Blowing the dust off this old thing to share my notes from CamLibs2020: 2020 Vision for Libraries. A great event, as ever, and it's amazingly wonderful to just see everyone and say hi. There were plenty of people I didn't catch up with, but so many I did, so despite the terrible awful no-good very-bad news that seems to be happening on a regular basis in the real world, the day was a great one and I don't think I stopped smiling!
The keynote speaker, Hong-Anh Nguyen, was great, talking about the role of libraries in sense-making. The library of the King's Fund, where she works, was the instigator of an online course which explains the NHS - one of the most successful courses in terms of completion on FutureLearn. The strength in the library doing it rather than the researchers is that the material is more easily communicated and understood - not dumbed down, but explained in layperson's terms.
The next talk I went to was Creating Games for Engagement: the Open Access Escape Room, by Katrine Sundsbø. She talked about giving space to ideas, to allow yourself to be creative, before talking about how she put together an OA Escape Room, the obstacles overcome and the results of it - which were somewhat surprising. Apparently people are so focused on winning the game that whatever they've learnt through the process is immediately forgotten (much like exam cramming), so it was only in the discussion afterwards that people would achieve any of the learning outcomes. Practically speaking the ideas bit was useful - write down all ideas, any ideas, and don't cast judgement at this stage - or commit to anything either. Allow them to percolate, give them space to breathe and grow, before revisiting them and then screening them for worth. When screening, have three questions in mind: is it possible? What does it achieve? and What will it need? Then talk to someone - only one person, and make it someone you trust - to see if the idea has merit, or if there are aspects you've not thought about. All the materials for the Escape Room are available on FigShare, so I need to go have a look - I suspect that there might be mileage in suggesting it to our Research Facilitator as a way to get our researchers interested in Open Access..
The other big talk I attended was Research Cafés: the Time to Engage is Now, presented by Katherine Stephan. This was very joyful talk, and rather raw in its honesty too. I didn't even know what a research café was before I attended, so it pricked my conscience a bit as it's clear I don't make enough of an effort to know what research is going on beyond the research I support in my own work. I liked the idea of the cross-disciplinary themed events (homelessess and drones were both mentioned), and it's very obvious that more needs to be done generally in public engagement and this is a great way of getting researchers into a forum where there are members of the public but in an informal and friendly way. Maybe as a public-facing institution we could do something to bridge the gap between researchers across the university (ie not just our researchers) and the public? Food for thought...
But it was refreshing to hear someone say: "If it doesn't work, tweak it. Change it, try again. And if it still doesn't work, or stops working, don't be afraid to just stop altogether."
The lightning talks were a bit variable. Some were interesting, and one was quite useful, but there were others which were a bit of a miss and I wasn't exactly sure what they had actually done. Thinking about a lot of the talks, it does feel as though we've stagnated a bit - I can't help but feel Brexit, austerity and general malaise within universities and libraries has stifled us. Thinking back to only a few years ago, I'd be going to talks where something groundbreaking would be being done (and I'd be sitting there thinking, "Well of course I'd love to do the same if I had the money/time/resources/staff,") - but now we're showcasing projects where people are begging/borrowing/stealing just to get something fairly meagre off the ground. Kudos to them, it's hard to get anything done now, but it's a bit sad that we're reduced to this.
It occurs to me that I'll be wrapping up the organisation of the Arlis conference 2020 (taking place in Cambridge) shortly before CamLibs2021 will need its next working party. Maybe I should volunteer again...
The keynote speaker, Hong-Anh Nguyen, was great, talking about the role of libraries in sense-making. The library of the King's Fund, where she works, was the instigator of an online course which explains the NHS - one of the most successful courses in terms of completion on FutureLearn. The strength in the library doing it rather than the researchers is that the material is more easily communicated and understood - not dumbed down, but explained in layperson's terms.
The next talk I went to was Creating Games for Engagement: the Open Access Escape Room, by Katrine Sundsbø. She talked about giving space to ideas, to allow yourself to be creative, before talking about how she put together an OA Escape Room, the obstacles overcome and the results of it - which were somewhat surprising. Apparently people are so focused on winning the game that whatever they've learnt through the process is immediately forgotten (much like exam cramming), so it was only in the discussion afterwards that people would achieve any of the learning outcomes. Practically speaking the ideas bit was useful - write down all ideas, any ideas, and don't cast judgement at this stage - or commit to anything either. Allow them to percolate, give them space to breathe and grow, before revisiting them and then screening them for worth. When screening, have three questions in mind: is it possible? What does it achieve? and What will it need? Then talk to someone - only one person, and make it someone you trust - to see if the idea has merit, or if there are aspects you've not thought about. All the materials for the Escape Room are available on FigShare, so I need to go have a look - I suspect that there might be mileage in suggesting it to our Research Facilitator as a way to get our researchers interested in Open Access..
The other big talk I attended was Research Cafés: the Time to Engage is Now, presented by Katherine Stephan. This was very joyful talk, and rather raw in its honesty too. I didn't even know what a research café was before I attended, so it pricked my conscience a bit as it's clear I don't make enough of an effort to know what research is going on beyond the research I support in my own work. I liked the idea of the cross-disciplinary themed events (homelessess and drones were both mentioned), and it's very obvious that more needs to be done generally in public engagement and this is a great way of getting researchers into a forum where there are members of the public but in an informal and friendly way. Maybe as a public-facing institution we could do something to bridge the gap between researchers across the university (ie not just our researchers) and the public? Food for thought...
But it was refreshing to hear someone say: "If it doesn't work, tweak it. Change it, try again. And if it still doesn't work, or stops working, don't be afraid to just stop altogether."
The lightning talks were a bit variable. Some were interesting, and one was quite useful, but there were others which were a bit of a miss and I wasn't exactly sure what they had actually done. Thinking about a lot of the talks, it does feel as though we've stagnated a bit - I can't help but feel Brexit, austerity and general malaise within universities and libraries has stifled us. Thinking back to only a few years ago, I'd be going to talks where something groundbreaking would be being done (and I'd be sitting there thinking, "Well of course I'd love to do the same if I had the money/time/resources/staff,") - but now we're showcasing projects where people are begging/borrowing/stealing just to get something fairly meagre off the ground. Kudos to them, it's hard to get anything done now, but it's a bit sad that we're reduced to this.
It occurs to me that I'll be wrapping up the organisation of the Arlis conference 2020 (taking place in Cambridge) shortly before CamLibs2021 will need its next working party. Maybe I should volunteer again...
