Alongside our member’s presentations we are happy to announce that we have two prominent keynoters at the coming IGeLU conference in Haifa.
The event will be opened by Marshall Breeding, Director for Innovative Technologies and Research at Vanderbilt University , who will be providing his view of the changing landscape of library technologies in a talk entitled The New Frontier: Libraries seek new technology platforms for end-user discovery, collection management, and preservation.
In it he will be exploring how many libraries find themselves involved with content areas outside of traditional collections, including the need to manage or archive scientific data sets, and to deliver new types of services in support of research, teaching, or other strategic activities. He will look at how traditional automation tools increasingly fail to meet expectations in this context, and will discuss some of the issues and challenges involved as new technologies emerge to address the changed realities of libraries today.
Wrapping up the conference will be Professor Sheizaf Rafaeli, Director of the Sagy Center for Internet Research, and Head of the Graduate School of Management (Business Administration) at the University of Haifa, who will be presenting a talk on Reading, Writing, and Making a Living: the changing business models of publishing.
Prof. Rafeli will be exploring what the economy of publishing, libraries, reading and writing will look like in the future, as the rise of electronic publishing changes the nature of access, search, delivery, and distribution. The talk will attempt to sketch the parameters of the problem and raise the questions. Does technology play the role of the villain? Will it possibly provide answers? Is the net a trap for culture looking into the future, or its panacea?
We hope you’ll find these thought-provoking and engaging!
Jirka Kende