Communication
has been a significant interest of mine in my career in libraries over the past
35 years. I’ve worked in three Irish
university libraries, in a health sciences library in Saudi Arabia, as a lecturer in librarianship at the
University of Sierra Leone and have carried out short assignments in Namibia,
Tanzania and Malaysia. Despite different cultures and contexts both myself and
the people I have been fortunate to encounter in my career, have shared the
desire to communicate effectively. I was
pleased in 2014 to be invited by Dr Graham Walton to be the guest editor of the
themed issue of New Review of Academic Librarianship for 2016 and following
discussion it was agreed that the theme would be the academic librarian as
communicator. Following the call for abstracts there were 46 submissions from
librarians from 11 countries spread over four continents. Following a double
blind peer review process, 24 abstracts were accepted; 18 articles made the
final volume. 11 of these articles are
the subject of short papers and discussion session at the seminar Academic Librarians Communicating in the 21stCentury which will be hosted at Maynooth University Library on the 20th
of October. We have 11 short presentations (involving 17 speakers from Ireland,
UK, Sweden, Abu Dhabi and the US) and we’ve factored in discussion time. Below
is some brief information about the topics and speakers. The event is free but booking is
essential.
See programme and booking details
See programme and booking details
John Cox (NUI
Galway) will speak on the new and emerging roles digitisation and digital
scholarship bring; Jane Burns (RCSI & UCD) will explore roles in the context
of the digitisation of the Mary Martin Diary;
Melssia Minds VandeBurgt ( Florida Gulf Coast University) will talk about
her Library’s outreach activities to digitally preserve local cultural heritage.
Zelda Chatten and Sarah Roughley (University of Liverpool) will share the
library’s experience of developing a social media presence. Sassa Persson and
Maria Sveningsson (Linköping University Library) will speak about their survey
of how researchers at their university are using social media. Librarians play
an active role in curating, promoting and creating the research output of
Faculty but their role as researchers is sometimes overlooked. Terry O’Brien
and Kieran Cronin (Waterford Institute of Technology) will speak about the
the academic publishing output of Irish librarians. Ian Rowland (University of
Leicester) will share approaches to
strategic marketing at the University of Leicester Library. Pablo the Penguin,
who has his very own twitter handle, will be introduced by David Bennett and Paula Thompson (University of Portsmouth) and we’ll hear how Pablo links the Library and students. James Barnett & Stephen Bull (University of Bermingham) will talk about
a Pop-Up Library initiative at the University of Birmingham, while Justin
Parrot (New York University in Abu Dhabi) will present some of the challenges
of operating library services across continents. Neil Smyth (University of
Lincoln) and Tony Simmonds (University of Nottingham) will share the Strategic
Engagement Cycle as a new model for librarian communication.
The seminar will
finish with a wine reception and the launch of the MU/NRAL/T&F Academic Writing
Award, sponsored by MU and Taylor and Francis.
No comments:
Post a Comment