HLI Conference

So on the Friday morning (the 26th) I caught the train in and had my favourite Boost Juice for breakfast and headed to the HLI Conference for a great day of networking with those in health related libraries. Here are my notes from the day:

‘Gen Y’: are they really that different? David Chalke

Single, unmarried, live at home (but will move interstate), take gap years, 1/3 come from broken homes – so they are non-committal.
Very funny presentation but he didn’t ask if there were any Gen Y’s there – like me! My boss had a chuckle though as she said she recognised many of the traits in me!

Wikis for knowledge communities. Bernie Lewin

Gave a general overview. Use them for sharing – a collective mind. Use wikis to nurture, not control.
His talk reminded me that there is so much out there like the discussion page son wikis, forums on Bookmooch. Too many things to be a part of and not enough time – How do you be selective? He reminded me very much of the work my friend Jill does at Urbis.

Delivering the evidence to the client. Terence Harrison

This was about clinical librarianship and the fact that to do this you need to know a little bit about all disciplines (allied health, medicine, nursing, psychiatry etc.). He mentioned databases and resources such as CATMaker, PICO, DARE (UK), DUETS. And the bliki he is working on: www.clinicallibrarian.wordpress.com

So much great information but he whizzed through everything so quickly and we could have learnt so much more. If the presentation was one hour long it would have been better.

Integrating Web 2.O applications into the OPAC. Toby McAleer.

They got all staff (ATO) to do the Learning 2.0 package. Then they split things into phases:

Phase 1: included book covers, chapter descriptions, book summaries (enriched content). And they added single search (federated search option on Sirsi Dynix)

Phase 2: News/RSS Feeds, Wikis, Your own library account etc. All in one page with the catalogue in the middle.

Testing Phase: Tagging (via Library Thing) and Del.ico.us

It reminded me that we should really run an RSS session, but it was also one of those moments where you go ‘Oh – you can do all that because you have the money, the time, the staff and a great ILMS!’. Such is life!

Awards

SLA presented to Stephen Due from Geelong Hospital. I mean the work he has done for use with consortium's is amazing. Definitely well deserved.

Pat Nakouz Award was not awarded as no one applied! Think of a topic!

Feeds and mashups: a healthy diet of live content. Andrew Pentecost.

Mashup – like on Realestate.com where it has Google Maps. (mashing two products together).
He gave a live example which was great as we could easily take this back and add it to our intranet page.

Library 2.0 @ Curtin University Library. Dianna Blackwood

SMS queries. Podcasts. Look up David Rothman blog.

Podcasting is something I definitely want to learn how to do next year!

Austin Health Libraries Survey. Dominique Collins

Was very interesting in that they used consultants but in reality there is no way we could afford to do that. However it looks like they got good results from it!

Reel Librarians. Andrew Rooke and Marijana Bacic

Great way to end the conference by looking at Librarians in film. Good snippets and some really old movies. The only current one mentioned that I haven’t see is Possession (2002). Rent his one!

Dinner

Many headed home after a few drinks but the usual crowd stayed on for dinner. What a great night. Gee I love Margaret from Box Hill and Kathryn from Western is always a great laugh. Not forgetting my trusty sidekicks Michelle and Laura! I caught the train back to mum and dad’s and didn’t get in until gone midnight! What a huge day but an excellent one at that!