kay poustie report ifla wlic 2018 - state library of ... kp... · kay poustie report |ifla wlic...

Caris Chamberlain | Senior Librarian

CITY OF NEDLANDS

KAY POUSTIE REPORT IFLA WLIC 2018

Kay Poustie Report |IFLA WLIC 2018

Caris Chamberlain | Senior Librarian Page 1 of 23

Contents Kay Poustie Scholarship .......................................................................................................................... 2

Conference .............................................................................................................................................. 2

Day 0 ................................................................................................................................................... 2

Public Library Section Business Meeting ........................................................................................ 2

Day 1 ................................................................................................................................................... 3

Newcommers Sessions ................................................................................................................... 4

Winning strategies for collecting, cataloguing, providing, playing, and preserving video games in

libraries ........................................................................................................................................... 4

Day 2 ................................................................................................................................................... 7

Motors of Change: Changing Ourselves to Change Our World - IFLA President's Session by Glòria

Pérez-Salmerón ............................................................................................................................... 8

Celebrating IT innovations in libraries - Information Technology (SI) chaired by May Chang and

Leda Bultini ..................................................................................................................................... 8

Social networks. Looking for the next big thing: libraries and social networks .............................. 9

Day 3 ................................................................................................................................................. 11

Librarian Fashion: What does the way we dress say about us? ................................................... 11

Tour of the National Library of Malaysia ...................................................................................... 12

Day 4 ................................................................................................................................................. 14

Public Library of the Year Awards - Public Libraries, Metropolitan Libraries and Library Buildings

and Equipment .............................................................................................................................. 14

Literacy in the Workplace – Literacy & Reading ............................................................................... 15

General Assembly ......................................................................................................................... 16

Day 5 ................................................................................................................................................. 16

Lightning Talks ............................................................................................................................... 16

Day 6 ................................................................................................................................................. 18

Sunway University ......................................................................................................................... 18

Bukit Damansara Community Library ........................................................................................... 20

Hallway Conversations ...................................................................................................................... 22

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 22



Kay Poustie Scholarship The Kay Poustie Scholarship provides monetary support to public librarians in Western Australia to

undertake overseas study tour or attend an international conference to learn and bring back the

knowledge to their colleagues.

I put in an application for the 2018 Kay Poustie Scholarship to attend the IFLA World Library

Information Congress (IFLA WLIC) with the intention to see what new technology and programs

were being run in libraries. I was fortunate enough to be one of the four people award this

scholarship in 2018.

The $1000 scholarship was put towards the registration cost for IFLA WLIC. City of Nedlands also

contributed to my cost of attending the conference paying for my flights and accommodation.

To share my knowledge of the conference I presented at Fremantle Library in October 2018 with the

other recipients. I shared my experiences at the conference and talked about the different

technology programs that I learnt about at the conference. This report is to provide further

information to the WA Librarians about the conference and the technology and programs that are

being used in libraries.

Conference The IFLA World Library Information Congress 2018 was held from 23 August to 30 August at the

Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre.

While at IFLA WLIC I attended sixteen different sessions. Most session contained multiple

presentations relating to the overall topic of the session. The presentation were between eight to

twenty five minutes allowing for the multiple speakers and time for questions afterwards.

I found this format surprising as the conference I have attended previously have one presenter per

session unless they are lighting talks. This format at IFLA meant none of the presenters could expand

on their topics due to the limited time and in some cases you got more out of reading the paper than

attending the sessions.

Day 0 Registration for the conference opened the day before the official start of the congress. As well as

registration a number of Business meeting of the different IFLA sections were being held. I had a

chance to attend the Public Library section business meeting on this day.

Public Library Section Business Meeting As part of IFLA WLIC the different IFLA sections have business meetings. These meetings are open for

public viewing and the standing committee can call on the audience for suggestions and comments.



The meeting cover the general business for the group including final preparation for the Public

Library of the Year Awards and what sessions each of the committee would be attending and then

providing feedback to the group.

At the end of the session there was a presentation from Margaret Allen about the Better Beginning

program being run in Western Australia public libraries. Pirkko Lindberg (Finland) spoke on the

recent survey they conducted about the use of libraries by customers and staff.

Minutes of the meeting are available on the IFLA website.

Day 1 On the official first day of the conference I attended three sessions, Newcommers Sessions, Opening

Session and Winning strategies for collecting, cataloguing, providing, playing, and preserving video

games in libraries.



Newcommers Sessions The Newcommers session is designed as an introduction to IFLA WLIC. Gerald Leitner the IFLA

Secretary General ran the session highlight different sessions in the conference and the various

networking opportunities available. It was a good chance to learn about how the conference

operates and start making new connections with the other new comers.

Winning strategies for collecting, cataloguing, providing, playing, and preserving

video games in libraries This two hour session was jointly held by the Audio-visual and Multimedia section and the

Information Technology section and was chaired by Tim Blevins and Patrick Megel. Five papers were

presented at this session with the sixth presenter being unable to attend. This ended up being the

most important session to my interest in technology. How the various libraries where using VR, AR

and game creation to further their projects and programs were very relevant to my interest.

All the papers for this session are available on the IFLA Library website.

Blurred Lines — between virtual reality games, research, and education by David Greene and Michael

Groenendyk

David Greene and Michael Groenendyk from McGill University, Canada presented a case study on

the use of Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs) in the maker space of their library. They discussed the

different VR and AR technology they are providing to students and the challenges they have faced

with the project.

McGill University is allowing students to book time to utilise and investigate VR and AR technology

within their maker space. This program is designed to show case the new technology and explore

learning opportunities and software developments.

The management of the technology has been a major challenge for the project. The set up and pack

down of the technology is time consuming and ensuring cable management for safe use can be

tricky. Security is also a concern with parts of the device being stolen and ensuring no credit card

information or account information is available to the students when they use the hardware and

associated software.



The service is kicking off but definitely had a slow start. The best marketing strategy they used was

taking a handheld VR device out into the university and showcasing the technology to the passing

students. As more people have become aware of the software word of mouth advertising has

continued to bring students to explore this technology.

JERMANIA - An Interactive Journey to Germany by Christel Mahnke, Nathalie Nasution, Mira Fatimah,

Nico Sandfuchs and Hannes Hasempatt

Christel Mahnke, Nathalie Nasution, Mira Fatimah, Nico Sandfuchs and Hannes Hasenpatt from the

Goethe-Institute authored a paper on the development of the Jermania app. Christel Mahnke

presented at this session.

JERMANIA app was a collaboration between Goethe-Institut Jakarta’s library and game designers.

The app was designed for Indonesians who were interested in learning German and about German

culture.

The presentation focused on some of the challenges around the creation of the app and the integral

partnership between the game developers and the library.



Level Up for Learning: Integrating Video Game Concepts into Information Literacy and Student

Engagement Activities by Jared Cowing, Simon Lee and Raymond Pun

Jared Cowing (Woodbury University, USA) Simon Lee (University of California, USA) and Raymond

Pun (California State University, USA) presented on information literacy and engagement activities

used by their university libraries. They showed cased the different programs they were using and

how they were incorporating gamification and video games to engage the students.

California State University have designed a series of workshops around the escape room concept to

provide information literacy training. The students work in team to solve a series of research clues

and discover the truth about the fake news. This is an interactive way to expose students to the

different resources in the library and explain the importance of fact checking sources.

Woodbury University have developed a library exploration game. Prior to the library tour all first

year students must attend they are asked to play the exploration game. In the game they are given a

checklist of different things they need to find to complete the challenge. This helps students discover

the various areas of the library and prepares them for the tour.

University of California has started collecting and lending video games to help support the

curriculum of various courses. The example they gave was Assassin’s Creed II being placed in the

course reserve for an intermediate Italian language class.

Developing video games with cultural value at National Library of Lithuania by Eugenijus Stratilatovas

Eugenijus Stratilatovas from the National Library of Lithuania presented on the different programs

the library was running involving video games.

In January 2018 the National Library of Lithuania opened its doors for 24 hours to host a Game Jam.

A Game Jam is an event where professional and amateur game developers form teams to create a

first draft of a game over the course of a weekend. The event was successful with over 300

participants of all ages.

