The Role of Libraries in the iPad Age

The National Library of Australia ran an excellent Innovative Ideas Forum 2010. For next year I suggest allowing for more audience input. The NLA provides time for questions and has excellent wireless microphones so you can hear the person asking the question. Also the NLA encourages blogging (tag: iif2010) and twittering (#iif2010) , providing power points and WiFi for laptops. However, what is blogged or twittered does not appear to the speaker or the non-twittering audience. The room is full of talent which could be tapped. Perhaps there could be some breakout session, where we fan out across different pars of the NLA building and discuss the issues, then come back and report.

In any case there is still clearly a role for the library in the iPad age. Being in this building at this event I felt I the "flow" which Ben Swift described in his seminar on mobile music making yesterday. This is helped by the NLA building being in the shape of a Greek temple and having stained glass windows like a medieval scriptorium. Things got a little historically weird when one of the library staff appeared, dressed like a character from a Jane Austin novel.

Food-Scanner needed for Austrlaia

At the Innovative Ideas Forum 2010,one of the speakers asked for a gadget which would tell you the nutritional content of food in the supermarket. So I did a web search and found a iPhone App for US$0.99 called "Foodscanner". This scans the Universal Product Code (UPC) barcodes on packaged food and displays ingredients, nutrition and calorie information. So I mentioned this but the audience said "yes we know Tom, but it doesn't work in Australia and its database is limited".

Cell phone download from iTunes: FoodScanner

The Future is Catered For

Greeting from the reading room of the National Library of Australia, in Canberra. I have taken half an hour off from the Innovative Ideas Forum 2010, which is happening down stairs. The morning session was interesting, exciting, but also hard work. There was an excellent lunch provided in the foyer by the NLA and the chance to chat with participants. I took up what proved to be a strategic position on the couch outside the cafe (corner seat is the best). I then helped a colleague from the University of Canberra design a social networking course for next semester, from the people who wandered over and what they chatted about. That might sound a random process but these were people like Intel Fellow, Genevieve Bell, who I had the pleasure of sitting behind at the "Realising Our Broadband Future" forum in Sydney (where she was carrying out an impromptu anthropological study of the politicians use of mobile devices around her her). Also there are people from the communications department, who work on the digital economy while suffering from the acronym of "dbcde". ;-)

Over the last few weeks I have attended events on e-teaching, innovation, e-publishing and reading a history of Cam,bridge University. It may just be the excellent coffee and the fresh air at the outdoor cafe at the NLA making me light headed, but I think I can see a way to combine these together.

The Library of Alexandria was Destroyed

Brianna Laugher, President Wikimedia Australia is talking on "Is Wikipedia a one-off? Is mass collaboration all it's cracked up to be?"
at the Innovative Ideas Forum 2010 success was a one off, short term at the National Library of Australia in Canberra. The issue addressed was if the Wikipedia'sphenomena. The Wikipedia might come and go quickly, even the Library of Alexandria, which must have seemed for ever, was destroyed.

An ebook is a standalone website

Mark Pesce at Innovative Ideas Forum 2010 seems to be using a very complex and wordy analysis for some very simple ideas of what an ebook is. He seems to think that paper books are a linear form starting from page one and going to the last page. This is not the case, most obviously for non-fiction books and less so for fiction.

Books have non-liner features such as tables of contents indexes and footnotes. In teaching web design I explain to the students how to design a web site by analogy to a book. I suggest that designed have one default linear path through the web site, like the format of a book. In the extreme case a book can be converted to a book, by converting the components to their book equivalent.

Recently I took a set of web pages and turned them into a book, including ebook versions (the paper version is in the NLA and the web version in Trove). Obviously the paper and ebook versions have different features. The ebook versions differ depending on the ebook device used and if it is online or not. As an example, the citations cannot be clicked on in the paper version of the book. In the PDF and Kindle versions they can be clicked on, but if the book is not online external links will still not work.

Whatever happened to plain English?

