The ALIAWest committee welcomed 2018 with the ‘Let’s Get Social’ icebreaker event, featuring guest speakers from academic libraries throughout Perth.
ALIA Board nominee Peter Green kicked things off by speaking about his plans should he be elected to the ALIA Board, including advocating for open access to library publications as well as advocating for libraries more broadly from a Western Australian perspective. Peter answered a few curly questions from the audience, including whether he had any plans to nationalise the WAIN mailing list he created (which he doesn’t, for anyone wondering!)
(Photo credit: Gabbie Dzieciol)
Hollie White and Leisa Gibbons, both from Curtin University and exceptionally well-travelled GLAMR professionals, shared about their experiences in academic libraries in Australia, the United States and Asia. Hollie shared the findings of her varied and many research projects on topics around information organisation, culture, and assessment, including the effect of descriptive metadata in increasing the discoverability of research repository entries. Leisa spoke about the use of social media in creating archives, as well as about the 'right to forget', a fascinating concept regarding a private citizen's right to have personal details removed from the internet (or at least bumped down in the search results) after a certain period of time.
Nicole Johnston rounded off the speaker panel with her research into the print versus digital reading preferences of students at Edith Cowan University, with suggestions that print is still preferred among students, including younger students who have grown up with (and on) technology.
Each speaker answered questions on their topics from an intrigued and engaged audience. You can read more about our speakers and their research projects at the following links:
Dr Hollie White
- https://staffportal.curtin.edu.au/staff/profile/view/Hollie.White
- https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=Wn3raLQAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate
Dr Leisa Gibbons
- https://staffportal.curtin.edu.au/staff/profile/view/Leisa.Gibbons
- http://leisagibbons.info/research-projects/
Dr Nicole Johnston
- www.ecu.edu.au/schools/science/staff/profiles/lecturers/dr-nicole-johnston
- www.vala.org.au/vala2018-proceedings/1245-vala2018-session-13-johnston
Following the speakers, audience members were broken up into small groups to share their responses to the icebreaker question cards placed on each table, which included questions about what you had found most interesting about the night and what two words your colleagues were likely to use to describe you. The volume from each of the tables suggested everyone was having a good time!
We hope everyone enjoyed the first ALIAWest event for 2018. Special thanks to the ALIAWest committee members who showed up early to prepare a spectacular spread of nibbles!