Wrap it up and stick a bow on it: IASSIST & ALA 2012, Part 1

I’ve been slow about writing conference wrap-ups! I guess it is because my summer conferences are pretty much back-to-back with IASSIST at the beginning of June and ALA at the end. The other issue may be that my conference experiences are changing. I’ve been spending less time in programs and more time in meetings. I called ALA the “grown-up version” this year because I spent so much time in meetings and much less seeing celebrities and partying. Ahem, I mean networking.

IASSIST 2012

IASSIST is the data professionals conference and it kicked off with two mega-meetings of the Administrative Council on Sunday and Monday. I’m on the Administrative Council by virtue of being a co-chair of the Professional Development Committee. My work on Prof Dev focuses mostly around creating workshops for the annual conference while the other chair is really into the big picture ideas like, “Where is IASSIST going? Who is IASSIST anyway?” We play to our strengths as I sometimes get frustrated with big picture discussions and tend to gravitate more to project development.

However, IASSIST needs to consider big picture ideas now because so many people are interested in data. We need to capitalize on the momentum to make a place for ourselves in the data world. Take this for example: while we were holding our meeting, the LITA Forum 2012 announcement came out, and the program is entitled “A New World of Data”. Some of the sessions look like they would overlap with IASSIST with a library focus. I don’t think the issue is necessarily competition, but rather how the organization communicates that we are a broad umbrella for all types of data professionals from librarians doing data discovery to DDI specialists to data archivists. How do we communicate more effectively with LITA and others who are working with or interested in data? It’s a quandary.

As always there were many excellent sessions and lots of good conversations. Here are the highlights from just a few.

Julia Lane, Senior Managing Economist, American Institutes for Research (AIR) kicked off the conference describing a project to build a data system to bolster a science policy data infrastructure to support better reporting on nature and activities of R&D efforts. The project is based on three principles: activity should be based on need; need to leverage existing data; and use 21st century methods. You can see the outcome of project at http://readidata.nitrd.gov/star/

Jen Green, Nicole Scholtz, and Samantha Guss talked about collaborative models for robust data support by comparing the University of Michigan’s new Clark Library, New York University’s Data Services Studio, and Yale’s Center for Science and Social Science Information. All three use the information commons model to try to support more complex needs of data users. In addition they are able to bring together data librarians, statistical support, and IT computing assistance into one area. I would love to see something similar at UNCG, but we don’t quite have the user volume to support such intensive use of a data-related area. Great models for other libraries though!

Carol Perry and Michelle Edwards at the University of Guelph talked about having a Researcher Day in which researchers on campus can gather to have workshops on data management and talk about their data needs. This helped to launch a working group that focuses on research data management.

On the final day, Stuart Macdonald from EDINA at the University of Edinburgh presented on the AddressingHistory project. The project brings together historical Scottish Post Office Directories and historical maps. Beyond being one of my favorite presenters ever (Scottish accent and funny guy), I’ve been seeing this project slowly developing since IASSIST 2010 at Cornell. It is great to see an end-product. I was also really excited to see that they are starting to support augmented reality, which would appeal to a wider audience. I hate to see efforts like this whither because of lack of use simply because they are too esoteric or academic. With an augmented reality app the site could appeal to people more generally interested in the history of Edinburgh.

IASSIST is a great organization and conference because it is small and a close-knit group of data heads. It is quite unlike ALA where you can get lost in the shuffle at times. It is also awesome because the conference planners really like banquets on boats. This year’s was cruising the Potomac. Sweet.

Next post will cover the wild and wonderful world of ALA. Stay tuned for Part 2.

About these ads

librarianship =