JCDL 2011
There are still two more tracks of presentations and the closing keynote, but I want to write down my impressions and thoughts from the last two full days of JCDL 2011. I have thoroughly enjoyed both keynote addresses. I feel like there are many of the paper presentations I have attended I want to read now. It's nice that as one of the attendees I received a copy of each paper.
The first keynote, Daniel Caron a Canadian Librarian and Archivist, spoke about many ideas for libraries. He didn't say anything I hadn't heard before, but a few things were said in a different way that got me thinking. My favorite nugget was, "information managers act as waste managers". He basically meant that information specialists receive so much stuff from people that they have to wade through it all and pull out the nuggets that are actually worth keeping (whereas most of the information really isn't). The value of materials is different and there should be criteria for what should be preserved. This immediately makes me think of rating the quality of online educational resources. This is a very hard, subjective, and elusive idea. The context for the use of the resource brings a lot to the table and everyone seems to have differing opinions about what is important. I find it hard for groups of people to come up with a standard set of criteria that works well for everything. So I hope if he figures out this set of criteria for libraries that they work and are flexible. He said libraries need to be reinvented. I can't disagree with that. The library profession has changed so much in the last 10 years that everyone seems to still be scrambling to keep up. With that, he said libraries are still trying to build digital libraries based on the ideas and models of a traditional book library and he believes the libraries of the future need to move away from this and again, reinvent what they can become.
The second keynote was Joan Morris DiMicco. She currently works in the research division of IBM but her background is the MIT Media Lab. Her talk was focused on data visualization (another area I love!). She said data vis is often used for story telling and then proceeded to tell us some stories. She started her stories with this visualization by Hans Rosling. What an amazing visualization, that one hit my geek bell! She talked about wordle, manybills, saNDVis, many-eyes, and second messenger. For all of these visualization options, she said that when you tell a story where you are trying to persuade someone to an idea or for making decisions, you should be sure that your data is accurate and if you can provide access to this data. It makes for a more compelling story when people can drill down to the facts themselves. I truly loved the manybills site and think I'll be using that for US legislation I usually think is too complicated to follow.
I thoroughly enjoyed the full paper by Catherine Marshall and Frank Shipman titled "The Ownership and Reuse of Visual Media". When the papers are available in the ACM digital library, I highly recommend this one. It was about right associated with images and what people believe. Keith, MG, and Tammy won first runner-up for best student paper and have been invited to submit a more lengthy version of their paper for a journal article. That is one of the best prizes they could have received. Awesome! My presentation went well. Their full title: "Understanding Digital Library Adoption: A use diffusion approach".
The poster session last night was great too. The poster I enjoyed the most was done by Sally Jo Cunningham titled "How Children Find Books for Leisure Reading: Implications for the Digital Library". It was a fascinating study about observing children in libraries and bookstore and shadowing families and their activities in regard to books. She was very passionate about it and I look forward to hearing more of her work. Interestingly, one of the full papers presented during my session, "In the Bookshop: Examining Popular Search Strategies" by George Buchanan and Dana McKay was fascinating as well.
During lunch on the first day there were demonstrations and the two I liked the most were: The American Literature Suite (DOCEAR) and Machine Readable Digital Library (Mr. DLib).
It's been a good conference, I've enjoyed the little tiny bit I've seen of Ottawa and I'm ready to head home tomorrow to see my family!
The first keynote, Daniel Caron a Canadian Librarian and Archivist, spoke about many ideas for libraries. He didn't say anything I hadn't heard before, but a few things were said in a different way that got me thinking. My favorite nugget was, "information managers act as waste managers". He basically meant that information specialists receive so much stuff from people that they have to wade through it all and pull out the nuggets that are actually worth keeping (whereas most of the information really isn't). The value of materials is different and there should be criteria for what should be preserved. This immediately makes me think of rating the quality of online educational resources. This is a very hard, subjective, and elusive idea. The context for the use of the resource brings a lot to the table and everyone seems to have differing opinions about what is important. I find it hard for groups of people to come up with a standard set of criteria that works well for everything. So I hope if he figures out this set of criteria for libraries that they work and are flexible. He said libraries need to be reinvented. I can't disagree with that. The library profession has changed so much in the last 10 years that everyone seems to still be scrambling to keep up. With that, he said libraries are still trying to build digital libraries based on the ideas and models of a traditional book library and he believes the libraries of the future need to move away from this and again, reinvent what they can become.
The second keynote was Joan Morris DiMicco. She currently works in the research division of IBM but her background is the MIT Media Lab. Her talk was focused on data visualization (another area I love!). She said data vis is often used for story telling and then proceeded to tell us some stories. She started her stories with this visualization by Hans Rosling. What an amazing visualization, that one hit my geek bell! She talked about wordle, manybills, saNDVis, many-eyes, and second messenger. For all of these visualization options, she said that when you tell a story where you are trying to persuade someone to an idea or for making decisions, you should be sure that your data is accurate and if you can provide access to this data. It makes for a more compelling story when people can drill down to the facts themselves. I truly loved the manybills site and think I'll be using that for US legislation I usually think is too complicated to follow.
I thoroughly enjoyed the full paper by Catherine Marshall and Frank Shipman titled "The Ownership and Reuse of Visual Media". When the papers are available in the ACM digital library, I highly recommend this one. It was about right associated with images and what people believe. Keith, MG, and Tammy won first runner-up for best student paper and have been invited to submit a more lengthy version of their paper for a journal article. That is one of the best prizes they could have received. Awesome! My presentation went well. Their full title: "Understanding Digital Library Adoption: A use diffusion approach".
The poster session last night was great too. The poster I enjoyed the most was done by Sally Jo Cunningham titled "How Children Find Books for Leisure Reading: Implications for the Digital Library". It was a fascinating study about observing children in libraries and bookstore and shadowing families and their activities in regard to books. She was very passionate about it and I look forward to hearing more of her work. Interestingly, one of the full papers presented during my session, "In the Bookshop: Examining Popular Search Strategies" by George Buchanan and Dana McKay was fascinating as well.
During lunch on the first day there were demonstrations and the two I liked the most were: The American Literature Suite (DOCEAR) and Machine Readable Digital Library (Mr. DLib).
It's been a good conference, I've enjoyed the little tiny bit I've seen of Ottawa and I'm ready to head home tomorrow to see my family!
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