http://bibliotecnica.upc.edu/LIBER2011/content/call-papers

The Programme Committee invites original presentations and posters on one or more of the following topics.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
•    Opening up access to content through (mass) digitisation
•    Innovative business models for dissemination of scientific data
•    Measuring the impact of scholarly communication
•    User behaviour and the users’ demand for services
•    Enhancing the resource discovery experience
•    Advancing information literacy and skills
•    Digital preservation
•    Mobile devices and applications
•    New roles and partnerships
•    Marketing research libraries

We invite submissions of:
•    Research papers presenting theoretical solutions, but with a clear illustration on how these solutions can be applied
•    Position papers presenting opinions on some aspect of practice, or describing work that is still in progress, but sufficiently mature to warrant attention
•    Experiences and case studies specifying requirements, challenges or opportunities
•    Best practices

The Programme Committee will select abstracts from these countries on basis of the following criteria:
•    Relevance for the call for papers
•    Originality
•    Level of innovation
•    Impact on the wider library community
•    Quality of the abstract

Instructions for submitting abstracts
•    Please use the following link  to submit the abstracts of your paper or poster. Deadline for submission of abstracts is 31 January 2011.
•    Abstract length should not exceed 2500 characters. Please note that the language of the conference will be English, and therefore the committee will only accept submissions in this language
•    All submitted abstracts will be peer-reviewed by at least two reviewers
•    A selection of full papers will be published in LIBER Quarterly, the LIBER e-only Open Access journal. Authors, who speak at the LIBER Conference, will be expected to supply full papers for publication in this journal

LIBER Award for Library Innovation
The 3 most innovative abstracts will receive the LIBER Award for Library Innovation. The prize consists of the opportunity to present the winning paper/poster at the LIBER Annual Conference 2011 in Barcelona, Spain, free registration, plus travelling expenses and accommodation.
LIBER Award for Library Innovation

LIBER Annual Conference Fund
The Programme Committee will select 10 abstracts from libraries in Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Moldova, Portugal, Romania, Turkey and Ukraine and reward them with a grant of 300 euro and free registration for the LIBER Annual Conference. 
LIBER Annual Conference Fund

The joint hosts are Aarhus University and the State and University Library of Denmark.

The Conference keynote speakers will be Clifford Lynch (Coalition for Networked Information, USA), Heather Morrison (Simon Fraser University, Canada), Lee Dirks (Microsoft), Jon Orwant (Google), and Brian Lavoie (OCLC).

Places for the Master Classes are limited and will be distributed on a first come first served basis.

Have a look at the latest version of the Conference Programme and register today via http://www.liber2010.eu/

LIBER, the Association of European Research Libraries, invites papers and posters for its 2010 Conference on the theme of

 “Re-Inventing the Library. The challenges of the new information environment”.

More information: https://togather.eu/handle/123456789/409

Twitter

The fantastic news is that I have already 103 tweets. I’m very proud of this This important increase is the result of an experiment. Last Tuesday and Wednesday I participated in the Ticer summer course at Tilburg University.  As usually I started to take notes on my laptop, in Word. I’m always surprised to see how special this is for quite a lot of colleagues who still write down their notes on paper. A few years ago, I decided to abandon paper for taking notes and it has really become a habit.  I wouldn’t want to miss it anymore since it is so much easier (and lighter to carry) when you only produce digital information. More people should do that.

Anyway, shy as I am, it was certainly not my intention to start tweeting (my wife says that BBC says that this is the correct verb) at the Ticer summer course.  Until I started talking during coffee break with a colleague from Groningen who was tweeting. She told me the secret code #09carte and convinced me to join her.  

Tweeting, like all kinds of data sharing (which was actually the theme of the Ticer summer course), is OK for most people if they know that others are doing the same. Nobody wants to expose himself to others for free . 

So after coffee break I started tweeting, and I decided not to make notes in Word anymore.

I actually only really discovered twittering since I heard it was one of the only tools for communication about the political situation in Iran after the elections in 2009. I found it amazing that twittering was so powerful and so accessible for all of us at the same time. After that I registered at twitter.com and I followed the twittering at the LIBER Annual Conference in Toulouse this summer. I didn’t contribute myself and there was not really a lot of activity (next year in Aarhus we should do better!), but I learned from it that twittering could be used in almost the same way as I was taking notes on the conference in Word, but with the advantage of course that twittering allows you to share your ideas with your colleagues immediately.

I like twittering: it’s easy,  quick and you have the impression to communicate, not to write. Writing a blog just takes much more time. Of course, I’m not the first person to write about the difference between both mediums: an enormous amount of articles on this can be found on the internet. Just a few interesting examples:

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/03/12/blogging-vs-twitter-a-few-random-thoughts-on-the-two-mediums/

http://www.blogbloke.com/twitter-vs-blogging/

http://www.onlinefandom.com/archives/blogs-vs-twitter-its-the-interactivity/

And so many other articles you’ll find through Google (“twittering vs blogging”). All very fascinating! And good material for my blog

The picture at the beginning of this post was made last weekend at the Gentsche Fieste (Feasts of Gent). As every year, a great event!