Greeting from the Innovative Ideas Forum 2010 at the National Library of Australia in Canberra. The second speaker is Mark Pesce, of Future St Consulting. His topic is "Whatever Happened to the Book?". So far he seems to have said that commercial content providers do not like to hyperlink outside their own web site, that the web encourages brief easily understood items and e-books are different to paper books. Perhaps he has some other non-obvious point he is trying to make, but I am having difficulty understanding what he is saying due to all the big words being used and convoluted sentences. He seems to be reading out a paper for a university paper (or something for Fibreculture). Perhaps it is just that I am so used to brief simple online expression and can't cope with old fashioned substantive expression and am too used to short, clear, easy to understand online expression.

The Future is Messy

Greeting from the Innovative Ideas Forum 2010 at the National Library of Australia in Canberra. The first speaker is Dr Genevieve Bell , Intel Fellow, Digital Home Group Director, User Experience Group, Intel Corporation, talking about technology and the ways people use it in their everyday lives.

Genevieve is originally from Canberra and gave an entertaining insight as to how culture and technology interact. One insight was that the people in the growth areas for Internet use in Asia live much more densely and that English was not longer the dominant language of the Internet. Western, and particularly American, ideas of how information is organised, meaning is expressed will not necessarily continue to dominate the Internet.

Genevieve argued that old forms of media, such as television, will live on. Rather than television being subsumed as a VOD service, TV is influencing the design of computers and the Internet. It would be interesting to see how this apply to the book.

The room is packed with about 400 people, about one quarter of who I know by sight from other e-events. The organisers encourage live blogging (tag: iif2010) and twittering (#iif2010) from the event, making for a lively discussion. You can read my notes from last year .

Innovative Ideas Forum 2010 in Canberra

The National Library of Australia will host the Innovative Ideas Forum 2010, in Canberra, 16 April 2010. This excellent annual event is free, but you need to register.

The organisers encourage live blogging (tag: iif2010) and twittering (#iif2010) from the event, making for a lively discussion. Last year I took Mark Scott, Managing Director, ABC, to task for problems with the accessibility of the ABC mobile web site, grumbled about Marcus Gillezeau's "Scorched", and contemplated what Dr Anne Summers had to say about serious writing and the Internet.

Innovative Ideas Forum 2010: Program

Chair: Warwick Cathro, Assistant Director-General, Resource Sharing & Innovation, NLA
9.30am	Welcome: Jan Fullerton, Director-General, NLA
9.40am	Dr Genevieve Bell , Intel Fellow, Digital Home Group Director, User Experience Group, Intel Corporation, talking about technology and the ways people use it in their everyday lives
10.30am	Mark Pesce, FutureSt Consulting "Whatever Happened to the Book?"
11.15am	Morning Tea
11.45am	Brianna Laugher, President Wikimedia Australia, "Is Wikipedia a one-off? Is mass collaboration all it's cracked up to be?"
12.30pm	Kent Fitch, Programmer, IT Division, NLA " Resistance is futile: how libraries must serve society by embracing cloud culture, the end of the information age, and inevitable technological and social trends"
1.15	Lunch
Chair: Mark Corbould, Assistant Director-General, Information Technology, NLA
2.30pm	Dr Nicholas Gruen, CEO. Lateral Economics "Information and content: the new public good of the 21st Century"
3.15pm	Rob Manson, Managing Director, MOB, "Collections are Leaking into the Real World". A look at how mobile phones, iPhones, iPads and augmented reality are changing our use of collections and their place in the world.
4.00pm	Closing remarks: Jan Fullerton

ABC Mobile Web site continuing problems

During Mark Scott, Managing Director, ABC, talk at the Innovative Ideas Forum 2009, I did a quick check and the ABC's new mobile web site which showed accessibility and HTML validation problems. Mr. Scott said he thought the accessibility problems had been fixed and he would go back to the office and check. To assist, here are some details on the test results.

I ran a TAW (Web Accessibility Test) based on the W3C - Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG 1.0). This reported 0 Priority 1, 14 Priority 2 and 1 Priority 3 automated test problems. While there were no Priority 1 automated errors, manual inspection requests were flagged, such as:

• Suspicious text equivalent for image, can not be file name or file size or placeholder text (1)
• • Line 32:

In this case the alternate text for someone who can't see images is the word "image". This is not useful text and appears to have been inserted so as to trick the automated test process. Other inappropriate ALT text appears to be honest mistakes by an inadequately trained web designer:

alt='White Space'

The W3C Markup Validator reported 79 errors. Many of these errors were due to unencoded ampersands and are not serious problems and easily fixed. More serious is that no "Doctype" is specified so it is not clear which particular HTML standard is intended. The document seems to be a mix of different pieces of HTML pasted from different sources. The validation assumed XHTML 1.0 Transitional, but I was unable to find any setting for which the code passed validation.

