Did Everyone Go to AliaOnline this year? Because if you didn't I have one hell of a post for you!
My Day.
I'm putting this above my post on AliaOnline because 2300+ words might be stretching the friendship a bit. Also I haven't proof read it or done a basic spellcheck(spellcheck isn't in the Mozilla Australian English dictionary, funny). So it is an ugly thing right now.
Brisbane city after dark is WEIRD!
After I posted my entry last night I left QUT and went to the city to get something to eat and then take a train home. I got stuck in Hungry Jacks again, because I'm always stuck waiting in line at Hungry Jacks, and had a horrible meal because they gave me a coke instead of a water. The cup was slightly greasy, I'm not sure what the deal was with that but overall I regret eating there even though it was only $5. The main reason I did eat there was because it was the only place still open.
I caught a train home after waiting at Central and the conductor on the train kept announcing over the PA that the back three carriages were closed because it was so late at night. He mentioned it about three times, I don't know why, no-one on the train was unaware that they couldn't go to the back.
After I got home I went to sleep at about 2am, I slept in pretty late which was nice and then decided to try and take my bike out for a little ride around. The first problem I had was that my bike had somehow gone missing, which was odd because I had left it in my brothers bedroom at my mums house(I usually left it in the granny flat out the back of the house but my other brother had been over recently and he and his family sleep out there when they're over so I had to move the bike indoors). I think my mum moved it outside to the front door for the same twisted reason that makes her think that putting a vacuum cleaner in front of my bedroom door, when I'm not sleeping at her house, will get me to vacuum my room.
I found my bike eventually after searching everywhere else and then found that the rear tyre was flat for some reason. I assumed I'd let it down last time I'd parked the bike(I do that sometimes in summer and vaguely recall doing it recently) so I re-inflated the tyre and then re-oiled the chain because I was worried it wasn't very oiled lately. I was in the middle of doing all that when I heard a scraping sound from the Derailleur and the chain. I'm not sure why but I've never had any success with not having those two specific parts rub against each other. Over four bikes now.
I got my bike manual out and my screwdriver and then proceeded to completely stuff up my bike to the point I was tempted to put it in the car and drive to someones house to get help. I eventually, carefully, read the bike repair manual again and then carefully fixed everything I'd just done, except now it actually didn't rub against the now well oiled chain.
I was only intending on a short ride but ended up doing about 6kms, not that long by most measures to be honest, I was riding out the back of Mount Coot-tha and I noticed a lot of walkers going by, apparently today was the Oxfam 100km mountain trail bushwalk, I found everyone about six kilometres from the end of the line. They seemed in good spirits. I thought they might have all been training for something like Kokoda or similar but they weren't, they were just walking for charity.
I swung around Chapel Hill road and then was planning on riding down to Rocks Riverside park via the Akuna playing fields when I found my back tyre was flat again. This confirmed my fears that the damn thing had a hole in it. So I cancelled my plans and went down to a park nearby and took the tyre out and then tried to test it to find the hole. I couldn't find the hole at all and I wasn't going to throw out the tube if I couldn't confirm there was a hole. So I stupidly put the tube back in DESPITE having a new perfectly good tube in my pack, then pumped up the tyre with everything I had and then tried to cycle home hoping the hole as small enough to stay inflated for the duration, I gave up after about a kilometre and stopping to get some food(Steakburger and chips with a milkshake... the Steakburger had a tomato on it, thus the entire meal is healthy!). The sun was setting at this point and I really didn't want to walk the bike home OR change the tube again(because I'm an idiot) so I phoned my dad and he drove me and my bike home. He had Matt in the car at the time, so it was really cramped.
My flat bike, locked up and waiting to go home.
After I got home I changed the tyre and then went to my computer and wrote the Entry about my time at the Alia Conference earlier this year. It took me about four hours, mostly because my incomplete Twitter notes were put up next to the conference schedule and I had to infer a lot of things until my memories started to actually kick in. And from what I've read about human memory that probably wasn't the most reliable method for recall.
