talks about:
1) Their special library hacking project
2) What hacking means to them
3) How libraries can learn from hackers
4) Public libraries as creators of digital content