Today, 4th of June is the 1st SAOUG Conference day.
The highlights of the day were:
Keynote speaker: Derek Law, University of Strathclyde talked about "Changing Users: Have they or Should we?". The Librarians need to build systems around users behaviour, especially power browsing. The "google generation" expect libraries to change and embrace the technological challenges. The options for libraries are:
- Building e-Research Collections and contributing to the Virtual Research environment;
- Managing Institutional Repositories
- Provide value added content
- Trainings, etc.
The "Teleporting from Boring to Cool" presentation from University of Pretoria, provided the innovative way in which the librarians reached to their users by creating virtual world of "avatars" on Second Life; Creating Facebook profiles, etc. They are trying to reach to their users on all possible levels.
the overall discussions today were on trainings in the libraries - "Training end-users in the Mining industry","The training monster" - WITS Health Library experience; the "Changing roles of the libraries and librarians with emphasis on the technology".
Lunch time we had a "Round table discussion lunches" on various topics - Library 2.0, End user training, Institutional Repositories, Life after Graduation, Mentoring, etc. People with similar interest discussed what is the way forward and the need for SAOUG to facilitate future workshops or discussions groups.
Afternoon sessions were on topics such as: Alerting & Reference services; How do you make a computer think like a human?; Legal practice bill and its impact on the profession and SA Legal Information Institute.
We had such an exiting day and looking forward the next.
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