Point of reference

Share this on social media:

Internet Librarian International will take place at London’s Olympia Conference Centre in October

Internet Librarian International, which is promoted as ‘Europe’s friendliest forum for exchanging ideas, learning new skills, hearing about new tools and tech, making unexpected connections, discovering practical solutions, and exploring new and interesting approaches’, takes place in London on 17 and 18 October.
Organisers of the event, at Olympia Conference Centre, describe librarians as ‘leaders in tech, organisational influencers, expert marketers (often working with a zero budget), change managers, skilled data crunchers and expert internet searchers – and so much more’.
Over two days, ILI’s six conference tracks highlight the breadth of the internet librarian’s activities:

  • The new library, the new librarian – exploring some of the strategies, structures, teams, skills, services and collaborations librarians are using to ensure they stay at the cutting edge;
  • Users, user experience and usage – understanding how libraries are working with users to redesign services, spaces and to understand usage;
  • Content creativity – investigating how creative libraries are creating, curating and marketing digital collections, how librarians are publishers in their own right and how they are driving collaborative content creation;
  • Fight the fake, find the facts – celebrating two of the librarian’s super powers – advanced search techniques and nurturing information integrity – in a post-truth/multi-truth era;
  • Marketing the library – sharing stories of librarians who are influencing use and expanding audiences for their services and collections, from the DJ librarian to the digital storyteller; and
  • New scholarly communications – exploring why the scholarly communications landscape is changing, and what this means for libraries and information professionals.

ILI’s six main conference tracks are supplemented by a series of one-hour workshops – ILI Extra – covering a wide range of specialised skills and topics, from tech topics to personal development.
For those whose time is limited, ILI’s pre-conference one-day workshops are on Monday 16 October:

  • Websearch Academy 2017 – super-searchers Phil Bradley, Marydee Ojala and Arthur Weiss explore the intricacies of research on the web, looking at advanced search, evaluation of search engines, apps relevant to serious research, social media search, and analysis of search results.
  • Marketing your library service: principles and actions – in libraries so much time is spent curating content and services that sometimes not enough focus is on telling people about what is done. How to ensure people hear about what libraries offer, and understand what they do? Ned Potter helps develop a marketing campaign for your library. Create a marketing template during the workshop and take it to your organisation to develop.
  • Running in parallel to Internet Librarian International is Taxonomy Boot Camp London, which is aimed at exploring and debating the growing use of taxonomies to drive data, content, information processes and more. See more in our interview with conference chair Helen Lippell on page 38.

The headliners

The two keynote speeches at Internet Librarian International will be as follows:

Making a noise about a quiet revolution – Kate Torney (above); CEO of the State Library Victoria, Australia. Former ABC News Director and now CEO of Australia’s State Library of Victoria, Torney (above) celebrates the quiet revolution within libraries and the sector’s embrace of disruption – but suggests the time for modesty is over; and

Expertise in an era of easy answers – David White, head of technology enhanced learning, University of the Arts London, UK. In a time when we can Google our way to almost any answer, David White explores the role libraries can play in countering the ‘think-less find-more’ mentality encouraged by the Web and the corresponding mistrust of ‘experts’.

 www.internet-librarian.com/2017