For the “To Be Banned: Baltic Books 1918–1940” exhibition National Library of Lithuania developed a

VR experience to allow people to experience and read these rare books and manuscripts. This was a

huge undertaking and during the project they came across many challenges.

Stratilatovas spoke on the difference between library members making games and libraries making

games for users. When patrons make games the focus is on the experience and the learning. If a



library is making a game for it patrons it must be at a high standard as it represents your institution

and bad design can negatively impact patron’s view of the library and the project.

Day 2 The second day of the conference I attended three sessions Motors of Change, Celebrating IT

innovations and Social networks.



Motors of Change: Changing Ourselves to Change Our World - IFLA President's

Session by Glòria Pérez-Salmerón Glòria Pérez-Salmerón President of IFLA started this session speaking about changing mindsets and

how we need to change ourselves to better the world. During the course of her Presidential address

she invited five past IFLA presidents to speak about their term as President of IFLA and how they

mobilised themselves and others to take action.

The talk was very inspiring and challenged the listens on what actions they themselves would take to

improve themselves and their libraries. Some of my key take a ways from this talk were the

following.

Try and find a solution don't just give up. You have to try because otherwise what’s the

point.

Focus on the process. If you get it wrong you can always try and try again.

Change starts with us.

We need to build up our resilience and keep trying. We need to fight the fatalistic point of

view.

We can make the change.

Have a dream and a vision for the future.

Try fail try fail try again

The full Presidential address was live streamed and can be watched on the IFLA YouTube channel.

Celebrating IT innovations in libraries - Information Technology (SI) chaired by

May Chang and Leda Bultini The IT section of IFLA celebrated its 55th anniversary and they used there session to look at various

innovations that have impacted libraries over the last 55 years and look at emerging technology.

While I was hopeful about this session it ended up being a fairly dry look at history. The session was

chaired by May Chang and Leda Bultini.

ILMS & digital libraries, Open Source, OER, Open Access, the Open Movement by Edmund Balnaves

Edmund Balnaves (Prosentient Systems, Australia) presented on the Open Source, Open Access and

the Open Movement and how these have impacted libraries. The presentation started by defining

what the difference between Open Source, Open Access and the Open Movement and then moved

into a historical talk about when and how libraries started adopting these. The talk was very dry and

talked about how these movement changed libraries in the past but did not look to the future.

MARC and beyond: our three Linked Data choices by Richard Wallis

Richard Wallis (Data Liberate, United Kingdom) spoke on the evolution of MARC and our options to

change it in the future to work with the Link Data movement. This presentation started by focusing

on the history of MARC and the creation of link data in bibliographic, authority and other library

records. Wallis then outlined the changes in the last ten years and the different link data standards

that were emerging and the pros and cons of libraries adopting each model. Another fairly dry talk



that would mainly be of interest to Cataloguers and vendors developing Library Management

Systems.

IT integration into LIS education: an academic librarian´s perspective by Lynn Kleinveldt

Lynn Kleinveldt (Cape Peninsula University of Technology) spoke on the importance of integrating IT

focused courses into Librarian education. She presented a case study of Master in Information

Technology (MIT) initiative in Africa funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and how they

are incorporating IT skills in the degree. The Masters exposed librarians to various aspects of IT

including the operability of library systems and implementation of Web 2.0, as well as exploring

international best practices. An interesting presentation that I felt did not have the time to explore

the case study and the impact of this change in the education content.

Achieving ongoing technical innovations in libraries by Frank Seeliger

Frank Seeliger spoke on the historical technical innovations at Technical University of Applied

Sciences, Wildau. This included implementation of Library Information System, the adoption of

public access computers and RFIDing the collection. The interesting part of the presentation was

when the spoke of current technology adoption including a small humanoid robot to help answer

simple queries for students including item search help and circulation duties. They plan to deploy

the robot in an unmanned library to offer student support in the absence of library staff. The use of

robots within library was very interesting and it is still in the early stages and would be cost

prohibitive for most Western Australian libraries.

Embedded from the start: IT in the world's newest national library building by Sohair Wastawy and

Stuart Hamilton.

Sohair Wastawy from the National library of Qatar discussed the new National library they are

building and what technology they are incorporating into the design. The new building looks

interesting and it looks like it will be a wonderful building once it is done. The IT integration includes

tablets imbedded in the shelves and RFIDing the collection.

