Submitted by Stephanie Ronan

I have collated all the tweets from the 41st Annual Iamslic & 16th Biennial Euraslic 2015 Conference and created a ‘story’ using storify.com.

You can view the story here: https://storify.com/StephanieRonan/new-story-55f3244492765f6408ac8ed2

This story makes it a lot easier to view all the tweets specific to the conference, and using the hashtag #iameura15, than trying to view all the tweets on twitter. It is an interactive story, so you can favourite and retweet from within the story. Once a tweet goes live, you cannot make any edits to it (except delete it), so apologies for any typos, or word substitutes that my phone’s predictive text made e.g. substituting the FAO building for FYI building 🙂

We created an official twitter account for Iamslic: @IamslicOrg, so please use this handle in all your tweets. I tweeted 218 tweets from the Iamslic account, took 53 photos, favourited 63 other tweets, followed 18 accounts and gained 22 followers for the account! I also tweeted about another 50 from my own account. So hopefully I managed to share some interesting and relevant information and photos from the conference.

Enjoy the story.

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Friday – 11 September 2015
Submitted by Kris Anderson

There was a great party last night, a trio played light jazz as we arrived and there were adult beverages and lovely pupus (that’s Hawaiian for appetizer) – OMG the breaded stuffed olives were awesome!  When we sat down there were 3 kinds of pasta, an entree course, salad, and dessert.  All lubricated with endless bottles of white wine, red wine, and water.  Glad there was a bus to my neighborhood!

Teresa Barriga Ramirez opened the session introducing Alyson Gamble.  Alyson received a grant from the Medical Library Association to investigate marine medical research.  Marine natural products got a big start in the 1960’s and 70’s when there was funding.  There were over 17,000 articles about natural products published since 1984 but very few articles about the influence of information science in marine medical research.

Kristen Metzger then described a bit of her history and how IAMSLIC has enabled her to be an amazing resource to industry. Her company needed to lay underwater cable along coast of Africa and needed a variety of information from EIS for each country, where the cable could touch land in each country and who the country contacts were.  Librarians need to be able to think beyond their area of specialty!  Kristen provided some interesting insights to how things are in the corporate world.  An example is that an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) may be accepted even if it indicates major environmental impact.  Regarding the underwater cable, did you know sharks like to gnaw on them?  Scientists aren’t exactly sure why that is so, but the result is some cables are being wrapped in additional shielding to deter the sharks.  Kristen also commented on how there are regional influences no matter where you live.  As always, she had the best illustrations for her talk – she left us smiling.

Last presentation of the conference was given by David Baca.  He talked about high impact practices and student employees.  “High impact activities are those that allow students to apply learning to real life, to make connections, reflect and integrate learning.” Learning communities and capstone projects are examples.  How can we create those opportunities for the student employees in the library?  An example is Iowa GROW program
https://vp.studentlife.uiowa.edu/initiatives/grow/

Oh my!  Last Break!  Last chance for those yummy little delicacies…sigh…

Business Meeting!  Opened by Guillermina Cosulich, IAMSLIC President.  The minutes will be on the website. Highlights from the meeting are a conference hosting proposal will be forthcoming from Uganda, also one from Crete.  The election results from an election with the largest turnout and the closest finish – as Steve stated is an indication of the respect for all candidates.  David Baca was elected Jr. Vice President and Brian Voss elected Secretary.  Big thanks to all board members!  Great honor on Guillermina!  And thanks again to Maria and Armand for an excellent conference!

All are invited to the 2016 conference in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico – 16-20 October 2016
Beautiful, historical, tropical, and food looks delish!

Conference is Closed!

