Reflections on ALIA Biennial Conference - dreaming 08

My Reflections on - dreaming 08:

Attending the Australian Library and Information Association Biennial Conference (ALIA) and the trip to the Northern Territory was an eye-opening, rewarding and unforgettable experience for me. It was much more than listening to the papers presented:

Local Indigenous Drumming Group

Kim, Julie and Andrea @ Conference Dinner

Eye-Opening

The conference made me aware of:

• Existing problems regarding indigenous collections. Professor Martin Nakata spoke about his research into the digitisation of indigenous collections. He highlighted some of the complex and sensitive issues, and emphasised the importance of making preservation of the heritage of Australia’s First People a priority.

• The Plenary session on IFLA 2010 Promotion presented many challenges for our profession that need to be addressed in order to dispel any doubts regarding its professional status. Emphasis was placed on the need for international advocacy initiatives.

Rewarding

• The ALIA Conference enabled me to establish many connections with librarians around Australia, particularly those in the Northern Territory:

Lunchtime @ Alice Springs Convention Centre

Ann Seidl & Cleve after Premier of Hollywood Librarian

• I took the opportunity to visit a number of libraries after the conference including: Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association Library (CAAMA) and radio studio, Catherine Public Library and Charles Darwin University Casuarina Campus Library:

Catherine Public Library and CDU Casuarina Campus


CDU Library Service Desk & Cleve with Joanne ( CDU staff)

Unforgettable

• This experience was dream come true for me! I now have a better understanding of some of the challenges facing indigenous people and I have forged some life-long friendships with both indigenous and non-indigenous people:

Local Friends from Alice Springs

Whilst in Alice Springs I was fortunate to be able to visit some aboriginal camps. By serendipity or providence, I met up with the brother of a young destitute indigenous man who sta

yed with me in Melbourne for a short time. In the camps, as an outsider looking in, I saw much despair and on one occasion had to fight back tears. Despite the sadness there was also a sense of camaraderie and a kindred spirit that reminded me of my own childhood in the Caribbean. I do hope to return to the Northern Territory - perhaps to live!

A visit to the Oltimers Indigenous Camp

Cleve & Darren

I travelled on the Ghan from Alice Springs to Darwin. The journey took approximately 24 hours with a 4 hour stop-over in Catherine. This was an amazing journey!

About to leave for Darwin

On the brief stope over in Catherine, I took the chartered bus into the town of Catherine and did a self-guided tour of the town and also visited Springvale Homestead on the way back to the train station. Some photos of the town of Catherine and of Springvale Homestead:

The Ghan arrived in Darwin around 7:30pm on Friday. The following 2 days (Sat. & Sun.) I attended the annual District Convention of Jehovah's Witnesses, where I met several people I knew from Melbourne and some from Sydney as well. Here are some photos at the convention:

My return flight to Melbourne was on Tuesday afternoon, so I only had Monday to explore as much of Darwin as possible. Had I not miss the train to Darwin from Alice Springs the previous Monday, I would have had a total of four days to explore Darwin instead of doing this in one day! That taught me to be more conscious of time and to take careful note of my itinerary in the future. Anyway, the one day of exploration was full of excitement! The journey from Darwin to Litchfield took about an hour-and-a-half. I was aomng a group of locals and other friends from Melbourne who attended the convention. Litchfield National Park has diverse attractions including rugged sandstone escarpments, many streams, monsoon rainforest, magnetic termite mounds waterfalls and historic ruins. We swam in refreshing plunge pools and rockholes formed from the many cascading waterfalls in the area, where, I later learned is the home of fresh water crocodiles. The locals assured me that the "freshies" are afraid of humans, but the "salties" are the man eaters! They also assured me that the "salties" were not around at this time of the year. If I had any inkling that crocks harboured in those waters, I would not have ventured in that area of the park, let alone swim in the water! May be its was a good idea that I wan't told from the start, otherwise I would have missed a marvelous time! Here are some photos of our day at Litchfield National Park:

We ended the day with a barbeque until late in the night. On our return trip, we had to stop twice to give way to two pythons crossing the road. One of them stood its ground and refused to move despite our proddign and prompting. It was so defiant that it struck at us twice in our efforts to get it to saftey. We eventually had to drive around it. Stubborn little creature!!

