EADI IMWG and NorDoc Meeting 22-24 September 2010 at Bergen Resource Center for International Development
The 2010 EADI IMWG meeting was hosted at Bergen Resource Center for International Development, Norway and was well attended with around 40 participants.
The workshop was aimed at information and knowledge managers, librarians, scholarly publishers, in particular those who work in the domains of global development, development research and development cooperation.
The main theme was “Mergers and acquisitions: integration of development institutions into bigger entities; what is the implication for research libraries, it, and Communication and information departments.”
Programme
The workshop ran over three days and was organised in a way to maximise scope for interaction and knowledge sharing. On the first day Ane Landøy and Ole Gunnar Evensen from the University Library of Bergen, Social Science and Humanities Faculty held a keynote speak on Capacity building in libraries by building south-south-north collaboration. This project was aimed at the education of librarians in universities in Uganda and Sudan.
This was followed by a presentation by Ingolf Kaspar, regional Sales Manger at EBSCO on Africa Wide Information. Africa Wide Information, produced by NISC South Africa, combines databases from around the world to form a multidisciplinary aggregation offering unique and extensive coverage of all facets of Africa and African studies.
In the afternoon there was a panel discussion on Mergers and acquisitions: integration of development institutions into bigger entities; what is the implication for research libraries, it, and Communication and information departments.
The panel consisted of:
- Kirsti Hagen Andersen, Bergen Resource Centre for International Development.
- Michel Wesseling, ISS, Haag
- Svend Erik Lindberg, DCISM, Copenhagen
- Jon Gregson, IDS, Brighton
- Laurel Dryden (moderator)
Subjects and statements as “Branding or blending” and “Bigger swallowing the smaller” were discussed.
Last speaker of the first day was Chris Addison on “Putting research online, so many options, but what works” He discussed some lessons learnt from IFPRI's online activities and how we can measure the success of websites, blogs, the press, print, events and social media using tools like Google Analytics.
The second day was opened by Cecilie Butenschøn Mariri, Regional Librarian, Southern and Eastern African Regional Centre for Women’s Law, University of Zimbabwe. She held a keynote on SEARCWL – “The other way around: From part of faculty to semi-independent institution and how to build a spider's net of libraries and lectures in women's law.” SEARCWL is a Regional Centre, now with its own library, housed within the Faculty of Law University of Zimbabwe.
The next session was Experience in the room: Social Media and the new apps facilitated by Chris Addison and Axel Mjeldheim from Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI).
A year on from the discussion on social reporting at IMWG09 this session was designed to collect the positive and negative perceptions and experiences and to look at some of the possibilities for the future. Several EADI participants presented their work with social media like twitter and blogs.
The remainder of the second day was reserved for peer assist sessions. The participants split up in two groups. One on “the future role of libraries and librarians”. The other group on “how to make your information systems and material visible and accessible”.
After two lively discussion sessions each group reported its conclusions, followed by a conference dinner.
The third and final day started with a hands-on session by Bernd Wunsch, from the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS). In his Internet of Things he referred to the networked interconnection of everyday objects and the relevance for development studies
The final key note speak was by Bente Saxrud, Office Manager, Norwegian School of Management, Oslo. She spoke on indicators for measuring electronic resources and services. In Oslo they use the tool LibQual+ for evaluation and benchmarking their academic library.
The 2010 workshop was closed with a EADI and NorDoc Business meeting. Next year’s general EADI meeting was discussed, as well as the location for the 2012 IMWG meeting. Hans De Backer from Universiteit Antwerpen volunteered to inform whether the 2012 meeting could be held at Antwerpen. KIT Amsterdam is a second option.
The workgroup also intends to repeat the Metropolib Delft workshop and combine it with 2011's uGame uLearn conference by TU Delft. Early 2010 this Metropolib workshop on gaming and learning was held at the modern Delft public Library (known as the Library Concept Center). About 25 people attended.
The workgroup wants to improve relation and communication with EADI secretariat.
And Michel Wesseling gave a short update on the IKM Emergent program.
You can find more information, blogs, pictures and tweets on the following pages:
