speaking

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I include slides and videos of some presentations below. Slides are often a poor record of a presentation, especially when used as prompts rather than as full records. But they can be useful. Of course, I will sometimes give various evolving versions of a similar presentation.

I also include some videos, although I cannot bear to watch myself in rerun!  

Recent slides on figshare

Collection directions and the relational library

A presentation at the University of Kentucky Libraries. Outlines transition from ‘collections-based’ library to the relational library. Discusses trends with collections in this context. Talks about collective collections, facilitated collections, and inside out collections. Also discusses how colle…

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Consortial observations: Orbis Cascade Alliance retreat

A presentation to the Orbis Cascade Alliance. Discusses some dynamics of library consortia, some factors involved in developing ‘one collection’, and other shared service areas.

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The academic library and the relational turn

Libraries have transitioned from collections to services. We are now seeing another transition, as the relational turn becomes important. The library is positioned in a dense network of partnerships, services, and interactions, and evolves in coordination with its users. This is especially important…

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Evolving library discovery: 10 directions

Library discovery layers are now mature, constructed from commodity systems and data. However, if one thinks about discovery practice and requirements there are many areas that remain underserved. This presentation discusses 10 gaps in how we think about discovery, and suggest some steps that wou…

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Workflow is the new content: presentation at the digital initiatives symposium, U of San Diego

The digital environment makes workflow support more important, as activities, content, and communications are tied together on the network in various combinations. Think of the interesting mix of social and functional capacities in an application like Strava, used by athletes to track activity and…

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One score and then: systemwide library contexts. Closing plenary address, CNI San Diego, 29 March 2022.

A discussion of 20 years of academic library issues in the US from a personal perspective.

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Collection Directions

This is a presentation presented at Informatie aan Zee in Belgium and in modified form at Bibliostar in Italy. It discusses some Pandemic Effects and how various collections trends are being affected.

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College, consortium, collaboration, collective collection

A presentation to the Board of Directors of Boston Library Consortium. Although library collaboration is common and many libraries collaborate through many organizations, it is a relatively unexamined aspect of library work. Many descriptions exist, but little from the point of view of organization …

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Pandemic effects and collection directions

Beyond the scramble of the current situation, universities will be looking at long term pandemic effects. This clearly has implications for libraries, as they cleave more closely to university strategies. This presentation looks at some pandemic effects, and considers how it will likely accelerate s…

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Collection directions, collaboration, and pandemic effects

This presentation discusses how libraries are optimizing and pluralizing their collections for an increasingly online post-pandemic environment. Versions were presented at the Mobius Annual Conference (1 June 2020) and the Orbis Cascade Webinar (17 June 2020).

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Rediscovering discovery: three general examples

This presentation describes three trends in library discovery, tying them to broad pandemic effects. It was presented in a panel at the CNI Spring 2020 meeting.

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Library consortia: scale, opportunity, challenge

This presentation describes some of the dynamics, challenges and opportunities for consortia. It was presented at the ICOLC meeting in Vancouver (8 April 2019).

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Operationalizing the collective collection: a case study of consolidation vs autonomy

This a presentation about operationalizing the collective collection. It focuses some of the decisions and frameworks that could underlie deployment of a shared approach. It is based on work done in partnership with the BTAA.

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The Irish presence in the published record

Uses the pattern of global library holdings as represented in WorldCat to explore the characteristics of the Irish published record. The most popular works and authors. It is an example of distant reading.

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Recent videos

Note on slide presentation: I debated whether to use Slideshare or figshare to present slides. Slideshare seemed to peak a while ago. I don't know why it did not last within the Linkedin family and we will see what Scribd do with it now that they own it. It has the advantage of a somewhat more easy to use embed feature. However, it is also a little forlorn in appearance and clearly has not received a lot of development effort in recent times. figshare, of course, is a very different type of service in terms of scope and demographic. It also has quite a new feel. I thought I would go with it for a while, although I am not embedding the view. I think clicking through to figshare is a better experience.

Updated note on slide presentation (9 March 2023): Slideshare is indeed much improved from a UI and experience point of view. However, YouTube-style, there are ads imposed periodically in the slide show so I have not gone back to it. Figshare does not do a great job with the formatting. Apparently it uses Office Libre to render the presentations, so in a call to support they advise using PDF for presentations. Sort of defeats the purpose? Of course, as one is not a paying customer in either case there will be a compromise.