September 15, 16 @ 10am ET.
Dear Colleagues: Join us! This event might be of interest to you.
“Libraries Raise to the Challenge: Meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals in the Times of a Global Pandemic.”
Join us US-Russia Library Dialogue September15 and16 at 5pm Moscow / 10am New York time.
Follow event on https://www.facebook.com/LIBFL/
#2030Agenda #SDGActionWeek #librariansunited
Libraries and Sustainability: the 17 development goals of the UN agenda 2030 in the focus of libraries worldwide.
The German Library Association dbv will present activities from Australia, France, United States and Germany.
Speakers are:
Moderator: Hella Klauser, Deutscher Bibliotheksverband e.V., Germany
Seminar language is English.
Date and time: Thursday, September 24, 15.00 – 16.00 CEST
Recording will be available after.
Despite the pandemic, there are librarians still conducting global work and research. Jana de Brauwere is one such librarian who still continues to actively connect to global library work! I had a chance to speak with her about recent project. In this interview, you’ll learn about Jana’s work and interests!
Ray: Thanks for speaking with me! Tell us about your work with global librarianship!
Jana: I have always been curious about how other libraries compare to the one I currently work for. Librarianship is all about information sharing so it only makes sense for us to share information about our work, projects, services, innovations etc…with others. We are all interested in providing the best possible service to the communities we serve and we are always on the lookout for that new innovative idea that can make our services even better. The library field is so diverse, we can learn a lot from each other. I have been interested in working with libraries abroad for a long time. Last year, I presented at QQML Conference in Florence, Italy and it was well received. In fact, one of the participants found it interesting and as a result of that I was invited by Masaryk’s University in Brno, Czech Republic to facilitate a day-long workshop on safety and security in libraries this year in February, right before the COVID-19 pandemic. The Faculty of Philosophy at Masaryk’s University hosted a three-day long Social Inclusion in Libraries Conference. This was my first time presenting on a library topic in Czech. What a great experience this was. The audience included library leaders from across the country, and one library colleague from Slovakia. The conference was free for all library staff and featured innovative projects, interesting speakers and more. I was especially impressed with the library students who were hosting this conference, fresh perspective and dedication is what really stood out to me.
Ray: You are a Fulbright Scholar, congratulations! What is your project focused on?
Jana: Thank you! Yes, I was granted a status of a Fulbright Specialist this year. However, the program is currently on hold due to COVID-19. As soon as it is re-instated, I will be working with a medical library in Prague on a project and a series of lectures about libraries and librarians during the times of pandemic. What we want to look at is how libraries in US and other countries responded and how library profession contributed to the community during the time of pandemic and what we can learn from that. This assignment will be sponsored by the library of Psychiatrická nemocnice Bohnice. The library supports medical research and provides services to the patients. The institution has a reputation for sponsoring and organizing many cultural programs and art-oriented festivals for public. The library, among other things, is known for its bibliotherapy program. I am really looking forward to this partnership.
Ray: What’s your advice for library workers interested in getting involved in international library work? What do you recommend?
Jana: I met so many great library colleagues at conferences. Get involved with your professional organizations, join ALA IRRT (we are currently looking for people to serve in several IRRT leadership roles), go to ALA, IFLA conferences, look to see what other libraries in the world are doing. Look at other graduate Library Programs around the world, what are they working on? Talk to your colleagues abroad, find out where the need is or a potential for cooperation and research the opportunities. Volunteer for United Nations, apply with Peace Corps, talk to libraries where you would like to intern and network at the upcoming IFLA WLIC in Rotterdam. And…did I mention, join ALA IRRT and get to know your international colleagues?
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Jana de Brauwere: Drawing upon sixteen years of experience in urban public libraries serving in a variety of roles and currently responding to the COVID-19 pandemic by stepping into a team lead position for San Francisco Department of Public Health to help advance the contact tracing efforts, Jana has been dedicated to serving language diverse communities of San Francisco Bay Area. Pre- COVID-19 Jana was a Program Manager in Business, Science and Technology department in the San Francisco Public Library.
At this very moment, library workers are working very hard to ensure safety for their workers and users. One project focuses testing materials. The REALM project also known as “Reopening Archives, Libraries, and Museums” has recently published the results of the fourth round of Battelle’s laboratory testing for COVID-19 on five materials common to archives, libraries, and museums.
Here are the results:
“Four of the five items—hardcover book cover, softcover book cover, plastic protective cover, and DVD case—were part of Test 1, but in this round, the materials were stacked to simulate storage in a book drop, bin, or on shelves.
The fifth item, expanded polyethylene foam—commonly used in museum exhibits, storage, and shipping—was tested unstacked.
View the results at https://oc.lc/test4-results.
“Results show that after six days of quarantine the SARS-CoV-2 virus was still detected on all five materials tested. When compared to Test 1, which resulted in nondetectable virus after three days on an unstacked hardcover book, softcover book, plastic protective cover, and DVD case, the results of Test 4 highlight the effect of stacking and its ability to prolong the survivability of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.”
You may want to see the updates about the REALM project to plan accordingly.
Photo: Jane Dysart
I was lucky to speak with Jane Dysart, a member of IFLA’s Knowledge Management Standing Committee and Continuing Professional Development Committee and Workplace Learning Standing Committee! We talked about her work in supporting online professional development learning, LIS trends and what’s in store for her upcoming virtual conference!
Ray: Thank you for taking the time to speak with me! With the shift to digital learning, it is unfortunate that all in-person meetings and conferences have been cancelled or converted to online formats. What are your thoughts on this approach and why did you decide to combine Computers in Libraries & Internet Librarian virtually together?
Jane: Yes, very sad to miss all our fun learning and networking face-to-face events. However, Information Today is hoping to make our first virtual library event, Computers in Libraries & Internet Librarian Connect, an exciting online learning and interactive experience. Computers in Libraries was scheduled for late March in Washington DC and we had to cancel it a few weeks before. Internet Librarian was scheduled for mid-Oct and early in July it became apparent that we couldn’t hold an in-person meeting even though we’d already planned the conference and had shared the program online. We wanted to do a virtual event to honor those who had registered for CIL and agreed to roll their registration over to 2021 and we wanted to reach our fans of Internet Librarian too. We also wanted to experiment and learn the ins and outs of virtual events. So voila! We put two strong, already planned, programs together, checked with speakers, and created a very ambitious 5 day event online!
Ray: What are some exciting sessions that you’d like to highlight from Computers in Libraries & Internet Librarian Connect this year?
Jane: We’re very excited about the format of our new event – each day of the week from Monday September 21 through Friday September 5. We’re starting early in the morning ET and including “Talking with Libraries: Stories from Around the Globe” — interviews by popular European library star, Erik Boekesteijn. The first interview features IFLA President Christine Mackenzie! We have two keynote every day, one early and one late: Lee Rainie, Sarah Boisvert, Clifford Lynch, Nicol Turner Lee, Daniel Russell, Eepmon (Erick Chan), David Feriero, Leslie Weir, John Bracken, Misty Jones, Bryan Alexander, Michael Edson, Dana Mitroff & more! We hope to attract library folks from all over the world and have some content during waking hours in their time zones! We have about 180 speakers — knowledgeable library practitioners, thought leaders, and experts from around the world! Prepare yourself if you look at the list of speakers, on our online platform, they are listed alphabetically BY FIRST NAME!! LOL, obviously not our choice!
Ray: That is funny indeed! What are tips that you’d like to share with the international library community interested in organizing online conferences?
Jane: There is definitely a learning curve with creating virtual events: from choosing a platform (there are many out there; we went with Pheedloop because it could support 5 tracks of content at the same time, much like our F2F events); learning the platform and dealing with its imperfections (or at least handling things differently that we are used to!); ensuring we all know how to deal with the technology (we’re doing training with both our moderators and speakers); marketing a new event (at least library folk are familiar with our F2F brands and we hope will support our digital one!). Our goal was to make this event as interactive as possible so our regular session programs are organized with 5 tracks of sessions over 5 days focusing on Content Discovery & Management; Libraries & Communities; Technology; Management, Marketing & Change; Internet@Schools, Makerspaces & More! You can see more about the daily topics of each track on the website, for example, Track A over 5 days, https://pheedloop.com/cilil2020/site/tracks-a/. Most of our sessions will feature a speaker for 20 minutes followed by 20 minutes Q&A/discussion and then 20 minutes of speaker availability in the networking area as we get ready for the next speaker. I am sure we will all be exhausted by the end of the week, but are really looking forward to the experience and seeing lots of library folks from around the world! We will have a virtual exhibit hall (still working on that), many meet ups (still in process), and lots of networking opportunities. So keep checking out website for new updates!
Ray: How exciting! Finally, what are some trends you see that the international library community should be exploring more?
Jane: Interesting question. I really believe we need to reset, not look for a new normal or try to fit the old ways into the new environment, but really rethink what we want to accomplish in our communities. We definitely need to build up our digital collections in libraries with many different learning and discovery avenues, such as couch safaris to different places, zoos, museums, art galleries, aquariums, etc; virtual bird watching expeditions using webcams all over the world; as well as open access to our research and scientific resources and lots more. I think we need to build more relationships with our communities (academic campuses, municipalities, enterprises, schools), bridging many of these communities in our geographic locations. We also need to look for strong partners as IFLA always says – stronger together. We need support from many new and diverse partners. I’m looking forward to our discussion in this session:
Health Crisis: Stress Test?
What did we learn in the past 6-plus months? Where did our libraries and communities fall short? How can we improve our services and readiness now and into the future? Vint Cerf recently said the virus was a really effective stress test of technology and technology companies, but what about libraries? How did we do with this stress test of our services. Where did we pass, where do we have more work to do and what does that look like? Hear about recent community experiences and share yours!
Thanks again for letting me share my passions – libraries, learning, information discovery and management, communities, building relationships and sharing our knowledge and experiences. Hope to see lots of IFLA members online and will look forward to your feedback following the event!
Here’s another link, Jane’s blog calling our ambitious program a librarypalooza, https://dysartjones.com/2020/08/sept-21-25-librarypalooza-cil-il-connect/
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