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Thursday – 10 September 2015
Submitted by Kris Anderson

Hey! It’s already day 3!  How did that happen?
Day got underway with Barb Butler introducing Judith Conner who shared about Monterey Bay, California and their work with deep-sea data.  They have remotely operated vehicles (ROV), with high definition cameras, that collect samples and video.  Every sample whether physical or visual has metadata that includes where it was collected.  The videos are all annotated so there are massive amounts of data to deal with.  Video Annotation and Reference System (VARS).  www.mbari.org/vars
MBARI just released a new Deep Sea Guide (dsg.mbari.org) which is a web interface that allows one to search the VARS data with a visual interface which includes taxonomic info, images, site collection data.  There are many ways one might use the data.

Lisa Raymond followed with a description of how WHOI has been developing a semantic integration product to link open access data through repositories to make searching across all available materials more seamless.  It is all very technical but the end result is contributing to the Dspace community and creating an environment where adding linking to other repositories becomes easier.  Encourage your scientists to get an ORCID ID!

Michael Haft finished up the pre-break session with a discussion of the Freshwater Biological Association’s development of AEDA repository http://www.environmentdata.org  and FISH.Link the linked data initiative.  All focused to enable data sharing amongst the freshwater community.  The repository includes FBA publications and datasets, images, and NGO publications related to the environment.

Break!  Yes, I got my espresso so I’m good to go.  I would also like you to know we’ve been indulging in lovely fresh fruit and devilish little pastries, some enhanced with chocolate/Nutella, which I’m pretty sure are calorie free…

Back to the conference, Lyra Pagulayan of FishBase told us about the development of an e-library of aquatic biodiversity documents in the Philappines.
Besides the documents in FishBase and SeaLifeBase, the library will be searchable by GIS mapping.  http://www.fin.ph

Closing out the morning presentations, Kateryna Kulakova, Olga Akimova, and Irina Kasenkova shared their thoughts and observations regarding librarianship.  Kateryna lead off with collaboration is essential!  CEERMar (CEERMar.org) is a joint repository project joining 13 libraries in 5 countries.  The 70’s and 80’s of the Soviet time include fewer documents as there were different copyright rules.  It is a preservation solution for rare books (though their scientists still want to touch the paper).  Documents are scanned, OCRed, added to repository and linked to ASFA.  Bib records in Cyrillic and English.
Olga spoke next and explained the long history of the Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas (IBSS).  She then described the IBSS repository http://repository.ibss.org.ua/dspace/  which has become very popular.
The VNIRO scientific institution was introduced by Irina who proceeded to remind us that no matter where you are, researchers need access to information and librarians need to work together to provide access and to help the researchers make their contributions accessible!  VNIRO also has a repository to expedite this goal.  http://vniro.com
What a great presentation ladies!!!
Actually everyone who spoke this morning is to be commended!  Looking forward to the afternoon sessions.

But now it’s lunchtime!

Oh, so full, hope to stay awake…

Kristen LaBonte welcomed us back and then introduced the first speaker of the afternoon,  Venugopalan Nottankandath.
Venugopalan gave us the history and goals of the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF).  They both produce and collect documents which they have in a database that uses the WinISIS software.  Information in any format which affects fishworkers is gathered by ICSF and disseminated through the website, through trainings, and through push technology of the SAMUDRA news. http://www.icsf.net

Samuela Nakalevu was next and told the story of metadata creation practices for repositories in the Pacific and Asia.  Samu began with a description of the Pacific region from his personal point of view and the description of Asia provided by collaborating author Daryl Superio.  He went on to describe the survey they sent to repository owners and the responses they received. It was interesting to see who was responsible for the repositories, training, attention to copyright, distribution of file types, metadata choice and selection, controlled vocabulary used, and interoperability standard. In many cases the decisions were based on locally derived standards.

Alice Endra followed Samu.  Alice is the librarian for the NaFIRRI library and shared the history and then the goals of the library.  They found it necessary to create their own data division plan based on how their scientists thought.  For example they cover many bodies of water but the scientists report on the specific part of that body of water so they broke the data for Lake Victoria by the Bays of the Lake.  Alice also identified the issues that affect the efficiency of the library.

I am still awake and still full but once again it’s BREAK time and I have espresso on my mind…
But THEN I realized we are 20 minutes ahead of schedule so we are going to hear the first talk of the last session so we can be done early.  We need as much time as possible to get pretty for the banquet!

