Lita Forum 2015 Takeaways

Jacob Shelby

Overview

  • General info
  • Session highlights
  • Takeaways

Demographics

  • Between 250 and 300 attendees
  • Attendees of varying ages and professional backgrounds
  • Enthusiastic about technology
  • Very welcoming and open to networking

Conference Structure

  • Three keynotes, one each day of the conference
  • Set of four concurrent talks/dual talks per session
  • 45 minutes per talk, ~20 minutes per dual talk
  • All sessions were on the same floor and close to each other

Project Management

  • Title: Project Management 101
  • Link to presentation
  • Plan as much before the project begins as possible
  • Avoid "scope creep" by establishing clear scope and goals, and shared commitment by the project team
  • Documentation, documentation, documentation!

Knowledge Management

  • Title: Why knowledge management? Achieving organizational buy-in through a unified and holistic approach... and the right technology tools
  • Organizational buy-in is key
    • Define staff needs and use-cases
    • Logical organization of content
    • Feedback from staff
    • Training
  • Challenges
    • Overcoming resistance to change
    • Old habits

Continuing Education

  • Title: Starting and Sustaining a Coding Workshop for Librarians
  • Advantages
    • Productivity
    • Reduce dependency on IT
  • Solve real-world problems (the training needs to apply to their work)
  • Even though this was in the context of coding, this applies to training for software such as Excel spreadsheets and CyPoint

Linked Data

Linked Data-Driven Discovery: Applications and APIs from a User-Centered Perspective

Linked Data for Professional Educators Competency Index

Publishing Datasets from an Open Access Repository As Linked Data

Other Sessions

Life Inside and Outside the Echo Chamber

  • Bringing the conference experience home
  • Having an idea/seeing an opportunity and acting upon it
  • Conference-goers should bring the experience back, and that experience should be disseminated throughout the library 
    • This is how we exit the echo chamber and continue to grow

Takeaways

  • Focus on our user community, include them in "naming initiatives", and help them tell their story
  • Emphasize training and continuing education. Technology isn't going away!
  • Good knowledge management facilitates good communication, openness/visibility, and preservation of institutional knowledge

Thank You

Jacob Shelby

jtshelby@iastate.edu

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