Most desktop web browsers will accept invalid code most of the time. However, mobile phone browsers tend to be more sensitive and may produce no useful display. Adaptive technology used by people with a disability will tend to be more sensitive and so may not work. Also it is not a good idea to hope the web pages will display correctly when communicating emergency information.

The ABC should be using tools to check the web pages are technically correct. They should also ensure the staff using the tools are trained in how to design web pages.

Connecting with Audiences in the Digital Age

Mark Scott, Managing Director, ABC, talked at the Innovative Ideas Forum 2009. This was a thoughtful presentation on how the ABC is investing in digital delviery, despite limited resources. He used the example of how Twitter was used during the Victorian bushfires. Mr Scott said "The ABC is the emergency broadcaster". So at question time I asked if the ABC ws investing sufficient in the mobile service for he community to rely on it. I did a quick check and the ABC's new mobile web site appears to still not meet with accessibility guidelines and has dozens of validation errors. Mr. Scott said he thought the accessibility problems had been fixed and he would go back to the office and check. If the ABC uses the web and mobile phones as an integral part of its service it then I suggest it has an obligation to provide that service to the wide community and in emergencies. That requires funding, planning and testing by the ABC.

Dr Summers on blogging

Dr Anne Summers, gave a thoughtful and entertaining talk at the Innovative Ideas Forum 2009, on the implications for serious writing of the Internet. She expressed concern about the loss of historical information as paper is replaced by ephemeral digital media. Dr Summers showed us her facebook page live, which was impressive. As an author, her business model appears to be to use the web to promote books for sale. As with the previous speaker I asked if there might come a time when the writing would be supported from online advertising. Dr Summers replied that she had signed up for online ads, but the revenue was minimal. She also comfortable she was comfortable with online books but hers may not suit that medium. I jokingly suggested she sign up for my ANU course on how to do it.

Web advertising to support Austrlaian TV production

As soon as Marcus Gillezeau, stopped showing bits of the "Scorched" telemovie and started to talk off the cuff at the Innovative Ideas Forum 2009, he started to become interesting and more credible. I asked him about flipping the business model for his production from funding from TV advertising supported by Internet promotion to Internet web based advertising supported by TV. He argued passionately that as the creative person, this is not an issue for him, but for his promotional partners. He seemed to think it necessary for him to go to companies to sell the advertising, the idea that the ads would find the content automatically (as Google Adwords does) does not seem to be something he is aware of.

Are hoax web sites ethical and legal?

The more Marcus Gillezeau, talks about "Scorched", a Channel 9 telemove, at the Innovative Ideas Forum 2009, the less I like it. The TV show created a character "Cassy Hoffman" inspired by the Lonelygirl15 hoax. While a creative person might decide that such a hoax is okay as a work of art, it is worrying that this was funded by a government body, the Australian Film Commission. While it is one thing for someone to spend their own money creating hoaxes for commercial gain, it is not acceptable for my taxes to pay for it. Marcus was also proud of having carried a "faux" (that is hoax) news service. About the only saving grace of this material is that is is of the poor quality of the script, acting and production should make the more than casual viewer that this is a hoax.

Back the book

In her welcome to the Innovative Ideas Forum 2009, Jan Fullerton, Director-General, NLA, emphasised that the library has embraced new digital technology while not forgetting the book. There are about a dozen people in the audience blogging (tagged "iif2009") and twitering (hashtag #iif2009). Unfortunately Marcus Gillezeau, Producer/Director, Firelight Productions' keynote is disappointing so far. This is about "Scorched", a Channel 9 telemove. Marcus talked about how the movie was supported by online extensions. Unfortunately the video he played made it clear that this is just old fashioned soap TV dressed up with some minimal web base content. Perhaps this will help Channel 9 sell more TV advertising, but does not do much for genuine use of the technology or Australian culture. However it is a useful warning of how old media will try to hijack the new media to cynically exploit it.