And now I need to sleep, because I've a Soccer game in nine hours and a baby's first birthday right after that.
Or I can post a long LONG detailed how to guide for changing tyres.
Lets see how I go.
This is the hole that ruined a perfectly good afternoon.
YouTube Clip of the Day.
This entry was stupidly long. Sorry for anyone who reads it. It might give you some good ideas as to what happened for those people who missed out on going. Search on twitter for #Aliaonline if you want a messy rundown of things. It was how I kept notes and I think I probably should have done a better job of it looking over the mess I left.
The Alia Online Conference 2013.
Date held: 12-Feb 2013 to 15 Feb 2013.
For this conference I decided that I would attempt to use Twitter a lot more than I would typically use it. In fact I used twitter to such an extent that by day two I had ceased using my notepad and simply typed everything I was thinking into twitter.
This use of social media had two very noticable effects. The first was that I had a lot of conversations, via twitter, with numerous other participants on the topics under discussion and was able to expand my professional network quite a lot. This wide variety of people, many of whom I would likely have never talked to in my time at the conference shared a lot of interesting information about libraries which I found both interesting and useful. The second effect of taking my notes almost exlusively in twitter was that actually accessing them later to write this reflection was made more difficult than it would have been had I simply used a notepad and paper. Twitter, basic Twitter, is not a very conductive website for using and recalling past events without going through a lot of useless tweets.
Fortunately I rarely use Twitter so I didn't have to go back too far to find my notes from the conference. As a result I don't know that I would rely on Twitter as much in future conferences after my experience in trying to use it here, while it did provide me with good connections to other people there it was also occasionally distracting from the talks I was attending.
The theme of the conference was Difference. The three days each had an overlying theme Day 1 was Be Different, Day 2 was Do Different and Day 3 was Think Different.
Day 1 (12/2/13) had a focus on being different. Looking at ways in which the library sector can change and differentiate itself from its current paradigm. There was a strong focus on the future and where libraries and content are going. The morning keynote talk was on User Experience and how people are willing to take bad content for a good user experience and leave behind good content for a bad user experience. This I found very interesting as I've always held that content should be the primary goal of any institution and the accessibility options should be a distant second as long as the information is accessible. Of course this attitude didn't factor in non-essential information and the competition for time that some institutions now face making a good and reliable user interface much more important. Later in the same day John Birmingham reiterated this point about User Experience being more important than content.
I made a note that online piracy was a good place for people interested in creating user experience to study as online pirates have spent many years studying and tuning their content delivery methods to suit user demands and needs and have been doing so for far longer than almost any other group online right now.
The next talk I attended was by Max Walters from Channel 7 Brisbane who talked about the challenges that Television faces in the digital world. He pointed out that Television needs to adapt to survive or the networks will die in Australia, this is also apparently true of most media platforms right now. The only way to combat this is to provide content which can't be pirated as easily OR is useless after it is aired. The example give was AFL games and other live sports which are highly rated programming for Television networks and have a lower demand from piracy.
This was followed by some lighting talks on a variety of subjects the most interesting to me personally was the talk by Michael Curran and James Teh on making technology more accessible to the disabled(the blind in their case) and using community and open source technologies to achieve this. I found that by being a non-profit organisation they had more credibility in using open-source and user generated content for their software than a for-profit likely would have in the same situation.
The key point I took away from this first day was that innovation requires users and providers to change their behaviour and that will almost always invite resistence and setbacks. And that providing the best content is now secondary to providing content in a manner that is better for the user. To do this libraries and librarians need to look outside of the library field and examine what other organisations have been doing and start to emulate the successes and learn from the failures.
Many of the speakers talked as though we were in the middle of some great changes and the challenges were to try and use those changes most effectively whilst maintaining some degree of stability for users and clients.
Day 2(13/2/2013) had a focus on Doing Different. In keeping with the theme of changing the way that libraries operate and function this day was focused on actual ways in which things are changing right now. Starting with a Keynote address by Canadian journalist Sue Gardner on the subject of online content such as Wikipedia, which she is a director of. The ease of using Wikipedia despite some of its content being unreliable fed into the discussion the previous day on content versus user experience in a more concrete way for me. And the discussion of the inner workings of Wikipedia, which as only a few dozen actual employees and several thousand volunteers was interesting. That the online community will help to generate content if and when they can is something we often take for granted now thanks to Wikipedia and using that type of enthusiasm and community spirit in other fields may be a key point towards the future role of libraries.
The first talk I went to was a discussion on the distributed collection of Queensland memory. Which was concentrating on saving and salvaging as much aboriginal history and recordings as is humanly possible. This has been done by examining the collections of a large variety of library and archives across the state and then distributing as much material around as possible. Another means used by one of the speakers was micro-doucmentaries which are short 2-10 minute films taken to record local history and stories, these short films are a perfect format for internet use and users used to short clips on sites such as YouTube and also ensure that material is more easily watchable for the general public. The speaker mentioned that once some information is available and shared, much like with Wikipeida, more people are encouraged to join in and contribute. The problem was getting the initial content and distributing it. Also mentioned was that some historical societies around Australia have social events with members of other societies to determine what content they have and to build informal ties between organisations and members. This helps to gather more content and sources for content but also helps with the distribution and publicity for things like Micro-Documentaries.
The next two talks I attended was on changing the ways libraries were run directly by examining areas often considered unchangeable by library professionals. The first talk by Janine Schmidt interested me greatly as it focused on getting rid of things that libraries don't need anymore. The speaker associated this concept with weeding older books from the shelves, removing old worn out ideas and concepts or at least critically examining them for potential changes can be used by librarians to improve their services going forward. The second talk that afternoon was by staff from the Sydney University of Technology and it was about fostering change in an organisational culture context via social events, open dialogue between management and staff and a gradual process of change with feedback to ensure user and staff satisfaction which I found rather interesting.
The final speaker for the day was Sarah Drummond who runs a Social Innovation and service design outfit based in Glasgow, Scotland, her focus was on examining public services, such as libraries, from a more user based perspective. She raised the point again about creative destruction and being willing to abandon certain prototypes and ideas when it comes to running a library service while talking about her firms success in failing and learning from it then using this information to help to build the next process/programs. Her belief was that setting out to test everything and possibly failing is better than just examining limited success and building on that.
The second day of the conference provided me with a lot of interesting ideas for running future libraries. It focused more on the processes and actual work of a library over what they can provide in terms of content. The idea of changing the general protocols of a library service to better suite the clients seems like an obvious one at first but the resistance can be challenging. The point I found most interesting was that most of the talks were about how to change a library and actually provided useful examples of past successes and the methods in which they were implemented instead of just re-iterating the need for change.
Day 3(14/02/2013) of the conference focused on Thinking Differently. The concept behind this day was to get librarians to think about different ways in which they could run their libraries as well as looking at some elements associated with their work from a new perspective. The speakers were often people who challenged the status quo with regards to content delivery and service in the library sector.
The first daily Keynote Address by Charles Leadbeater pointed out that libraries are a vital resource in our communities as they form a non-commercial indoor social gathering place which backed up a point I'd made myself several months prior to this, that Libraries are like public parks for people who hate grass. Leadbeater is a noted creative advisor to companies and corporations around the world and pointed out that libraries have a valuable place even today as well as a great reputation amongst the public as well as their trust.
