My Participation at ILI Events

Background

The ILI (Internet Librarian International) conference is celebrating its 20th anniversary next week. In a recent post entitled The ILI Conference – Looking at the History I announced the availability of a search interface to all 20 ILI conference web sites which might be of interest to those with an interest in the growth and development of use of the Internet in libraries (including public and academic libraries) as revealed by sessions given at this high-profile international conference.

As a long-standing speaker at – and supporter of – the ILI conference I felt next week’s celebrations provides an opportunity for me to reflect on my involvement at the event.

It seems that I’ve given 35 talks at ILI conference and details of the talks, with links to the session abstracts and slides, given in the following table.

Reflections

Content

Standards

The first ILI conference, jointly badged with the LibTech conference, was held on 29-31 March 1999 at Olympia. London (with pre-conference workshop taking place on the Sunday, before the conference started).  My talk at this conference was on “New Standards on the Web” and described emerging new standards being developed by W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium), including XLink, XPointer and HTTP/NG.

I revisited my interest in standards at ILI 2003 with a talk on “HTML Is Dead! A Web Standards Update”  which suggested that HTML may be replaced by a new family of XML-based data formats such as SMIL, SVG and MathML with XHTML providing a migration to this new environment.

I suspect that many readers will not be familiar with standards such as SMIL, SVG and HTTP/NG – and these failed to have any impact at the time. A recognition for a more pragmatic approach to use of open standards in digital library development programmes was described at ILI 2005 in a talk on “Facing The Challenges Of A Standards-Based Approach To Web Development” which stated that “open standards may be difficult or expensive to deploy. Indeed open standards may even fail to gain widespread market acceptance.”

My final talk on standards was given at ILI 2009. A talk on “Standards Are Like Sausages: Exploiting the Potential of Open Standards” provided examples of failed open standards, explored some of the reasons for such failures, described approaches which can help organisations to identify successful open standards and provided a framework to support the selection of solutions which may not make use of open standards (and back then proprietary applications such as Skype were frowned on by some when open standards such as VOIP and SIP were available).

Web Magazines

The early ILI conferences provided an opportunity to share UKOLN’s experience in providing the Ariadne e-jounal. A talk on “Electronic Magazines: Issues In Implementation” was given at ILI 2000 and at ILI 2001 I co-facilitated a half-day workshop on Publishing Web Magazines, e-Journals & Webzines with Bernadette Dally, the Ariadne editor at the time.

Mobile Devices

At ILI 2002 I gave  talk on New Devices And The Web. Interestingly. although the talk mentioned mobile phones and PDAs (remember devices such as the Palm?) the main focus on the talk was the mobile eBook reader.

Web Accessibility

My main research area of interest has been in web accessibility. At ILI 2003 I gave a talk which asked  “Web Site Accessibility: Too Difficult To Implement?“. At ILI 2005 I facilitated a half-day workshop with Lawrie Phipps on “Web Design: Usability, Accessibility and Interoperability“.

Web 2.0 and the Social Web

The ILI 2004 conference saw my first talk about the Social Web – and talks on this topic were given every subsequent year until 2010, with the exception of ILI 2008 when I was the event coincided with a conference I was speaking at at the National Library of Singapore.

At ILI 2005 in a talk on Beyond E-mail! Wikis, Blogs and Social Networking Software I introduced some of the key applications of the social web and at ILI 2004 in a talk on Email Must Die! I argued that tools such as blogs and instant messaging services could provide advantages over email lists. The same year I highlighted some limitations of social web services in a talk which described Folksonomies – The Sceptic’s View.

At ILI 2006 I provided  Reflections On Personal Experiences In Using Wikis. The following year at ILI 2007 I gave a talk on  The Blogging Librarian: Avoiding Institutional Inertia and co-facilitated a half-day masterclass on Using Blogs Effectively Within Your Library with Kara Jones.

After missing  ILI 2008 in 2009 I co-facilitated a workshop on Using Blogs Effectively Within Your Library with Marieke Guy. Finally at ILI 2010 I co-facilitated a  workshop on Effective Use of the Social Web in Organisations with Ann Chapman.

Impact

By ILI 2011 my interests had moved on to evidence gathering and impact assessment and at that event I gave a talk on “Monitoring and Maximising Organisational Impact“. At ILI 2012 I gave a talk on “Monitoring and Maximising Organisational Impact”

Predicting Trends

My most recent area of interest was in predicting trends. At ILI 2009 I took part in the final panel session at the event which review some of the “Top Technology Trends for Libraries and Information Professionals“. At ILI 2011 I gave a talk on “What’s on the Technology Horizon?“; at ILI 2012 a talk on “Making Sense of the Future” and at ILI 2015 a talk which asked “What are the Major Technology Trends that will Impact Library Services and their Users?“.

