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Libraries As Interfaces, Extending The Possibilities | LIANZA 2012 Keynote

My keynote presentation at this years professional organisation for the New Zealand library and information management profession (LIANZA).

My abstract: The opportunities to connect to audiences and markets are vastly changing due to the social layer the web and new technologies now offer. How can libraries leverage this rich source of interaction to aid their focus, deepen existing relationships plus help generate new ideas and solutions?

Thank you to the amazing (nearly 500 strong) crowd, the organisers, the tech staff etc

Here’s the humbling testimonial:

DK was an outstanding presenter — fast-paced, dynamic, fun and the audience just loved him! They loved his content too — challenging and ‘mind-melting’ but also with plenty of takeaway messages. His keynote was perfect as it delivered oodles of inspiration, and his workshop demonstrated how fast and easy it is to create exciting content in the social media world. He was very professional too, cool and calm during a few technical hitches, and great to deal with.

Linda Palmer
LIANZA 2012 conference convenor

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10 comments

  1. Hi DK,
    One of the best presentations at Conference. A lot to think about. I like the idea of my library being an intersection. As a Prison Librarian, at first the idea conjures up visions of all roads from my intersection ending abruptly at the “wire”. Then I had another vision of the roads leaping the wire and allowing our borrowers access to the world “outside”. Lots of possibilities for us to explore.
    Thanks for inspiring me.

    1. Thank you Judith and loved the image you created from applying the metaphor to your situation – keep in touch with how you get on with it all.

  2. You were a dynamic and engaging presenter who kept giving us light bulb moments throughout your presentation. The libraries as intersections was one for me. I too could see libraries changing in the future even the physical spaces are become intersections to other opportunities such a space creation places. Well done on challenging us to look to the future with excitement. All of my team of 5 at conference were talking about you and your workshop afterwards and on the way home the sign of a great presentation.

    1. Thanks for such a fabulous comment Lynne – so happy I had such a positive impact on you and your team – looking forward to you keeping in touch and sharing all the amazing things you’re doing there in South Taranaki (with / through social media) :-)

  3. First off: thank you for this talk. It was a bit long winded and it was hard to concentrate but it was great and gave me lots of ideas. You probably already know but Iceland didn’t really crowdsource their constitution. Coming from an Icelander himself:

    “We Icelanders voted in a NON-BINDING referendum, where the first question was “yes / no, I want / do not want the proposals from the public constitutional congress to be used as the basis for a parliamentary referendum for a new constitution”. It is then explicitly stated on the voting card that the proposals may change in the process of being worked into a parliamentary referendum for a new constitution – which then again must be approved not once but twice by two separately elected parliaments (i.e. voted through in parliament, parliament dissolved, voted in again, and the referendum approved again there).
    Headline is FALSE and misleading.” [0]

    It would be nice to have libraries redo their database to accept semantic (linked data) search for people that love to explore related books. A new data base will engage people and encourage them to explore the archives if done visual enough. With more exposure and time spent in the intersection, the value grows.

    Updating the library goes on par into updating 311, 411, civic society in general and other directory-like based data sets. I was having a bit of trouble finding a library in a different municipal from where I live a few days ago. All I wanted to do is access a computer and fax something to the IRS. I was surprised to find out that the library has closed down and replaced with a private internet hub. 311 is for government based locations, they referred City Council number to find out where the library is, and then finally to 411 where they gave me the library’s number (which rang but the library didn’t exist so I found it quite odd). This municipal lost it’s sight on what a library really was because there was no engagement or communication between each other. Nobody taught them the value. On top of all of this as soon as they inferred what I was searching for they instantly hung up and a robot said the number instead of transferring me. How human is that right?

    Advocating restructuring the government’s community renovation efforts starting off with a physical library design is a big goal that should come after changing the libraries’ software. Personally, I’m seeing a community based effot to install Ubuntu with pre loaded apps like Coursera, YouTube’s Education Channel, Wikipedia, i.e. anything that has to do with education alongside introducing the libraries statistics as an expandable homescreen widget- linking with the libraries’ social sites (pinterest with inforgraphics, twitter with conversations, facebook with surveys, etc) would be awesome.

    The library as a public apprenticeship / co-creation / hacker-make-space-hub was the best idea you’ve illustrated.

    Why did everything stop and people started singing? That was random.

    My other question would be a reply to what you said about the cognitive surplus world we have to face, how can we encourage people to tackle information overload?

    My answer for this is to encourage people to have more than a voice– to do more than just blogging but to manage their own database of knowledge / repository. Their Evernote notebooks, delicious bookmarks, dropbox/local files, favorited slideshares, favorite videos, favorited handbooks / tutorials / educational sites, their source of information (RSS feeds [ Google Reader]), their recommended apps, books, movies, music, you know stuff like that.

    I find this more interesting than finding about how someone’s day went. I can ask in person if I’m really interested talking about their life but on encouraging people to share their own personal library / knowledge base– how would you go about doing that as a community movement? Specifically, attached to a civic– lets apply for Code for America type deal. On this I’m going to launch a Crowdtilt, talked to the someone to waive the 2.5% fee similar to http://neighbor.ly/projects/24-help-kc-code-for-america/embed. It’ll start on Tuesday and was wondering if I can get any feedback before it’s launched on top of my questions being answered– if you don’t mind, and if you have time!

    [0] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4683804

    1. Jayvan – thanks for taking the time to watch / comment. Glad some ideas resonated and appreciate clarifying the Iceland constitution mistake. Will ensure future references uses that link as still a positive use of the medium.

      re: the singing – it was a ‘waiata’, see Māori_music.

      re: information overload – agreed. Having folks manage their own media menu is the only way to cut through the noise to find the signal. Yes, creation is part of that story and the other is curation. Both enable a richer media experience and serves a bigger idea of adding and extracting value from this world.

      Doing it as a community project would still need those with the requisite skills to show others what they are missing – I suppose that’s what the Crowdtilt campaign could support, the development of these resources (be it a platform or online pdfs / videos etc). Either way, good luck with it and keep me in the loop with its development!

    1. Many congrats – all the best for it sir.

      re: what else would be considered creating new media – the video sums up some great ideas and the only thing I would add is to create a partnership with the popular social networks there to integrate some of those ideas fully into the platforms citizens use everyday!

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