How can we talk about the newest web tools and ideas at library conferences when papers need to be submitted months in advance?
In Australia, the cities of Sydney and Melbourne take it in turns to host the hottest library tech conference – one year it’s Information Online in Sydney , the next it’s the VALA conference in Melbourne. Abstracts for VALA 2008 were submitted in May this year. Successful papers need to be complete by September – 5 full months before the conference is held. This is typical for a conference, but it stops people discussing hot new tools and ideas.
Untitled uploaded to flickr.com on February 26, 2007 by mms0131
This Saturday 23 June, a mob of creative librarians are going to test an alternative to this model during the American Library Association conference. The Library and Information Technology Association’s interest group for blogs, wikis and social software (the BIGWIGS ) are holding a round table discussion of hot new tools that may have a use for libraries. They hope this will be informal and speakers will learn from participants.
Each speaker has prepared a presentation that is available on the Bigwig Social Software Showcase wiki. This includes screencasts and videos. Everyone is welcome to comment on each page of the wiki. It’s a great resource for librarians world-wide who want to be up to date. Topics covered are:
- David Free / David Lee King discussing the finer points of Twitter
- Casey Bisson
- Lichen Rancourt talking about Web 2.0 and why libraries should care
- Michael Casey
- Michael Porter The new facebook developer’s platform: Why libraries care
- Tim Spalding
- Tom Peters showing us the virtues of Web Conferencing Software
- Iris Jastram enlightening us concerning Meebo Rooms
- Jessamyn West illustrating portable software applications
- Simon Spero holding court on folksonomy
- K.G. Schneider pontificating on LOCKSS
Afrotto – IMG_2517 uploaded to Flickr.com on April 18, 2006 by jeroen020
As noted by Jay Datema on the libraryjournal.com site ( 5 Days to a Social Software Showcase ), there are many social software tools set up so that you can follow the goings on.
- BIGWIG Twitter Feed
- BIGWIG Meebo Room
- Meebo Me for each of the BIGWIG officers
- Flickr feed for all photos tagged bigwigshowcase07
- Social Software Showcase on Technorati
- LITA BIGWIG Social Software Showcase on Facebook
While it’s great to be able to follow using all these tools, I’d love to be in the same room as the BIGWIGS on Saturday. So much shiny, shiny bright-sparking going on.