I had a splendid time in the Northern Territories and I am eager to return!!

23 Things Plus 5 - Staff Learning

The 23 Things staff learning experience has enabled me to become more aware of the impact that Social Networking and Web-based Technologies have on the learning styles of Generation-Y and how these technologies may be integrated into the classroom with particular reference to Information Literacy Classes to engage these learners. However the proliferation of these social media and web-based technologies has presented the challenge of knowing which ones are most appropriate for social engagement and collaborative learning and how these may be implemented.

The following five tasks are in addition to the 23 Things that have previously been explored:

• Connect with colleagues using LinkedIn


• Use VuFind to search a library catalogue


• Use KartOO Visual Meta Search Engine
  

• Try Voyage RSS Feed Reader


• Read about the Semantic Web
  

Connect with colleagues using LinkedIn

Immediately after joing LinkedIn I was able to re-connect with colleages and classmates living in various parts of the world whom I was unable to locate for many years. LinkedIn connections through institutions and their internal mail feature were invaluable in the search process. I see great potential for using LinkedIn in collaborative projects with colleagues from different institutions.

Use VuFind to search a library catalogue

Using VuFind to search the National Library of Australia's Catalogue was an enjoyable experience. I like the simplicity of the catalogue's interface and the effecient way the search system allows the user to perform a basic search and then to be able to narrow down results by choosing from various facets of the results. This allows the user to find results that he would otherwise never knew existed.

VuFind seems like a good alternative as an OPAC interface for Swinburne. One of the key advantages of using this product is that its flexibility allows the library to combine its traditional catlaogue functionality with some web 2.0 features.

Use KartOO visual meta search engine

At first glance the KartOO interface did not appeal to me. Perhaps the lack of appeal was due to the quirky gene perching above the search box. However, after doing a few searches I could appreciate the benefits of using visual display of search results, though I am comfortable with the linear method. I like the idea of being able to look across a broad selection of cites. This kind of search result is particularly effective for ambiguous queries where the searcher is trying to understand various meaning of the search term. In any case, I don't see myself using KartOO as a preferred search engine.

Try Voyage RSS feed reader

My first experience with Voyager was a bit frustrating as I couldn't figure out how to use it intuitively. However after several trial and error attempts I was able to add/delete and retrieve feeds successfully. Understanding the functionality made the experience worthwhile, in fact even somewhat mystical, particularly with being able to scroll your mouse to move from present to past with messages floating beyond reminding me of Star trek!

Read about the Semantic Web

The idea of a Semantic Web is a marvellous one, but wether this will be a reality is yet to be proven. The thought of being able to encode semantics on a web page to enable machines to understand the meaning of data and then make inferences is a revolutionary one when it comes to the World Wide Web. This means that the web will have new functionality that will go beyond simply displaying data, it will now be able to process and understand it. If this becomes a reality, then there will be no difference between information produced primarily for human consumption and that produced mainly for machines.

According to some proponents of the Semantic Web, at present there seems to be some progress towards making this idea a reality, because two important technologies for developing the Semantic Web are already in place, namely:

• eXtinsible Markup Language (XML): which allows the user to add arbitrary structure to their documents and
  

• Resource Description Framework (RDF): which expresses meaning and has a natural way of describing the vast majority of data processed by machines
  

The most formidable challenge that creators of the Semantic Web now face, is their ability to add to add logic to the Web. I am looking with eager anticipation to see how this will become a reality!

Reference

Berners-Lee, T , Hendler & Lassila, O 2001, ‘The Semantic Web,’ Scientific AmericaVol. 284, no. 5, pp. 34, Viewed 20 August 2008, http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=2&hid=4&sid=63c00564-

4ebc-4cb6-bfd2-d685719fc2ab%40sessionmgr8&bdata=JnNpdGU9Z

Whvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=anh&AN=4328935

WEEK 13 : CONCLUSION

Feedback - 23 Things Online Learning Program:

The 23 things experience has broaden my perspective of communication and information delivery. This was a very engaging and inspiring experience, one that has given me the courage to embrace new technologies and inspired me to explore and investigate new discoveries without any apprehension. The 23 Things Learning Project has also galvanized the efforts of the staff members to unite and succeed as a group across all campuses. This learning program was a great asset to building team spirit among the library staff.

I envisage using many of these Social Software tools in my present and the future work environment as well as with leisure activities.

WEEK 12: SECOND LIFE AND LIBRARIES!

Read about Second Lief and how Libraries are using it:

Second Life is a Virtual World, built and owned by its users. According to the University Medical Centre Groningan, within this Virtual World, participants:

· Meet each other

· Interact, compete, collaborate, learn from and talk to each other

· Engage in Distant Learning

· Establish Virtual Communication

· Go anywhere and do anything

Second Life has established new frontiers for educators (including librarians) who are looking for ways of dissemination information and making learning a more engaging and interactive experience. However, these new frontiers come with new challenges and problems, and it is exciting to observe as these unfold.

In attempting to understand how Second Life operate and what challenges and problems may be encountered, I signed up and successfully downloaded the software but was unable to gain access. It appeared that access was no longer granted through Swinburne University’s server. I tried several times, but access was denied. I gave up trying, and just resorted to reading about the experiences of those who are current participants or thse who had previously shared in the Second Life experience.

Week 11 : Podcasts!

Find and Listen to a Podcast or two:
From Google I located a number of podcasts for conference papers from the VALA Conference held in Melbourne in 2006. I attended one day of this conference and enjoyed many interesting and informative presentations but would have liked to hear other presentations which were delivered simultaneously with the ones I had chosen. Now I am able to listen to the ones I missed. It is much easier to listen to the podcasts rather than to read the pdf version of these papers. You can check out these podcasts at the following address: http://www.vala.org.au/vala2006/auth2006.htm

Week 10 Wikis and Video Sharing

Put Photo of Your Pet on the Wiki:
This photo was put on the Wiki to represent my beloved Billy, a pet with whom I had a close bond many years ago in Jamaica, before he ended up on the dinner table for some unknown reason to me. Since then I learnt not to develop any close bond with any pets, but I still remember Billy with much fond memories!! Nanny and her baby in this photo are descendants of Billy. This photo was taken on a recent trip to Jamaica!

Watch YouTube Videos People Have Made About Libraries:
YouTube has a number of interesting and informative videos about libraries and among these, I found the following two videos most informative:

• The University of Southern California Library of the Future Awards Ceremony: This video shows the unveiling of the visions of students from USC during their 2007 parents weekend. The team of student presenters used slide presentations to give their creative visions of the form and function of the future of academic libraries. They included the architecture, the technology and how students will use the library to achieve their academic goals.
  

• Voices from Imagination to Transformation Mid- Atlantic Library Conference:

In this video a number of delegates from a Mid-Atlantic Library Conference expressed their views about libraries of the future. Some of the areas covered in their forecasts for future libraries included:

• Emerging trends
  
• Environmental sustainability of library buildings and landscapes
• Transformations caused by social networking
• New approach to content creation and
  
• Convenience of information access

It is reassuring to know that Swinburne University of Technology Library has already had in place or is currently implementing many of the suggestions given by the delegates as their forecasts for future libraries.

Weeks 8 & 9

iGoogle Home Page:
Having a personalized iGoogle Home Page is a good idea. This enables me to get a quick glance at a wide variety of information from Google and across the web at one go. Creating the iGoogle Home Page and organizing its contents was very easy and straightforward:


Play With Delicious:
Delicious is a very effective medium for keeping all your book marks in one place. I found it quite convenient using this social bookmarking website to access my bookmarks from any computer and in adding bookmarks form anywhere. Another advantage I found is the ability to see the links to my friends bookmarks and to be able to share mine with them:



Read about the Library 2.0 Movement:
My investigation of the Library 2.0 movement, has revealed that it represents a paradigm shift in the way library services are viewed today. The Library 2.0 movement seems to foster a seamless user experience by reaching out to the library communities via social networking (blogs, wikis, IM and screencasting etc.). Its about user participation, making their voice hear through blogs , wikis and making the library space (virtual and physical) more interactive, collaborative and driven by community needs.