Emerging and innovative technologies: IE University Library reinventing higher education by Amada

Marcos

Amada Marcos (IE University and IE Business School) showcased some of the new technology they

are using at their university. Most of the technology showcased in this presentation is not in use in

the library but instead the university as a whole. The main library technology they talked about was

a humanoid robot that assists with circulation and basic reference enquires.

Social networks. Looking for the next big thing: libraries and social networks The IFLA programing committee scheduled two similar sessions at the same time. I attended the

Social networks session deciding to read the papers of the Digital Marketing session that was

happening in the next room.



The Social networks sessions didn’t have any ground breaking ideas but did have a few good take a

ways. The first being that communications is everyone’s job and that you should utilise all staff in the

creation of content for social media platform. By involving everyone in you can use the different

strength of the team and share the work load. This does have risks as it allows more people to access

your social media account but as long as you are vigilant and have clear guidelines this can be

reduced. The other key take away is that video content can be very effective and not that expensive

to make.

Looking for the next big thing by Guy Berthiaume

Guy Berthiaume from the Library and Archives Canada spoke on the use of social media in

promoting their collection. The Library and Archives Canada have a large collection of photographs

of indigenous people that were never properly catalogue or attributed. Most photos in the collection

had vague descriptions, eg Three Eskimos and a dog. The Archive felt it was disrespectful to leave

these photos without proper description and identify the people portrayed in the images. After

consulting with the leader of the local indigenous communities they started digitising the photos and

posting online using social media, asking the public to help identify the people in the photos. The

project has been very successful and it has helped reconnect families and solve mysteries on what

happened to certain people. This was a very interesting use of social media in promoting and

improving a library collection.

Instagram as a media to get information: a case study at Grhatama Pustaka Special Region of

Yogyakarta by Raisa Fadelina

Raisa Fadelina spoke on the use of social media to promote library services in Grhatama Pustaka

Special Region of Yogyakarta. The case study presented focused on the use of Instagram. The library

used Instagram to engage with the community providing information about library policies, library

facilitate, condition in the reading room and upcoming events. The presentation was fairly basic and

none of the information provide was ground breaking and many Western Australian libraries are

already using social media for the same effect.

Blogging & Social Media for Library Marketing & Communications by Mimi Calter

Mimi Calter spoke of how blogs are used by Stanford Libraries to share information with the

community. The libraries use social media to circulate the blog posts to gain a wider audience for the

content but all the content is created on the blogs. The main interesting part of the talk was that all

librarians are encourage to create content and it is not restricted to one or two people within the

organisation.

Using video to socialise the science of family literacy and promote libraries by Rachael Browning, Kate

Hannah, Louise Denoon, Kylie Webb and Vicki McDonald

The case study presented was the First 5 Forever Project by State Library of Queensland. Four

different videos were produced to help engage families and educate them on the importance of

literacy and how libraries can help. The four short videos were shown during the presentation and

were well put together and had strong simple messages. The videos can be found on the State

Library Queensland YouTube channel.



Day 3 I attended the Librarian Fashion session in the morning. In the afternoon I made my way to the

National Library of Malaysia for a tour of their facilities.

Librarian Fashion: What does the way we dress say about us? This session was chaired by Montserrat Espuga Condal (Spain), Andrew Finegan (Australia), Antoine

Torrens (France) and Vesna Vuksan (Serbia) and focused on the rising interest in library fashion and

it impact on services provided in libraries.

Dressed to the 746s: Australian Librarian Style by Amy McKenzie, Anne Reddacliff and Bonnie Wildie

This was an eight minute video presentation created by Anne Reddacliff, Amy McKenzie and Bonnie

Wildie. The short film looks at how librarians in Australia choose to dress and why they make the

choices they do. The film was made up of short interviews from a variety of Australian librarians. The

film is available in full on Youtube.

Wear the past in the present for the future by Puspa Diana Jawi, Japri Bujang Masli and Muhammad

Annwar Adenan, Traditional Costumes as Librarians’ Uniforms for Work at Public Libraries of

Yogyakarta, Indonesia by Atin Istiarni and Ida Fajar Priyanto, and Women librarians in traditional and

modern attires in India: Nationwide scenario by Sarika Sawant

These three presentations all focus on a similar topic of the wearing of Librarians wearing traditional

dress for work. Each talk presented a different case study about the use of traditional garments as a



uniform. The use of traditional clothing was mainly used as a way to preserve the unique cultures of

the areas. The different case studies are available on the IFLA Library website.

Tour of the National Library of Malaysia

As part of IFLA WLIC participants were encouraged to visit the National Library for a tour of their

facilities. The National Library of Malaysia was established in 1966 and move to the current building

in 2000. The building is designed in the shape of a tengkolok (tradition Malay head gear). Two

prominent collection in the library are the Malaysiana Collection and the National Centre of Malay

Manuscripts.



The National Library was also the first Samsung SMART Library. A joint project with Samsung to

provide Malaysian with free access to the internet using tablets at the library. As part of the project

the National Library has created two reading rooms, one especially for children, filled with Samsung

tablets.



Day 4 On the fourth day of the conference I attended the Public Library of the Year Awards, Literacy in the

Workplace and the General Assembly. I was planning to attend the Great Ideas for Library Advocacy

but a lunch networking opportunity arose meaning I did not get to attend that session.

Public Library of the Year Awards - Public Libraries, Metropolitan Libraries and

Library Buildings and Equipment The Public Library of the Year Award is a joint venture between the Public Libraries Section,

Metropolitan Libraries Section, Library Buildings and Equipment Section and sponsored by

Systematic. This award is presented annually at IFLA WLIC and celebrated new public libraries. The

libraries are judge on their open, functional architecture, creative IT solutions and takes into account

digital developments and local culture. The library must be a newly built or a refurbished building

that was not previously used as a library.

The five finalists for the 2018 Award were Austin Central Library (USA), Villa-Lobos Park Library

(Brazil), Deichman Biblio Toyen (Norway), Tampines Regional Library (Sinagpore), KopGroep

Bibliotheken (School 7) (Netherlands). Each library presented in this session talking about their

project and the unique and special aspects of their library. The winner for this year was KopGroep

Bibliotheken (School 7), a repurposed school building that has been transformed into a magnificent

public library.



Of the libraries present the Deichman Biblio Toyen (Norway) was of the most interest to me. This is a

public library aimed only at the youth in the community. It was designed to give the children and

teenagers a place to go and do something and learn as was an initiative to help lower crime rates,

truancy and anti-social behaviour in the community. One key feature with their programing is that

don’t call anything a workshop instead they frame it as they are making something, eg they won't

say it is a carpentry workshop instead they say we are making treehouses.

Literacy in the Workplace – Literacy & Reading This session was chaired by Adriaan Langendonk and focused in the different types of information

literacy and how they can be developed in the workplace.

Technology Tea for Staff - Informal Sessions for staff to learn how to use iPads and other Technologies

by Atlanta Meyer

Atalanta Meyer a Western Australian public library librarian provided a case study of a program she

has been running at her library. The program focus on provide digital and technology literacy

sessions to staff. The sessions gave staff time to learn how to use iPads and other technology

including various social media. Staff were encourage to attend the sessions by providing cake. By

have a relaxed session where staff were encouraged to play and explore the technology on offer it

taught them necessary skill in a no stress environment. The sessions also served as a team building

exercise allowing staff to learn from each other. This simple program would be easy to replicate in

any Western Australian library and would be a good way to train staff who aren’t as confident with

technology.



What makes libraries the best places to promote digital literacy across Europe? By Ilona Kish, Cross-

Cultural Impact on Workplace Literacy by Lesley Farmer, and Community readiness for digital economy:

libraries and community engagement by Rashidah Hj. Bolhassan

These three presentations were also included in the Literacy in the Workplace. None of these

sessions left a last impacting and covered information either not applicable in the Western Australia

library context or were things we already do.

General Assembly During IFLA WLIC the General Assembly is held. This is the AGM for IFLA where members can vote on

issues and the organisation yearly position is discussed. A fairly generic AGM that main at struggled

to meet the quorum needed to run the meeting.

