41st Annual IAMSLIC Conference and 16th Biennial EURASLIC Conference Report Day 1-2

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.

September 8, 2015 · Filed under Announcements

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