They Named the Building after Us: The Library as Conversation

With the online Conversants Conference/Conversation wrapping up, I wanted to make the materials for the keynote generally available. Thanks to all who helped out and participated.

“They Named the Building after Us: The Library as Conversation” Keynote Conversants Conference/Conversation.

Abstract: The mission of librarians is to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities. Through service, innovation, and leadership librarians facilitate, conversations in schools, communities, colleges, government, businesses, and beyond. It is this act of facilitation of knowledge in partnership with communities that makes a library – not collections, blogs, catalogs, or ivy on walls. This is the central premise of participatory librarianship. This keynote will explore the new role of librarians as a passionate and powerful force focused on the social good. It will present a unifying approach to librarianship that seeks to make sense of Library 2.0 and information commons alike.
Slides: https://davidlankes.org/rdlankes/Presentations/2009/ConversantsKeynote.pdf
Audio: https://davidlankes.org/rdlankes/pod/2009/ConversantsKeynote.mp3

Screencast:

They Named the Building After Us: The Library as Conversation from R. David Lankes on Vimeo.

The Death of the Document

“The Death of the Document” Program for Cooperative Cataloging, American Library Association Annual Conference, Chicago, IL.

Abstract: When a book becomes an ebook it looses more than simply its physical binding – it looses hard boundaries that separate the content of the book from its use. Online journals are not simply pictures of a traditional journal on a screen, but rather the foundations of intellectual communities. While today we hold on to terms such as book, journal, magazine and simply affix “e” to them, in truth, these terms of simply metaphors, an echo of an earlier analog reality. Online narratives, theses, and “how-to’s” become living documents bound closer to a multitude of contexts that defy traditional notions of information organization, already strained to the breaking point of scale. What is needed is a new approach to organizing knowledge, one based on context that occurs in the space between artifacts.
Slides: https://davidlankes.org/rdlankes/Presentations/2009/SUNYLA.pdf
Audio: https://davidlankes.org/rdlankes/pod/2009/PCC.mp3

Screencast: