Innovative Ideas Forum 2008.
Henderson, Sandra
On 10 April the National Library hosted its third Innovative Ideas
Forum. This year the forum coincided with the meeting in the Library of
the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC). This
presented the opportunity to invite some IIPC members to make
presentations to the forum.
Professor Gerard Goggin, from the University of New South Wales,
spoke about the Internet, the mobile phone and the phenomenon of mobile
technology. Kris Carpenter, from the Internet Archive, gave a very
interesting presentation on the work of the archive and the future of
digital services.
Richard Wallis, from TALIS in the UK, entertained greatly with his
lively presentation style. He said there is still some way to go in
fully utilising Web technologies in libraries, and a number of the
following presenters referred to his discussion of the semantic Web.
Several National Library speakers gave short presentations on some
rapid prototyping projects underway at the Library. Comments from
delegates after the event indicated that they particularly enjoyed the
presentation by Mark Triggs and Steve McPhillips, who gave a
non-librarian perspective on a catalogue redevelopment they've been
working on using VuFind. One of the delegates commented by email
afterwards that 'we need more honest reflection like this from
OUTSIDE the profession and median age group--such cool insight and a
model for us to think about'. Mark and Steve's prototype
recently became the default catalogue format at the Library.
Stewart Wallace from the Dictionary of Sydney project outlined some
of the ways information is being collected for this undertaking.
The final two speakers, like Kris Carpenter, were from the IIPC.
Julien Masanes spoke about a European project, the Living Web Archives,
which is working on ensuring the viability of web archiving into the
future. Gordon Mohr of the Internet Archive addressed the challenges
being faced by organisations such as his.
If you did not get a chance to attend or would like to revisit the
various presentations, the program for the event, with links to
PowerPoint and audio files from the day, is available online at
www.nla.gov.au/initiatives/meetings/InnovativeIdeas2008program.html.
Sandra Henderson
Executive Support