Jaime Goldman jumped to the podium and introduced Geoffrey Salanje.  Geoffrey’s library had all publications in print so he described their project to digitize their publications.  Goals were to encrease exposure to local materials, preservation and conservation of rare publications and enhance the research process.  He had a flatbed scanner with a sheet feeder but it died and a fancy overhead scanner is on its way to Malawi.  So far about 350 publications have been scanned and added to Aquatic Commons.  They may also go to the LUANAR repository.  Challenges included no policies on open access or repositories as well as no  national coordination of repositories. MALICO – Malawi Library Information Consortium – is working to create policy.  Long term goals are to collect the print documents held by scientists, digitization of same plus the materials in the library, addition to Aquatic Commons, and marketing.

Got my espresso (x2) AND an evil little cream filled chocolate and sprinkle encrusted cookie!  We shall not discuss the caloric potential…

Jaime called us back to order and called up Jen Walton.  Jen provided great points and reasons why it’s an excellent idea to incorporate project management practices into library culture. For example: Set title, state objectives, establish roles and responsibilities, define scope, identify milestones/timeline, inventory resources.  Good motivation!

Closing out this last full day of the conference is Michelle Leonard.  Michelle talked about collection assessment.  They do a number of interesting things – one I like is doing informal survey of library users where they write a question on a whiteboard at the library entrance.  Anyone who sees the question is encouraged to write their answers on the whiteboard.  When the time period for the survey is over they take a picture of the board and wipe it clean – ready for next survey.  For example they asked what software patrons were using and purchased some online computer books on those products.  She talked about the information you need for assessment, reasons why assessment is important, the uses of assessment and how to progress, but I’m going to let you read her paper to get all that.

Ready for the banquet?  Here’s where we are going: http://www.ristoranteorazio.it/
I need to go comb my hair now and put on my party shoes!

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Wednesday – 9 September 2015
Submitted by Kris Anderson

Today is Blue Growth Day!  Blue Growth is an FAO initiative to address sustainability in food from the ocean.
Pauline Simpson introduced our first speakers, Lahsen Ababouch and Marc Taconet of FAO.  Lahsen started with statistics and projections of fish production worldwide.  The Blue Growth initiative focuses on four areas: capture fisheries, aquaculture, processing, and cultural importance.  The Initiative addresses environmental and socio-economic considerations related to the four areas of focus.  Blue Growth focuses on food security where Blue Economy involves ALL uses of the oceans.  Marc Taconet talked about information needs related to forwarding the initiative.  FAO offers much information on related websites for our use.  An example is: http://www.fao.org/biodiversity/cross-sectoral-issues/ecosystem-approach/en/
For those interested in fisheries, you should look at the SOFIA reports (State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture): http://www.fao.org/fishery/sofia/en

Suzette Soomai was the next speaker.  Her focus is advancing the Blue Growth agenda. She is working on her PhD and focusing on scientific information use in influencing/driving policy.  There is a need to bridge the gap between conceptual use of science and engagement of data support in creating policy.  There are “drivers, enablers and barriers in the information pathways” that must be identified in order to move forward.

Anton Ellenbroek followed Suzette and he informed us about iMarine Dataset Citation. www.i-marine.eu/
Data e-Infrastructure Initiative for Fisheries Management and Conservation of Marine Living Resources.
He briefly commented on copyright and ownership issues and the went on to show what is in iMarine.  The issues surrounding sharing data were addressed.  The next step is BlueBridge.  http://tinyurl.com/pu4pogl

Yay!! Break!  Stretch the legs and swill some coffee.

Next topic was OpenAIRE, an Open Access Publication infrastructure for Europe. https://www.openaire.eu  The presentation was delivered by Alessia Bardi.  She gave a summary of the history and the examples of what is contained and who is depositing.  They are also looking to BlueBridge.

Uwe Barg followed Alessia to present the project under development to collate Codes of Practice (COP) or Better Management Practices (BMP) for Aquaculture.  They have compiled 350 documents from around the world thus far. The ultimate goal is to make these documents available online on the FAO/FI site and also in Aquatic Commons.

Lunch!

Dorothy Barr reminded all paper and poster presenters to get their submissions to Dorothy in a timely manner!!

Michelle Leonard then introduced Stephen Alayon who explained the importance of fisheries in the Philippines and Asia in general.  He then discussed how marine and aquatic information is disseminated in Asia.  Stephen did a study on the topic.  He first did an inventory, then a survey of institutions.  His survey requested who was in charge of information and asked about knowledge/membership in IAMSLIC.  International partnerships for document exchange were also identified.  Last was information about ASFA and ASFA partnership and knowledge/interest in Aquatic Commons.  Stephen closed with a brief mention of interest in creating an Asian regional group.

Following Stephen, Rizia Begum told us about fisheries information users in Bangladesh.   Since 1984 fish production in Bangladesh has increased over 400%.  There are 100,000 seekers of fisheries information.  Rizia then gave us a breakdown of services provided. She recommended increase flow in information sharing, expansion of Aquatic Commons, and establishment of a regional repository.

Last of presentations for the day was Daryl Superio. Daryl did a survey of milkfish aquaculturists in certain areas of the Philippines.  His findings identified profile info about the respondents from age, education, knowledge of laws applicable to aquaculture, health and safety, and information seeking behavior.  Libraries are not utilized for daily information needs.  Most relied on personal communication for daily information needs. His conclusions discussed preferred methods of dissemination to support this important industry.

Break!

Business Meeting, whoo hoo!!!

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#iameura15

Tweet and Follow!!

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Submitted by Kris Anderson

Monday – 7 September 2015

Monday set aside for meetings.  EURASLIC held exec and business meetings.  There was also a meeting of librarians from Asia who are interested in creating an Asian regional group.
The IAMSLIC executive board met.
The opening reception on the 8th floor of FAO with stellar views of Rome!  Plenty of food, wine, and juice lubricated the networking amongst the attendees.  I did give a welcome to everyone and then proceeded to meet friends both new and old ( or should I say “established” in light of the greying of  some of us).

Tuesday – 8 September 2015
Let the conference begin!

Stephanie Ronan of Oceanus Library in Ireland is the official tweeter for the conference and wants everyone to tweet and follow:  #iameura15
Watch for her collation at the end of the conference!

Maria welcomed attendees and introduced Arni Mathiesen the Assistant Director-General of FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Department.

Arni welcomed IAMSLIC and talked about how influential the Fisheries Branch Library was in its long years of service.  He then spoke of ASFA and the importance of information dissemination.  He wished us all a productive meeting.

Guillermina then offered her welcome and a brief insight into the benefit of collaboration for an organization.

It was my job to present the fine points – bathrooms, wifi password – and urge speakers to speak slowly and clearly in respect to the varying levels of English understanding.  I then had the privilege to introduce the keynote speaker, Dr. Devin Bartley.

Dr Bartley is an inland fisheries and aquaculture specialist.  He was very persuasive in his arguments that inland fisheries have been overlooked/under researched as protein resources in food stability, monetary value, and land use.  Why isn’t dried fish included in disaster response kits?  He is an advocate of Scopus but I won’t hold that against him.  Devin is a strong advocate of libraries and information dissemination.  He also spoke to us in 2005 when we were last at FAO, I’d welcome him back anytime.

Linda Pikula followed Devin with a report on the collaboration between IAMSLIC and IODE GEMIM.  She was very good with the acronyms.

BREAK!  Great to stretch the legs and get a caffeine hit…  Espresso!!!  Brain is now awake!

Herded the cats back into the meeting room.  David Baca extended greetings and got back at it starting off with Marcel Brannemann talking about European Copyright.  He started by singing “Happy Birthday” and then explaining that even though it is an old song and everyone sings it, it doesn’t enter into public domain until next December.  Check out TheHagueDeclaration at www.thehaguedeclaration.com  and sign!

Marcel was followed by Sofija Konjevic of the Rudjer Boskovic Institute Library in Zagreb, Croatia.  Sofija is head of ILL.  She told us about a system they use in house for ILL which they call Send 2.0 with the number being the version they are currently using.  She demo-ed it for us as well.  The interface is very clean and intuitive.

Lunch!  Again good to get up and move around.  Buffet lunch with something for everyone.

Back to the meeting room and introduction of Ian Stewart by Marcel. Ian told us about what’s happening at Inter-Research.  IR is the publisher of venerated titles such as Marine Ecology Progress Series and has long been a strong supporter of IAMSLIC.

Next up the second and last vendor presentation by Anneli Meeder of NHBS.  NHBS started Natural History Book Service and now sells as many tools for naturalists as it sells books.  They have a small list of books for which they will take applications from conservation organizations anywhere in the world and the organizations selected will get a free copy of the book shipped to them at no charge.  Check their website www.nhbs.com and look for Gratis Book Scheme.  Check them out and help the small vendors in our Amazon world.

After the vendors we commenced with short poster presentations:
-Teresa Barriga Ramirez told us about starting an information literacy program at CICIMAR-IPN in Mexico
-Dang Hai Yen from Vietnam spoke of the FAO fishery publications importance for research support at the Vietnam Institute of Oceanography (VINO)
-Ningsheng Yang  of Chinese Academy of Fisheries Science has presented information about his institute and highlight his area of interest Information and Strategic Development Studies.  There are four areas of focus that you will need to look up in the proceedings when they come out.
-Saida Messaoudi shared the projects her institution INSTM in Tunisa is working on and how their affiliation with IAMSLIC and FAO and IODE have benefited them.
-Arame Keita showed how IAMSLIC has contributed to sustaining aquatic and marine resources management in Africa.
-Carolina Monti inspired us with 10 steps to remaining calm while starting a new career in a library without organization!

Marcel sang a song to break up the two poster sessions.  What a guy!!!

-Ingrid Catic started off the EURASLIC poster session with the poster she did with her colleague Anita Murusic on the successful partnership of an IOF library as an ASFA centre.
-Irina Iniaeva then told us about the evolution of the PINRO publications database.
-Malgorzata Grabowska-Popow reminded us all of the importance of respectful communication!
-Marina Mayer let us know about how her institution, Ruder Boskovic Institute Library has been promoting and participating in Open Access for a number of years.
-Natalya Kondratyeva shared on the information needs of scientists and researchers and the value of the Library in her poster From Information to Knowledge.
-Stephanie Ronan enthusiastically introduced herself and her library, the Oceanus Library at the Irish Marine Institute.
-Vladimira Bendova told us about library cooperation in support of fisheries research in the Czech Republic.
-Elitsa Petrova, in a poster she did with Daniela Klisarova, finished the session with a brief discussion of sustainable information management in the Institute of Fish Resources Library in Varna, Bulgaria

BREAK!!!

I got another espresso and then spent some time perusing the posters.  They were all quite impressive!  There are some very talented and brilliant members in IAMSLIC.

The last two presentations of the day were introduced by Steve Watkins.
First up was Doctor-Doc: an Open Source Tool to Handle Literature Requests.  Olivia Diehr started off with an amusing discription of a researcher’s approach to a librarian.  She then passed to Christina Fromm who demonstrated the interface of Doctor-Doc.  Back to Olivia to explain the implementation of the program which took her about 20 hours of work.   http://www.doctor-doc.com/
Their researchers are quite pleased!

The last presenter of the day was Bart Goossens who explained the (R)evolution Towards an Open Research Institute at Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO).  They had some directives set in 2009 they are still striving to complete.  They have been inhibited by licensing and copyright.  Changes have been implemented and they are moving forward with some impressive advances and they have some fun data available to play with.

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