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Library Conference Wiki

Just to confirm a possible need: I’ve spent all day today trying to gather information on library conferences that might be of interest to me over the next year. This is surprisingly hard to do, especially when you don’t know what you’re looking for…google is amazing for search but terrible for browse, which is what I want to do. Entering something like “library conferences” is obviously useless, and I haven’t had any luck finding a good listing of stuff that librarians might be interested in attending. The ALA has a page, but that only lists ALA conferences (naturally). There’s a decent list over at Douglas Hasty’s page from Florida International University, but it only lists the biggies…no love for some of the small national conferences, and certainly nothing on local ones.

So, having found an information need, I seek to fill it. If I were to set up a wiki installation for this purpose, draft some basic organizational rules….would you use it? Would anyone out there help me seed the thing with information and links to the conferences that might otherwise go unnoticed?

Thoughts? I could have a wiki running within the week, I think. Would this help anyone plan the upcoming year’s travels?

By griffey

Jason Griffey is the Director of Strategic Initiatives at NISO, where he works to identify new areas of the information ecosystem where standards expertise is useful and needed. Prior to joining NISO in 2019, Jason ran his own technology consulting company for libraries, has been both an Affiliate at metaLAB and a Fellow and Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and was an academic librarian in roles ranging from reference and instruction to Head of IT at the University of TN at Chattanooga.

Jason has written extensively on technology and libraries, including multiple books and a series of full-periodical issues on technology topics, most recently AI & Machine Learning in Libraries and Library Spaces and Smart Buildings: Technology, Metrics, and Iterative Design from 2018. His newest book, co-authored with Jeffery Pomerantz, will be published by MIT Press in 2024.

He has spoken internationally on topics such as artificial intelligence & machine learning, the future of technology and libraries, decentralization and the Blockchain, privacy, copyright, and intellectual property. A full list of his publications and presentations can be found on his CV.
He is one of eight winners of the Knight Foundation News Challenge for Libraries for the Measure the Future project (http://measurethefuture.net), an open hardware project designed to provide actionable use metrics for library spaces. He is also the creator and director of The LibraryBox Project (http://librarybox.us), an open source portable digital file distribution system.

Jason can be stalked obsessively online, and spends his free time with his daughter Eliza, reading, obsessing over gadgets, and preparing for the inevitable zombie uprising.

5 replies on “Library Conference Wiki”

I would note that one of the links on ALA’s page is to a lengthy list of ALA, divisional, state and regional library association, and affiliated association conferences. Still certainly not a complete international list, but a whole lot more than “ALA conferences” in the sense of Annual and Midwinter.

The most comprehensive calendar of upcoming library and information science conferences I have found is at: http://icisc.neasist.org/quickcalendar.html

It covers international and national events, but seems pretty thorough… P.S. I love the idea of a library conference planner, but I do not know if I could make a commitment at this time to ‘seed’ it. Hope someone else takes up the challenge though!

The need for something like this came up at the ALA’s Web Planning Retreat, at which point I started a Google Calendar for library conferences. That’s about as far as I got with it, though. I like the wiki idea, but I’m a visual person and would much prefer a calendar view. That’s why the ALA list doesn’t work well for me, either.

I’d be happy to try to help with something like that, especially if I can get a data dump of what ALA already has. I could help publicize it, too, as its success would then depend on conference planners continually updating it, rather than any one entity.

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