I didn't attend the rest of the morning session as I was distracted by a minor family concern but was able to attend the entire afternoon session for the day. The next keynote speaker was Anna Troberg who is a member of the Swedish Pirate Party and an advocate for limiting copyright restrictions. Her point on copyright limiting culture and preventing access to the full story of history was interesting to me personally as I hadn't thought of culture as related to copyright before. By preventing the free access to content as a result of copyright often material such as books and movies gets lost and destroyed because it wasn't the most popular and successful content of its time. According to the speaker this means that unpopular ideas and concepts can become lost. I noted that by only protecting the bestsellers we save works like the Da Vinci Code and 50 Shades of Grey but would lose 1984 and First and Last Men. The role of libraries in this is that Libraries can help to protect this type of content, much like the United States Library of Congress and other such archives around the world. The widespread distribution of content ensures that multiple copies exist and can preserve them for future generations.
Much like the lost languages of the Aboriginal people our culture is in our content and once it is lost forever it can never be recovered.
This was followed up by a talk by Debra Rosenfeldt from the state library of Victoria who was talking about rethinking copyright for a digital economy. Her talk was about how the digital economy may make copyright redundant and that artistic people are still creating despite not getting much of a financial return for their efforts. Websites across the world have sprung up and provide numerous opportunities for artists to create works for free. While not all of it is great it is allowing for a wider public acceptance of artistic endeavours which is removed from publishers and rests solely with the artists.
The final day of the conference presented me with a lot of different perspectives on content and deliverables as well as the place of libraries in the greater cultural whole. I had never thought about copyright as an enemy of culture before, I hadn't thought of them as related in any way previously. I had also never thought of the positive reputation that libraries had and how it could be used in the future to help build services and to encourage community participation. I felt that the third day did feel slightly removed from the first two days but overall it was very interesting to see an outsiders perspective on the library field.
The overall topic of the day was to think differently and I believe that by presenting us with perspectives removed from those we were used to the Alia Online Conference of 2013 succeeded.
The conference went for three days and allowed me personally to listen to some brilliant minds talking about the future of the library profession. I felt more confident about my choice of career going forwards. I also gained a greater appreciation for libraries and their place in the public sphere as well as librarians, researchers and archivists and their efforts as they relate to the preservation of our heritage and culture.
I'm putting this above my post on AliaOnline because 2300+ words might be stretching the friendship a bit. Also I haven't proof read it or done a basic spellcheck(spellcheck isn't in the Mozilla Australian English dictionary, funny). So it is an ugly thing right now.
Brisbane city after dark is WEIRD!
After I posted my entry last night I left QUT and went to the city to get something to eat and then take a train home. I got stuck in Hungry Jacks again, because I'm always stuck waiting in line at Hungry Jacks, and had a horrible meal because they gave me a coke instead of a water. The cup was slightly greasy, I'm not sure what the deal was with that but overall I regret eating there even though it was only $5. The main reason I did eat there was because it was the only place still open.
I caught a train home after waiting at Central and the conductor on the train kept announcing over the PA that the back three carriages were closed because it was so late at night. He mentioned it about three times, I don't know why, no-one on the train was unaware that they couldn't go to the back.
After I got home I went to sleep at about 2am, I slept in pretty late which was nice and then decided to try and take my bike out for a little ride around. The first problem I had was that my bike had somehow gone missing, which was odd because I had left it in my brothers bedroom at my mums house(I usually left it in the granny flat out the back of the house but my other brother had been over recently and he and his family sleep out there when they're over so I had to move the bike indoors). I think my mum moved it outside to the front door for the same twisted reason that makes her think that putting a vacuum cleaner in front of my bedroom door, when I'm not sleeping at her house, will get me to vacuum my room.
I found my bike eventually after searching everywhere else and then found that the rear tyre was flat for some reason. I assumed I'd let it down last time I'd parked the bike(I do that sometimes in summer and vaguely recall doing it recently) so I re-inflated the tyre and then re-oiled the chain because I was worried it wasn't very oiled lately. I was in the middle of doing all that when I heard a scraping sound from the Derailleur and the chain. I'm not sure why but I've never had any success with not having those two specific parts rub against each other. Over four bikes now.
I got my bike manual out and my screwdriver and then proceeded to completely stuff up my bike to the point I was tempted to put it in the car and drive to someones house to get help. I eventually, carefully, read the bike repair manual again and then carefully fixed everything I'd just done, except now it actually didn't rub against the now well oiled chain.
I was only intending on a short ride but ended up doing about 6kms, not that long by most measures to be honest, I was riding out the back of Mount Coot-tha and I noticed a lot of walkers going by, apparently today was the Oxfam 100km mountain trail bushwalk, I found everyone about six kilometres from the end of the line. They seemed in good spirits. I thought they might have all been training for something like Kokoda or similar but they weren't, they were just walking for charity.
I swung around Chapel Hill road and then was planning on riding down to Rocks Riverside park via the Akuna playing fields when I found my back tyre was flat again. This confirmed my fears that the damn thing had a hole in it. So I cancelled my plans and went down to a park nearby and took the tyre out and then tried to test it to find the hole. I couldn't find the hole at all and I wasn't going to throw out the tube if I couldn't confirm there was a hole. So I stupidly put the tube back in DESPITE having a new perfectly good tube in my pack, then pumped up the tyre with everything I had and then tried to cycle home hoping the hole as small enough to stay inflated for the duration, I gave up after about a kilometre and stopping to get some food(Steakburger and chips with a milkshake... the Steakburger had a tomato on it, thus the entire meal is healthy!). The sun was setting at this point and I really didn't want to walk the bike home OR change the tube again(because I'm an idiot) so I phoned my dad and he drove me and my bike home. He had Matt in the car at the time, so it was really cramped.
My flat bike, locked up and waiting to go home.
After I got home I changed the tyre and then went to my computer and wrote the Entry about my time at the Alia Conference earlier this year. It took me about four hours, mostly because my incomplete Twitter notes were put up next to the conference schedule and I had to infer a lot of things until my memories started to actually kick in. And from what I've read about human memory that probably wasn't the most reliable method for recall.
And now I need to sleep, because I've a Soccer game in nine hours and a baby's first birthday right after that.
Or I can post a long LONG detailed how to guide for changing tyres.
Lets see how I go.
This is the hole that ruined a perfectly good afternoon.
YouTube Clip of the Day.
Click to viewThis entry was stupidly long. Sorry for anyone who reads it. It might give you some good ideas as to what happened for those people who missed out on going. Search on twitter for #Aliaonline if you want a messy rundown of things. It was how I kept notes and I think I probably should have done a better job of it looking over the mess I left.
The Alia Online Conference 2013.
Date held: 12-Feb 2013 to 15 Feb 2013.
For this conference I decided that I would attempt to use Twitter a lot more than I would typically use it. In fact I used twitter to such an extent that by day two I had ceased using my notepad and simply typed everything I was thinking into twitter.
This use of social media had two very noticable effects. The first was that I had a lot of conversations, via twitter, with numerous other participants on the topics under discussion and was able to expand my professional network quite a lot. This wide variety of people, many of whom I would likely have never talked to in my time at the conference shared a lot of interesting information about libraries which I found both interesting and useful. The second effect of taking my notes almost exlusively in twitter was that actually accessing them later to write this reflection was made more difficult than it would have been had I simply used a notepad and paper. Twitter, basic Twitter, is not a very conductive website for using and recalling past events without going through a lot of useless tweets.
Fortunately I rarely use Twitter so I didn't have to go back too far to find my notes from the conference. As a result I don't know that I would rely on Twitter as much in future conferences after my experience in trying to use it here, while it did provide me with good connections to other people there it was also occasionally distracting from the talks I was attending.
The theme of the conference was Difference. The three days each had an overlying theme Day 1 was Be Different, Day 2 was Do Different and Day 3 was Think Different.
Day 1 (12/2/13) had a focus on being different. Looking at ways in which the library sector can change and differentiate itself from its current paradigm. There was a strong focus on the future and where libraries and content are going. The morning keynote talk was on User Experience and how people are willing to take bad content for a good user experience and leave behind good content for a bad user experience. This I found very interesting as I've always held that content should be the primary goal of any institution and the accessibility options should be a distant second as long as the information is accessible. Of course this attitude didn't factor in non-essential information and the competition for time that some institutions now face making a good and reliable user interface much more important. Later in the same day John Birmingham reiterated this point about User Experience being more important than content.
I made a note that online piracy was a good place for people interested in creating user experience to study as online pirates have spent many years studying and tuning their content delivery methods to suit user demands and needs and have been doing so for far longer than almost any other group online right now.
The next talk I attended was by Max Walters from Channel 7 Brisbane who talked about the challenges that Television faces in the digital world. He pointed out that Television needs to adapt to survive or the networks will die in Australia, this is also apparently true of most media platforms right now. The only way to combat this is to provide content which can't be pirated as easily OR is useless after it is aired. The example give was AFL games and other live sports which are highly rated programming for Television networks and have a lower demand from piracy.
This was followed by some lighting talks on a variety of subjects the most interesting to me personally was the talk by Michael Curran and James Teh on making technology more accessible to the disabled(the blind in their case) and using community and open source technologies to achieve this. I found that by being a non-profit organisation they had more credibility in using open-source and user generated content for their software than a for-profit likely would have in the same situation.
The key point I took away from this first day was that innovation requires users and providers to change their behaviour and that will almost always invite resistence and setbacks. And that providing the best content is now secondary to providing content in a manner that is better for the user. To do this libraries and librarians need to look outside of the library field and examine what other organisations have been doing and start to emulate the successes and learn from the failures.
Many of the speakers talked as though we were in the middle of some great changes and the challenges were to try and use those changes most effectively whilst maintaining some degree of stability for users and clients.
Day 2(13/2/2013) had a focus on Doing Different. In keeping with the theme of changing the way that libraries operate and function this day was focused on actual ways in which things are changing right now. Starting with a Keynote address by Canadian journalist Sue Gardner on the subject of online content such as Wikipedia, which she is a director of. The ease of using Wikipedia despite some of its content being unreliable fed into the discussion the previous day on content versus user experience in a more concrete way for me. And the discussion of the inner workings of Wikipedia, which as only a few dozen actual employees and several thousand volunteers was interesting. That the online community will help to generate content if and when they can is something we often take for granted now thanks to Wikipedia and using that type of enthusiasm and community spirit in other fields may be a key point towards the future role of libraries.
The first talk I went to was a discussion on the distributed collection of Queensland memory. Which was concentrating on saving and salvaging as much aboriginal history and recordings as is humanly possible. This has been done by examining the collections of a large variety of library and archives across the state and then distributing as much material around as possible. Another means used by one of the speakers was micro-doucmentaries which are short 2-10 minute films taken to record local history and stories, these short films are a perfect format for internet use and users used to short clips on sites such as YouTube and also ensure that material is more easily watchable for the general public. The speaker mentioned that once some information is available and shared, much like with Wikipeida, more people are encouraged to join in and contribute. The problem was getting the initial content and distributing it. Also mentioned was that some historical societies around Australia have social events with members of other societies to determine what content they have and to build informal ties between organisations and members. This helps to gather more content and sources for content but also helps with the distribution and publicity for things like Micro-Documentaries.
The next two talks I attended was on changing the ways libraries were run directly by examining areas often considered unchangeable by library professionals. The first talk by Janine Schmidt interested me greatly as it focused on getting rid of things that libraries don't need anymore. The speaker associated this concept with weeding older books from the shelves, removing old worn out ideas and concepts or at least critically examining them for potential changes can be used by librarians to improve their services going forward. The second talk that afternoon was by staff from the Sydney University of Technology and it was about fostering change in an organisational culture context via social events, open dialogue between management and staff and a gradual process of change with feedback to ensure user and staff satisfaction which I found rather interesting.
The final speaker for the day was Sarah Drummond who runs a Social Innovation and service design outfit based in Glasgow, Scotland, her focus was on examining public services, such as libraries, from a more user based perspective. She raised the point again about creative destruction and being willing to abandon certain prototypes and ideas when it comes to running a library service while talking about her firms success in failing and learning from it then using this information to help to build the next process/programs. Her belief was that setting out to test everything and possibly failing is better than just examining limited success and building on that.
The second day of the conference provided me with a lot of interesting ideas for running future libraries. It focused more on the processes and actual work of a library over what they can provide in terms of content. The idea of changing the general protocols of a library service to better suite the clients seems like an obvious one at first but the resistance can be challenging. The point I found most interesting was that most of the talks were about how to change a library and actually provided useful examples of past successes and the methods in which they were implemented instead of just re-iterating the need for change.
Day 3(14/02/2013) of the conference focused on Thinking Differently. The concept behind this day was to get librarians to think about different ways in which they could run their libraries as well as looking at some elements associated with their work from a new perspective. The speakers were often people who challenged the status quo with regards to content delivery and service in the library sector.
The first daily Keynote Address by Charles Leadbeater pointed out that libraries are a vital resource in our communities as they form a non-commercial indoor social gathering place which backed up a point I'd made myself several months prior to this, that Libraries are like public parks for people who hate grass. Leadbeater is a noted creative advisor to companies and corporations around the world and pointed out that libraries have a valuable place even today as well as a great reputation amongst the public as well as their trust.
I didn't attend the rest of the morning session as I was distracted by a minor family concern but was able to attend the entire afternoon session for the day. The next keynote speaker was Anna Troberg who is a member of the Swedish Pirate Party and an advocate for limiting copyright restrictions. Her point on copyright limiting culture and preventing access to the full story of history was interesting to me personally as I hadn't thought of culture as related to copyright before. By preventing the free access to content as a result of copyright often material such as books and movies gets lost and destroyed because it wasn't the most popular and successful content of its time. According to the speaker this means that unpopular ideas and concepts can become lost. I noted that by only protecting the bestsellers we save works like the Da Vinci Code and 50 Shades of Grey but would lose 1984 and First and Last Men. The role of libraries in this is that Libraries can help to protect this type of content, much like the United States Library of Congress and other such archives around the world. The widespread distribution of content ensures that multiple copies exist and can preserve them for future generations.
Much like the lost languages of the Aboriginal people our culture is in our content and once it is lost forever it can never be recovered.
This was followed up by a talk by Debra Rosenfeldt from the state library of Victoria who was talking about rethinking copyright for a digital economy. Her talk was about how the digital economy may make copyright redundant and that artistic people are still creating despite not getting much of a financial return for their efforts. Websites across the world have sprung up and provide numerous opportunities for artists to create works for free. While not all of it is great it is allowing for a wider public acceptance of artistic endeavours which is removed from publishers and rests solely with the artists.
The final day of the conference presented me with a lot of different perspectives on content and deliverables as well as the place of libraries in the greater cultural whole. I had never thought about copyright as an enemy of culture before, I hadn't thought of them as related in any way previously. I had also never thought of the positive reputation that libraries had and how it could be used in the future to help build services and to encourage community participation. I felt that the third day did feel slightly removed from the first two days but overall it was very interesting to see an outsiders perspective on the library field.
The overall topic of the day was to think differently and I believe that by presenting us with perspectives removed from those we were used to the Alia Online Conference of 2013 succeeded.
The conference went for three days and allowed me personally to listen to some brilliant minds talking about the future of the library profession. I felt more confident about my choice of career going forwards. I also gained a greater appreciation for libraries and their place in the public sphere as well as librarians, researchers and archivists and their efforts as they relate to the preservation of our heritage and culture.