Ranging from personal emails and comments on social networks to full blown blog overviews and published articles, the Charleston Conference is all over the web. (And that’s not to mention our own Conference’s SlideShare Group and the Conference Photo Page on Flickr where attendees are invited to upload their own pictures.)
Charleston Conference 2011: Big Ideas, Big Challenges from The Library Journal website “Digital Shift” provides an excellent overview of the Charleston Conference plenary sessions complete with relevant outside links. Author David Rapp covers sessions that featured heavy hitters ranging from Michael Keller, (university librarian at Stanford University Libraries) who “spoke about the importance of developing linked data and the Semantic Web” to Robert Darnton (director of the Harvard Library) who presented on the progress of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). Highlighting the outside expertise that the conference brings to the table was the “Long Arm of the Law” panel featuring three attorneys discussing copyright and related legal issues. The article also reports on MIT’s MacKenzie Smith who “spoke of the challenges surrounding the publication of electronic “data papers; Mark Dimunation from the Library of Congress who “urged that a higher priority be placed on increasing accessibility of “hidden collections; Brad Eden, dean of library services and professor of library science at Valparaiso University, IN, who noted that librarians do not challenge themselves in a presentation entitled, “The Status Quo Has Got To Go;” and Kimberly Douglas, university librarian at the California Institute of Technology and Melody Burton, chief librarian at the University of British Columbia who focused “mainly on the rising cost of serials.”
Another great overview comes from Donald T. Hawkins in his “Conference Circuit” column for Information Today. Don’s Charleston Conference Wrapup provides a bulleted list of the key sessions that he attended as well as offering brief observations on each. Cleverly, he also uses this list to serve as a gateway to his more in-depth reports on the major programs including Michael Keller’s Keynote Address: Semantic Web for Libraries and Publishers, MacKenzie Smith’s discussion of Data Papers in the Network Era, Robert Darnton on the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), the copyright panel “The Long Arm of the Law,” Clifford Lynch and Lee Dirks on New Directions in Open Research and Brad Eden’s profession challenging The Status Quo Has Got To Go! They are all must reading.
Publishingtechnology.Com features two items. The first is Charleston 2011- As it happened which offers a fascinating look at how the conference was being discussed in the social media as events occurred. The second is ROI and Discovery for librarians – A view from Charleston which is Janet Fisher’s informative and insightful blog. Janet picks up on two themes, discoverability and return on investment that she feels “dominated all of the discussions people were having in the sessions themselves and in private meetings.”
Jane Burke reflects on the Charleston Conference in The Past vs. The Future — The Problem with Cataloging pointing out that the “keynote speakers were advocating that librarians take on new roles with linked data and research data sets.” Jane admits that she is a proponent of linked data… and that “librarians are the right ones to do this work.” But she takes issue with the notion that “current staff resources can be successfully redeployed within the existing library technology environment.” She, of course, has her own suggestion.
Robert Darnton’ plenary session takes the form of the article “Jefferson’s Taper: A National Digital Library” in an upcoming New York Review of Books. The article is “a work-in-progress report on the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)” As you may remember if you attended the Conference, Bob not only reports on the project but he argues “that it is a feasible, affordable project as well as an opportunity to realize the Enlightenment ideals on which our country was founded.” (The full article is only available to subscribers of NYBR.)
In a UKSG Serials-eNews editorial simply titled Charleston, Helen Woodward of Cranfield University feels that the 31st Annual Charleston Conference was “an excellent meeting which attracted a record number of delegates.” While admitting that “it is almost impossible to write up a Charleston Conference” with its “literally hundreds of … sessions,” Helen offers her own personal highlights focusing in particular on the plenary sessions.
ebrary has posted a recording of their session at the Charleston Conference about the 2011 Global Student E-book Survey and how it compared to 2008 results. Are we meeting Student’s Research needs “was attended by hundreds of librarians and publishers at the Charleston Conference and via webinar” and “provided valuable insight into the informal survey’s preliminary findings.” Conclusions and areas for further discussion were also included.
And last but not least, PJ Grier, Outreach and Access Coordinator National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM), University of Maryland, Baltimore offered this assessment in an email on the Southern Chapter/MLA list.
“I was fortunate to attend the Charleston Conference 2011 – “Something’s gotta give” this year (http://www.katina.info/conference/). In addition to being overwhelmed by the number of concurrent sessions, an explicit theme emerged….that academic libraries are on the verge, on the edge, on a cliff….you name the descriptor…but change we must. Besides being a forum for acquisitions, books, serials and e-content it uniquely mixes librarians, publishers and vendors together.”
A summary about the Charleston Conference is at Digital Shift http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2011/11/publishing-2/charleston-conference-2011-big-ideas-big-challenges/. Additionally, you may want to keep abreast of The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). DPLA recently received $5M in combined funding from the Alfred P. Sloan and Arcadia Fund (UK) and has an ambitious agenda with a planned go-live date of Apr 2013. Elements<http://dp.la/about/elements-of-the-dpla/> of the DPLA include code, metadata, content, tools & services and hear NLM’s Sally Sinn<http://dp.la/2011/11/08/brief-interviews-from-the-dpla-plenary-sally-sinn/> give her recent perspectives on DPLA.
PJ Grier
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