How high the lectern

It is organised chaos at the National Library of Australia, with last minute preparations for the Innovative Ideas Forum 2009 . My bus was cancelled (the ACTION Canberra bus service changed the timetable) but the alternative bus which arrived turned out to be quicker (shame it was dangerously overloaded with public servants). I turned up at the reception desk for the forum gave my name, got a strange look and was asked to go down and help with the IT for the event. There were a half dozen A/V people, speakers and Warwick Cathro, the MC organising flash drives with presentations on them. I decided there were enough people and my help would not help. The biggest issue seemed to be if the lectern could be raised high enough for Mark Scott, Managing Director, ABC. I decided to retreat to the Bookplate cafe in the library foyer, where I could watch the passing parade of people and blog in comfort.

Worshipping at the temple of information

The Innovative Ideas Forum 2009 is in Canberra today at the The National Library of Australia. The library building is a 20th century interpretation of a Greek temple, raised on its own artificial granite acropolis. At first glance a building full of books may seem a strange place to have an event about 21st century media, web-based social networking and digital content. But the NLA is one of the world centres for expertise in digital media. You can walk into the library with nothing, not even a pencil, use the computers there to research and write on a topic, publish your work online and walk out again (after lunch and a coffee). The library collects Australian online publications in its Pandora Archive, including some things companies and government would prefer were forgotten. The ARROW Discovery Service has Australian research outputs. Picture Australia has a catalogue of images from cultural institutions.

Innovative Ideas Forum 2009

The National Library of Australia is hosting the Innovative Ideas Forum 2009 in Canberra, 27 March 2009. The venue has free wireless internet access and the Library is encouraging blogging and twittering, with blogs tagged "iif2009" and tweets with hashtag #iif2009. Mark Scott, Managing Director of the ABC is a speaker and I might ask him about deficiencies in the accessibility and emergency features of the ABC's mobile web site. Here is the program:

Chair: Warwick Cathro, Assistant Director-General, Resource Sharing & Innovation, NLA
9.30am	Welcome: Jan Fullerton, Director-General, NLA
9.40am	Marcus Gillezeau, Producer/Director, Firelight Productions "21st Century All-Media Storytelling - The freedoms and challenges of a multi-platform universe"
10.30am	Dr Anne Summers, Author and Columnist "The implications of web-based social networking for cultural heritage institutions"
11.15am	Morning Tea
11.45am	Mark Scott, Managing Director, ABC "Connecting with Audiences in the Digital Age"
12.20pm	Rose Holley, Manager of the Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program, National Library of Australia “Enhancement and Enrichment of Digital Content by user communities: The Australian Newspapers experience"
1.00pm	Lunch
Chair: Mark Corbould, Assistant Director General, Information Technology, NLA
2.00pm	Darren Sharp, Senior Consultant with Collabforge " Library 2.0: Citizens Co-Creating Culture"
2.45pm	Jillian Dellit, Director, The Le@rning Federation Secretariat "Creative Tension? The Challenges of Social Networking for Schooling in our Federation."
3.30pm	Jo Kay, Freelance Geek, Designer, and Facilitator "Virtually Creative: Exploring Innovative Arts and Educational Communities in Second Life"
4.15pm	Closing remarks: Jan Fullerton

Innovative Ideas Forum on Mobile Internet and Archives

The third annual Innovative Ideas Forum started at the National Library of Australia in Canberra this morning. This is a one day event for librarians and other information professionals. There is almost a full house in the NLA theatre. It is very pleasant to be able to just sit here and let someone else do the organizing, after last week's Open 2020 Summit.

The proceedings are being recorded and will be podcast by the NLA, along with copies of the speaker's slides next week.

The ideas forum is a curious blend of the old and the new. Demetrius of Phaleron, librarian at the ancient Great Library at Alexandria, would have felt at home at the NLA; it looks like a temple for books. If you look closely, some of what was on paper, such as catalogs and signs, have been replaced with electronic screens. But the operation and feeling remains the same. No doubt Demetrius would have attended forums on "papyrus 2.0". ;-)

The event was opened by Professor Gerard Goggin on Internet and Mobile Phone. He described broadband as a "totem" for the new government and asked what it might be used for and the role of wireless. Roger Clarke got a mention in recording the history of the Internet. Gerrard pointed out that scientists figured prominently, but activists should be mentioned. My recollection from around the early 1990s is that we deliberately clothed any social activism of the Internet in scientific language to make it politically palatable. Having, for example, someone who had been jailed for their political activism did not seem a good way to get the government onside.