These talks were based on work of the Jisc-funded Jisc Observatory project which was provided by UKOLN and Cetis. A methodology for predicting trends was developed which was described in a paper on “What Next for Libraries? Making Sense of the Future“. The methodology was used at a number of workshops which were delivered at ILI conferences. At ILI 2013 I co-facilitated a full-day workshop on “Future Technologies and Their Applications” with Tony Hirst and at ILI 2015 , again with Tony, we ran a half-day workshop on “Preparing for the Future: Technological Challenges and Beyond”

Conclusions

The ILI conferences provided a valuable forum for disseminating the Jisc-funded work I was involved with during my 17 years worked at UKOLN for my core activities of standards-related work, web accessibility and use of emerging web technologies together with additional project activities. It is interesting to look back at a significant part of one’s professional activities over an extended period of time.  And I must admit that I am looking forward to hearing Phil Bradley’s talk on “20 years in 20 minutes” which will conclude this year’s ILI conference.

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The Data

No.	Event	Talk	Notes
1	ILI 1999 / Libtech	New Standards on the Web	Talk in Session D4 – Update on Standards for Web Authoring
2	ILI 2000	Electronic Magazines: Issues In Implementation	Talk in Session B-5 (note talk given by Brian Kelly and not Bernadette Daly)
3		Finding Resources On Your Web Site	Talk in Session H4
4	ILI 2001	Beyond Design: Advertising on Your Web Site	Talk in Session B203 – Top 10 Navigation Tips
5		WebWizards’ Roundtable	Talk in Session B4: Webmasters’ Roundtable
6		Publishing Web Magazines, e-Journals & Webzines	Half-day post conference workshop (with Marieke Napier)
7	ILI 2002	Benchmarking Of Library Web Sites	Talk in Session B202: WEBWIZARDS’ SYMPOSIUM – Designing Sites That Work Well
8		New Devices And The Web	Talk in Session Session B301 – New Devices and the Web
9		Building 21st Century Web Sites	Talk given in Exhibition Hall
10	ILI 2003	Web Site Accessibility: Too Difficult To Implement?	Talk given in Session B105
11		HTML Is Dead! A Web Standards Update	Talk.
12	ILI 2004	Quality Assurance For Web Sites	Half-day pre-conference Workshop 4: Quality Assurance for Web Sites
13		Beyond E-mail! Wikis, Blogs and Social Networking Software	Talk in Track B — Optimising Technology in Libraries
14		Panel Session – Optimising Technology in Libraries	Talk in Track B — Optimising Technology in Libraries (panel discussion)
15	ILI 2005	A Holistic Approach To Web Usability, Accessibility And Interoperability	Half-day pre-conference Workshop 4 — Web Design: Usability, Accessibility and Interoperability (with Lawrie Phipps)
16		Email Must Die!	Talk in Session A101 – Digital Tools for Collaboration
17		Folksonomies – The Sceptic’s View	Talk in Session B105: Folksonomies: Community Metadata?
18		Facing The Challenges Of A Standards-Based Approach To Web Development	Talk in Session B203 – Using Open Standards and Open Source Software
19	ILI 2006	Reflections On Personal Experiences In Using Wikis	Talk in Session A103 – Wikis and Social Software (note not included in programme)
20		Web 2.0 and Library 2.0: Addressing Institutional Barriers	Talk in Session A101 – Setting the Stage for 2.0
21	ILI 2007	The Blogging Librarian: Avoiding Institutional Inertia	Talk in Session A105 – Blogging Inertia and 2.0 Scepticism
22		Using Blogs Effectively Within Your Library	Half-day masterclass M3 — Using Blogs Effectively within Your Organisation (with Kara Jones)
23	ILI 2009	Using Blogs, Microblogs and Social Networks Effectively Within Your Library	Half-day pre-conference workshop W5 – Using Blogs, Microblogs and Social Networks Effectively Within Your Library (with Marieke Guy)
24		Standards Are Like Sausages: Exploiting the Potential of Open Standards	Talk in Session B105 – Open Standards
25		Reflections on the Library of the Future	Talk in Session A201 – Reflections on the Library of the Future
26		Top Technology Trends for Libraries and Information Professionals	Closing panel session on Top Technology Trends for Libraries and Information Professionals
27	ILI 2010	Effective Use of the Social Web in Organisations	Half-day pre-conference workshop (with Ann Chapman)
28		Monitoring and Maximising Organisational Impact	Talk in Session C102 – Monitoring and Maximising Organisational Impact
29	ILI 2011	What’s on the Technology Horizon?	Talk in Session A101 – What’s on the Technology Horizon?
30	ILI 2012	What Does The Evidence Tell Us About Institutional Repositories?	Talk in Session B203 – Evidence and impact (with Jenny Delasalle)
31		Making Sense of the Future	Talk in Session A101 – Future technology: stay ahead, stay agile
32	ILI 2013	Future Technologies and Their Applications	Full-day pre-conference workshop (with Tony Hirst)
33		Digital Life Beyond the Institution	Talk in Session A104 – Being smart with technology – creating something from nothing
34	ILI 2014	What are the Major Technology Trends that will Impact Library Services and their Users?	Talk in Session B101 – Technology futures
35	ILI 2015	Preparing for the Future: Technological Challenges and Beyond	Half-day pre-conference workshop (with Tony Hirst)

 

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