Day 5 The final day of the conference I attended the three sessions of lightning talks and then the closing

ceremony.

Lightning Talks This year, we have an exciting new format for sharing knowledge with Congress delegates. One

session room, for the full day, will be dedicated to 5-minute lightning talks – an opportunity for 30

selected speakers to quickly share innovative projects of international relevance with other

delegates. Whether it is a project with a marginalised group, tips to pass on about building the

membership of your association, an idea to solve a problem in a particular library, or a passion

someone wants to share, the more variety, the more interesting it becomes!

A new format that IFLA WLIC trialled this year was the Lightning talks. They had three sessions of

lightning talks (six hours’ worth) with each speaker being allotted five minutes to presenter with

extra time at the end for questions. This did not give much time for the presenters to explore their

topic and while many could have been interesting the time allowed was not sufficient to get their

point across. I attended all the lighting talks and two particular presenters stood out to me. The topic

of the lighting talks were the following.

Internet Governance - What is at stake for libraries? By Winston Roberts



The 5Cs for managing public libraries efficiently by B. Shadrach

Sleep is good for all of us: Student-led innovation, the introduction of energy pods and a

win-win for all at Maynooth University Library, Ireland by Cathal McCauley

User Delight - Advancing library user experience to the next Level by Yue Wu and Yuanjun

Zhang

Bringing the Local Community into the Academic Digital Humanities by Christopher A. Miller

Libraries: Use design thinking to ignite co-creation and creativity! By Sidsel Bech-Petersen

Future of the EU: opportunities for Europe's libraries by Ilona Kish

PD with a Passport: A glimpse into volunteering internationally by Cate Carlyle

Iraqi libraries after ISIS by Hussein Adil Hasan

IDP workathon mobile services: A possibility! by Adetoun Oyelude

#checkyourfacts - Raising Awareness of Bias in Information by Robin Kear

Lislearning.in - a Portal to transform Library Science education and Professionals in India by

P.M. Naushad Ali

Innovative Practices of JX Miller Memorial Libary in transforming the Students community by

S. Sangaranachiar

Staff development in a developing space by Mimi Calter

My INELI Toolkit - knowledge and skills from the INELI Program that I use in my workplace by

Atlanta Meyer

Agile Working - in Libraries! By Cornelia Vonho

Odense Libraries presents Bookeaters Magazine - Connecting Libraries, Bookbloggers,

Readers and Publishers by Kent Skov Andreasen

Children mobilizations in Bangladesh - Objective, interventions, method and challenges by

Razina Akhter

Sound the Alarm: What the Library Community Needs to Know About Predatory Publishing

by Sandy Avila and Buenaventura Basco

An international survey of born digital legal deposit policies and practices by Frederick

Zarndt

Correcting the Records: Improving Subject Access to the Indigenous Peoples of Oregon by

Richard Sapon-White

Research library multi galleries by Khasiah Zakaria

Sleep is good for all of us: Student-led innovation, the introduction of energy pods and a win-win for all

at Maynooth University Library, Ireland by Cathal McCauley

Maynooth University Library in Ireland has started a yearly student-led innovation program.

Students are invited to put forward proposal about how they would improve the library. These

proposal can cover everything form programing, opening hours and resources.

The proposal were submitted to a panel of library staff and students were invited to give a short

presentation on their proposal, similar to the TV shows Dragon Den and Shark Tank. After viewing all

the proposal the panel choose one program to implement and the student with the winning idea

was awarded $1000.



Odense Libraries presents Bookeaters Magazine - Connecting Libraries, Bookbloggers, Readers and

Publishers by Kent Skov Andreasen

Odense Libraries in Denmark reached out to local publishers, bookblooger, booktubers and

bookstagrammers to create a curated book review magazine for young adults. The libraries noticed

the growing trend and popularity of book reviewers publishing on social media. They decided to

reach out to this Danish speaking community to creating a not for profit magazine with interviews,

reviews and articles about trending new Young Adult books.

The Odense Libraries brought together the established book reviewing community with the

publishers and other Danish libraries allowing them to produce a popular well-read magazine that

no induvial party could have created.