Professor Goggin mentioned several Internet historians and activists. But he did not mention Carl Malamud's "Exploring the Internet : A Technical Travelogue" (1992), which was about trip around the world visiting Internet pioneers, including those in Australia. This book has a large effect on me. Much of what is advocated has happened. Some of open access to documents may be about to happen.

Professor Goggin asks for histories of how and when the Internet developed in different parts of the world. However, he proposes to approach this from that of the key figures involved. The problem with this is that the people saying things publicly in traditional forums were not necessarily the people actually key to the process. Many of the key strategists were not public figures, relying on others to put the message out. Also the technology was used, so that the work was done by loose online groups which did not necessarily have leaders or formal structure. Those involved in this process may not necessarily know who did what.

This distributed approach still applies to Internet development. As an example, a few weeks ago I was part of a process to tell the government that it was not a good idea to give each school child a laptop. Within 24 hours, a cabinet minister said this to the media. It is not clear who said what to who and for this form of political communication to work, the lines of communication need to remain unclear.

It was not clear in the 1990s that "the Internet" would be a success and their were many alternatives which were proposed, failed and forgotten. It is very much the case with the Internet and the web that the victors have written the history. The other forgotten histories are buried in electronic archives, yet to be dug up by Internet archaeologists.

Professor Goggin pointed out that exciting new developments in the use of mobile phones in developing nations do not get considered. He also said that exactly what would be done with broadband on mobiles in Australia was not yet clear.

The commons approach then got a mention (of which Creative Commons is an example). He argued that the commons approach to mobiles has not been explored. This is relevant to broadband development in Australia, as the Australian Government recently cancelled the Opel contract to build a wireless broadband network in regional Australia. The government has no viable strategy to replace that network. A commons approach may help solve a looming political problem for the government. The opposition could get political traction around the perception that regional Australia is missing out on broadband access.

At question time I asked if historians needed to adopt analytical techniques to discover the history of the Internet. I suggested reading what people wrote in old fashioned paper books is not the way to do it. Also reading Wired magazine is not the way to do it (described by my technical colleagues as "The Dolly magazine of the computer industry"). The Internet Archive and others have kept records which can be analyzed to see who said what first. Professor Goggin replied that both approaches were needed. He was working on an analytical analysis of how Australian youth use mobiles, but it was also important to look at what historians say about topic.

Next there was Kris Carpenter Negulescu from the Internet Archive. She started off pointing out that the archive has more than just copies of old web pages, with books, music and video. Alos the use of the archive for research was emphasized, with "content as infrastructure" and "examination of primary data". She mentioned challenge with archives linking together with APIs. One aspect of interest was the risk of patent which risk the use of common approaches, such as a US company patenting the us of a thumbnail of a web page next to a reference to it. As an expert witness I have used the Internet Archive to check the prior art for such patents.

One interesting development was the use of Zotero in place of End Notes to keep research references. Mellon is funding an extension to this to allow a social network of researchers to exchange their references in a closed group or publicly.

Also it is interesting that data can in the archives can have analysis. An example Kris gave was of the use of the term "Cube Farm" to refer to an open plan office with low partitions. In passing she mentioned that Herman Miller was horrified that his idea of a more comfortable more flexible office layout turned into the confined cube farm.

Kris pointed out that the trend in research funding in the USA was to require the researchers to plan for sustaining the results of their work beyond the end of the funding. In Australia there has been some limited discussion of doing this, with researchers having to put their data in an institutional repository and pay for its upkeep.

