Innovative Ideas Forum

Innovative Ideas Forum

On 10 April the National Library hosted its third Innovative Ideas Forum. This year the Forum coincided with the meeting in the Library of the International Internet Preservation Consortium. This presented the opportunity to invite some IIPC members to make presentations to the Forum.

The program for the event, with links to powerpoint and audio files from the day, is online at http://www.nla.gov.au/initiatives/meetings/InnovativeIdeas2008program.html.

Professor Gerard Goggin from the University of New South Wales, spoke on the Internet and mobile phone, and the phenomenon of mobile technology. Kris Carpenter, from the Internet Archive, gave a very interesting presentation on the work of the Archive and the future of digital services.

Richard Wallis, from TALIS in the UK, entertained greatly with his lively presentation style. He said there is still some way to go in fully utilising web technologies in libraries, and a number of the following presenters referred back to his discussion of the semantic web.

Several National Library speakers gave short presentations on some rapid prototyping projects underway at the Library. Comments from delegates after the event indicated that they particularly enjoyed the presentation by Mark Triggs and Steve McPhillips, who gave a non-librarian perspective on a catalogue redevelopment they’ve been working on using VuFind. One of the delegates commented by email afterwards that “we need more honest reflection like this from OUTSIDE the profession and median age group - such cool insight and a model for us to think about”. If you want to try out the prototype Mark and Steve have been working on, go to the NLA catalogue and select the beta catalogue from the box at the top.

Stewart Wallace from the Dictionary of Sydney project outlined some of the ways information is being collected for this undertaking.

The final two speakers, like Kris Carpenter, were from the IIPC. Julien Masanès spoke about a European project, the Living Web Archives, which is working on ensuring the viability of web archiving into the future. Gordon Mohr of the Internet Archive addressed the challenges being faced by organisations such as the Internet Archive.

If you did not get a chance to attend, or you want to revisit the various presentations, please go to the web page above.

Sandra Henderson, National Library