Day 6 A range of library tours were offered after the final day of the conference. Each tour visited two

libraries. The tours going out into the country side took a full day while the metro tours covered a

half day. While I wanted to do two half day tours the organisers would not allow it in case the

morning tour was running late.

Each tour bus got a police escort on a motor bike whose job was to ensure the bus could get through

the traffic. With the police escort many red lights were ran and cars and trucks were forced to empty

a lane of traffic so the bus could get through at speed.

Sunway University The first library my tour visited was Sunway Campus Library. This particular library had transformed

itself from a traditional academic library to a learning commons. The refurbishment allowed for

more spaces where students could work by themselves or in a group.



Bukit Damansara Community Library The second library we visited was Bukit Damansara Public Library. The library first opened in

November 2013. The library was built and funded by a corporation called Island and Peninsular (I&P)

Group. This library is the first in Malaysia to be built by a company for the local community. The

library is fully managed and staffed by the National Library of Malaysia.



Hallway Conversations During IFLA WLIC there were a lot of opportunity to network with fellow librarians from around the

globe. Part of this networking was at formal events but most happened by chance while waiting in

line for coffee or sitting next to someone new in a session. During these short networking

opportunities I learnt of some interesting programs being run around the world, my favourite was

the Grandmother reading club.

During a short discussion I learnt of a Grandmother reading club, unfortunately I don’t recall which

small village was running the program. A group of grandmother created a reading club at a primary

school to teach themselves how to read. This self-run group came together to learn so they could

read with their grandchildren. They grow up at a time that when women in their community were

not taught to read and after hearing about the school library from their grandchildren they came to

look and ask if they could also use the resources. The club meet weekly and they provide each other

support and encouragement while learning to read.

Conclusion Overall I was disappointed in my choice of sessions while at IFLA as not many of them were

interesting or engaging. In usual conference I would move on from a session if I was not learning or

being engaged but with how the session were run at IFLA I did not do this. Each session at IFLA was

made up of short talks with different speakers. I choose not to leave the sessions as I always hoped

the next speaker would be more interesting and relevant but sadly this was often not the case. If I

attended IFLA again and they had the same format I would choose to move on from sessions in

hopes of getting a better learning and professional development opportunity.

During my time at IFLA WLIC I did learn about some new technology being used in libraries around

the world and the challenges they have faced incorporating them into their service. Western

Australian public libraries can learn from these case studies as we look to incorporate the new

technology into our services.

Libraries are starting to offer Virtual Reality (VR) set-ups for clients to use. By providing access to the

hardware it allows people to explore this new computing paradigm, which would otherwise be cost

and space prohibitive for many. Promoting this new service to library members has been a challenge

but in the case-studies provided usage has been increasing. Libraries have been providing access to a

selection of games and tools in VR that showcases the potential of this technology. VR set-ups can

only be used by one person at a time restricting the programs you can run with this technology. The

management of the technology has is also a major challenge. The set up and pack down of the

technology is time consuming: ensuring proper hygiene of the head set, ensuring no trip hazards are

in the area (including the setups own cables) and that the technology is working properly. Security is

also a concern with parts of the device being easy to steal and ensuring that no personal information

and credit card information is available to the public when they use the hardware and associated

software.

Augmented Reality (AR) is also being used in libraries across the globe. Two different types of AR

were discussed in the sessions and library visits. The most common use of AR so far has been the

purchase and creation of AR supported content. Books and other media can now incorporate AR

elements. These physical items are used with a smart phone or tablet and provide additional content

to enhance the experience of the reader. This additional content can be 3D renders of the



characters, movies, games or additional information. The other use of AR is similar to VR as it

requires specific hardware, the Microsoft HoloLens is an example of this. Some libraries are

providing access to this AR hardware to showcase its potential and provide access to the emerging

technology.

Artificial Intelligence and robots are being adopted by some libraries. These robots are used in a

variety of function including: mobile book returns and circulation. Robotic workshops are run at

some libraries but the more complex robots are being used to support staff rather than run

programs.

Some libraries have started creating games, apps and other programs for their clients. These

programs can be used for information literacy training, learning the layout of the library and

experience some of the library resources in a different way.

kay poustie report ifla wlic 2018 - state library of ... kp... · kay poustie report |ifla wlic...

Documents