Innovative Ideas Forum, Canberra, 10 April 2008

The National Library of Australia is holding another of their excellent free Innovative Ideas Forums, 10 April 2008 :

Innovative Ideas Forum
Program

Morning - chair Monica Berko

9.00am Welcome

9.10am Professor Gerard Goggin (Professor of Digital Communication, University of New South Wales)

Topic: The Internet and the Mobile Phone: Histories, Possibilities, Challenges

10.00am Kris Carpenter Negulescu ( Internet Archive )
Topic: Digital Services and Online Research: The Future of Who does What and For Whom
Today institutions around the globe struggle with the daunting task of archiving and maintaining for future generations a record of the Web –the social, economic, cultural and scientific heritage of nations, states/provinces, academic disciplines, and other communities of interests—and with the large-scale digitization of traditional materials. How can/should current policies, partnerships and best practices, allocation of funds and/or research investments shape the future of digital services, i.e. what is provided, who is a provider, and for which audiences? This talk attempts to explore the current trends and considerations that could hold the most influence over this future.

10.50-11.20 Morning tea

11.20am Richard Walis (TALIS)
Topic: Beyond Web 2.0 -The Continuing Journey
Is Web 2.0/Library 2.0 just about rounded corners on your web site, links to Amazon, sharing tags with your fellow patrons, and the Library Director’s blog? These developments have led to a welcome opening up of libraries, their systems, and the minds of the librarians that run them.
Have we reached a destination on a road of innovation or are these just symptoms of the journey? The benefits of what we are seeing are in general localised to individual libraries or services. It is only with the open sharing of the data produced by Web 2.0 features such as tagging, and building on the semantic relationships between library data, social networking add-ons, and other rich data sources across institutions, that the real benefits of Web 2.0 be realised - by then we will be utilizing Semantic Web technologies and probably be calling it Web 3.0.

LUNCH 12.10pm - 1.25pm

Afternoon - chair Margy Burn

1.25pm - 1.35pm Introduction to rapid prototyping for innovation projects at the NLA - Warwick Cathro

1.35pm - 2.20pm Steve McPhillips and Mark Triggs (National Library) - VuFind.
Alison Dellit (National Library) - NLA's single business prototype.
Library systems operate in a significantly different environment than they did a decade ago. New technologies, new ways of thinking about information discovery and greater competition in the information space mean users have rapidly changing expectations of search services. This creates an uncertain environment for system development. In this presentation, we will discuss some of the National Library's experiences with using prototyping and rapid development techniques to build resource discovery systems that are more responsive to users' needs. We will look at the National Library's new catalogue prototype, which uses VuFind; and the "single business prototype”.
Douglas Elford (National Library) - What is the MediaPedia?

2.20pm - 3.00pm Stewart Wallace (Dictionary of Sydney)
Topic: Modelling and deploying urban history - Terms, Entities, Factoids, Graphs.
The Dictionary of Sydney is building a digital repository of text and multimedia related to Sydney's history. The repository is designed to facilitate a variety of deployments including web, mobile, RSS etc. In seeking the best method for connecting all these resources to Sydney's urban history, the Dictionary is developing an accompanying semantic model of Terms, Entities and 'Factoids' to create an extensible web of digital connections

3.00-3.30pm Afternoon tea

3.30pm - 4.00pm Julien Masanès (Director of the European Archive Foundation )
Topic: Next Generation web archiving methods
Julien will talk about the Living Web Archives (LiWA) project, a three-year project funded by the European Union. This project will carry Web archiving beyond the current approach, characterized by static snapshots, to one that fully accounts for the dynamics and interrelations of Web content. The result of LiWA's work will be a set of next generation Web archiving methods and tools making possible the creation and long-term usability of high-quality Web archives. Aspects of the project's research will focus on providing for the capture of the hidden Web, the filtering out of unwanted content through spam and trap detection, and addressing the temporal incoherence inherent in current Web capture methods and tools. The research will also address the rapid semantic and technological evolution of the Web in order to promote the long-term viability of Web archives.

4.00 - 430pm Gordon Mohr ( Chief Technologist for the Internet Archive's Web Archive )
Topic:Challenges on the horizon
The pace of innovation on the web demands constant attention from those who seek to record the discourse of the early 21st century. Gordon will speculate about these trends and how the Internet Archive is adapting its own techniques and constantly innovating to create tools to keep pace with these changes.

