Category: Presentations News

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“The Social Internet: A New Community Role for Libraries?” Lecture, Pratt Institute SILS, New York, NY

Slides available at: /rdlankes/Presentations/2006/PrattSocial.pdf

Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, Blogger these web services have begun to redefine how communities form and work on the web. What lessons can libraries learn from these services to improve their own websites? How can libraries extend their efforts to provide community gathering places to the web? This presentation will discuss how libraries can not only improve their own web services, but help shape the whole concept of communities on the web. This presentation will be based on an ALA’s Office of Information & Technology Policy and Syracuse University’s Information Institute of Syracuse project on the social Internet.

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“Reference in Academic Libraries: Virtual Reference” OCULA Spring Workshop, Toronto, ON, Canada

Slides and handouts for the workshop are now online at:

/rdlankes/Presentations/2006/Toronto.pdf

Here’s the abstract:

On day one join David Lankes as he looks at current issues and themes in digital or virtual reference. Libraries are taking reference to the web and this is creating challenges for librarians in terms of new skills, staffing requirements, and budget demands. This workshop will cover the basics of virtual reference, virtual reference tools, current trends and a little crystal ball gazing into the virtual reference future.

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“Reference Authoring” School of Information’s iForum, University of Texas, Austin, TX

Slides now available:

Digital reference is not just reference interviews online. The main difference is the production of a â??reference artifact.â?? In face-to-face reference, work must be done to retain the transaction (it must be recorded, or written down…action must occur), whereas in digital reference the opposite is true (the e-mail must be deleted, the database purged). This may seem like a small difference at first, but it is critical. With recorded transactions knowledge bases can be created, pathfinders authored, training can occur with real data, etc. This use of digital reference output is called reference authoring. This presentation will explore reference authoring, the use of induction and complexity research to manage knowledge created through reference authoring and the increasing intersection between reference and information retrieval.