Innovative Ideas Forum, Canberra

On Monday I am going along to the Innovative Ideas Forum at the National Library of Australia:

The purpose of the forum is to provide an opportunity for librarians and others working on projects or programs that enhance the national information infrastructure to share information about innovative new ideas, developments and trends in providing access to information to all Australians. Services and projects contributing to the national information infrastructure include shared portal services, subject gateways, federated discovery services, collaborative projects to increase online access to content, and federated authentication services.

That might sound a bit dull to non-librarians, but the speakers include some of the revolutionaries who helped get Australia (and the world) on the Internet. The web has started to demolish print publishing (and soak up its advertising revenue). The academic sounding topics presented here may decide who gets billions of dollars to be made in the next few years as podcasting replaces radio and TV broadcasting.

Tomorrow during the conference I will try and do a "live" update from the library. Anyone with a question for a speaker can email it to me.

ps: I wrote this with the Writely on-line word processor, recently acquired by Google.

Program (the abstracts are also available):

Monday 3 April 2006

Morning

9.00am Welcome by Dr Warwick Cathro

Future trends in information discovery and delivery. (Richard Springhall, Yahoo!7 )

9.30am Trends in integrated library management system developments. (Jeroen Reiniers, Endeavor Information Systems)

10.00am Dis-integrating the integrated library information management system. (Lloyd Sokvitne, State Library of Tasmania) (abstract)

10.30-11.00 Morning tea

11.00am (chair: Tony Boston) What's in A Name? Issues in Identification. (Geoff Huston, Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre ) (abstract)

11.30am DART: Dataset acquisition, accessibility and annotation e-research technologies. (Andrew Treloar, Monash University) (abstract)

12.00pm Next generation networks and advanced communication services - expanding the reach and interactivity of cultural institutions. (George McLaughlin, AARNET) (abstract)
LUNCH 12.30pm - 1.15pm
Afternoon

1.15pm (chair: Mark Corbould) NLA Strategic Directions. (Warwick Cathro, NLA)

2.00pm Extending Digital Libraries Infrastructure to support eResearch. (Jane Hunter, University of Queensland) (abstract)

2.30pm Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative. (Maggie Exon, Curtin University)

3.00-3.30 Afternoon tea

3.30pm (chair: Warwick Cathro) Creative Commons. (Brian Fitzgerald, Queensland University of Technology)

4.00pm National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance. (Aaron Corn, Sydney Conservatorium) (abstract)

4.30pm Australian Social Science Data Archives. (Sophie Holloway, Australian National University) (abstract)

Tuesday 4 April 2006

Morning

9.00am (chair: Heidi Pritchard)
The Learning Federation. (Alan Bevan, CEO) (abstract)

9.30am
EdNA Online's shared information services architecture and the delivery of education-related resources. (Pru Mitchell and Gus Singh, EdNA Online) (abstract)

10.00am
Domesticated and feral - sharing resources created by expert resource developers and enthusiastic classroom teachers, while ensuring quality. (Kevin O'Gorman, Centre for Learning Innovation) (abstract)

10.30-11.00 Morning tea

11.00am (chair: Helen Kon)
Learning content for cultural institutions, in digital publishing and workflow design. (Greg Styles, Blended Learning International) (abstract)

11.30am
Connecting people to information through the VOCED database. (Miriam Saunders, National Centre for Vocational Education Research) (abstract)

12.00pm
Vrroom: the virtual reading room of the National Archives of Australia. (Beatrice Barnett, National Archives) (abstract)
LUNCH 12.30pm - 1.30pm
Afternoon

1.30pm (chair: Margy Burn)
NLA services to support education and research. (Tony Boston, NLA) (abstract)

2.00pm
Gateway to Australian educational research: new products & services from the Australian Council For Educational Research (ACER). (Sue Clarke and Tine Grimston, Australian Council for Educational Research) (abstract)

2.30pm
A proposal for a national catalogue and resource sharing service for people with a print disability. (Donna Runner, Deakin University) (abstract)

3.00-3.30 Afternoon tea

3.30pm (chair: Warwick Cathro)
Information Management in action: profiling research with a create once and re-use approach to digital repositories and administrative systems. (Simon Porter and Eve Young, Melbourne University) (abstract)

4.00pm
Developing a national film and television resource centre for education. (Mike Lynch, Screenrights) (abstract)