On 5-7 February I attended the International Digital Curation Conference in Melbourne. ​​

The conference consisted of two days of presentations, panels, lightning talks, and posters. This was followed by an unconference day designed to promote informal discussion and networking on topics suggested by the participants on the day. 

More details if you'd like to follow up:

• Conference program (includes links to slides and also collaborative notes taken by attendees)
• Unconference ideas pad (also includes links to collaborative notes) 
• Twitter #idcc19  

This was the first time this conference had been held in the Global South and it attracted an audience of over 250 participants from a wide range of countries. I have reviewed abstracts for this conference for quite a few years so I was really chuffed to finally get to experience it! The conference was very friendly and it was a chance to reconnect with many former colleagues as well as to meet some people face-to-face that I only know from Twitter. 

One of the things that I enjoyed the most about the conference was the large number of archivists attending and the many archives-related presentations. I started my career as an information professional in archives and have written previously about the value for librarians of developing a deeper understanding of archival theories and practices, particularly when working in areas such as research data management. The conference brought home to me my own need to refresh and update my professional knowledge of what is happening in the broader world of digital preservation and cultural collections in organisations other than universities and libraries (i.e. I need to get out more!)

My top three papers (though it is really hard to choose just three – I encourage you to explore the full program) were:

Developing Culturally Competent Data Publication Resources

Ryan Stoker and Jen McLean, University of Sydney

This paper received the top paper award from the program committee based on reviewer feedback.

Ryan and Jen talked about the process they are going through to revise their library guide on data publication in light of frameworks emerging from the National Centre for Cultural Competence at USyd. This has involved so far self-assessment by library staff of their own perspectives and biases, addition of indigenous cultural & intellectual property rights (including links to AIATSIS ethics guidelines), and inclusion of indigenous community considerations in sections on sensitive data.

The lessons learned are feeding into other projects including the institutional repository redevelopment and a university digital asset management system (DAMS). They are reviewing digital collections priorities, exploring new kinds of metadata (such as traditional knowledge labels) and ensuring licensing / access information is captured appropriately.

Progress in Research Data Service development: An international survey of university libraries  | Slides 

Mary Anne Kennan, Charles Sturt University

Mary Anne presented on the results of the latest round of international surveys conducted from 2014 onwards across a range of countries including the UK, Ireland, Australia, NZ, Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands. The results will be published in a journal article soon.

This presentation helped me to see where my place of work is currently sitting compared to peers in terms of our service provision, organisational structures, drivers, skills gaps and other challenges. Mary Anne and her co-investigators have also come up with a really interesting maturity model for research data management services.

Human Security Informatics, Global Grand Challenges and Digital Curation

Anne Gilliland, University of North Carolina

This was a very thought-provoking paper on emerging work in Human Security Informatics (HSI). HSI is focused on how current digital infrastructures fail to meet the needs of many vulnerable communities due to systemic inequities and inaccessibilities, and lack of institutional will, coordination and capacity.

There are many cases when records and archives are used as mechanisms of oppression and appropriation, and where vulnerable communities (e.g. refugees, abuse survivors, those affected by natural disasters) must interact with records but may have no “bureaucratic literacy” or the relevant language skills to do this.

The case study presented related to the needs of displaced populations that are being explored through the Refugee Rights in Records Project. Given the current tone of political discussions in Australia right now this was very timely (but also really depressing). ​

​Three practical things I plan to do as a result of attending this conference are:

1. Develop a digital preservation strategy for my institution's repository by end of 2020
2. Explore connections between our repository and the Analysis and Policy Observatory to enable our research to be more accessible to public policy audiences outside of academia
3. Explore the role that data packaging transfer tools (such as the Cloudstor Collections service from AARNet) might have in new data repository workflows. ​

Recently I was funded through a Queensland University Libraries Office of Cooperation (QULOC) Professional Development Scholarship to attend the Software Licensing and Asset Management conference (SLAM). I am very grateful to QULOC for this opportunity.

This annual event is organised by the University Software Licensing Community, a community of practice under the banner of the Council of Australasian Directors of IT (CAUDIT).The 2018 event in Brisbane attracted around 50 attendees, including procurement specialists from CAUDIT, delegates from universities (from areas including IT, finance/procurement, risk and audit) and vendor representatives.

The varied program included keynotes relating to strategic trends such as artificial intelligence and cybersecurity; case studies from CAUDIT member organisations of innovative approaches to software asset management and licensing; and vendor/sponsor negotiation updates and product showcase.

Why I attended

I’m responsible for managing my library’s portfolio of software applications, and there are significant licensing costs associated with this. Over the past three years, my team has conducted a rolling series of service reviews to ensure we are making the most of our systems, and I have more actively negotiated with vendors to try to achieve containment of costs in this area.

I wanted to further explore the methods and practices used by other professionals in the higher education sector. In applying to QULOC for funding, I said in my application:

University libraries benefit significantly from collaborative approaches to procurement of library resources, but we do not commonly apply similar approaches to software licensing. While the CEIRC (CAUL Electronic Information Resources Consortium) Terms of Reference do not preclude discussion of technical infrastructure, in practice the focus is strongly on information resources. As CAUL Statistics bundle technology costs with other operational costs, there is a lack of even basic information about software spend in libraries across the sector, however this should be estimated at a minimum of $10M and may be much higher. Consortial models for library resource purchasing may not transfer directly to software, but there is little professional discourse about what other collaborative approaches could be taken. Becoming more aware of best practice in this area would enable me to better take advantage of the expertise located elsewhere in my own organisation and also to promote different ways of doing things through my professional networks, including the new CAUDIT Library IT Community of Practice that I recently established. 

I will be reporting back to QULOC with a written report and in a webinar to be held in about a month (stay tuned for details). In the meantime here are a few key takeaways.

Takeaway 1: There are many similarities in the roles, organisational contexts, and issues faced by library staff and our counterparts managing software assets. 

Both groups:

• provide resources/tools to staff and students that are essential to support the core business of universities in education, research and administration
• are perceived as being cost centres and must increasingly communicate the value they provide to senior stakeholders and demonstrate alignment with strategic agendas
• must ensure compliance with law and contractual obligations, in environments where users have ready access to “shadow” channels that provide quicker and easier solutions than official channels
• manage portfolios of information assets with complex access management requirements for different cohorts (e.g. alumni, adjunct academic staff, industry affiliates), and 
• deal with similar market conditions and vendor practices, including sole- and limited-supplier procurement, unsustainable pricing, and deliberately opaque licensing terms and conditions.

Given these similarities it would make sense for library staff who procure and manage software and resources to expand their informal networks to include software licensing colleagues, and to be aware of and contribute to best practice across their organisation as a whole.

Takeaway 2: Usage statistics for software, just as for e-resources, can be used to drive decision-making, inform negotiations with vendors, and contain costs. 

SLAM introduced me to the concept of licence optimisation through some interesting case studies.

On returning to work, I checked with my team on concurrent licence usage data for one of our bigger applications. This identified possible cost savings that could be achieved through licence reduction and configuration changes (e.g. by reducing the length of timeouts).

Unfortunately the terms of the three-year contract we have entered into for that product favour the vendor and will probably not allow us to achieve these savings. However, I will now be more aware for future renewals and new contracts of the need to negotiate an annual change in licence numbers as our business needs change (“true-up / true-down” in the language of the software licensing specialists – yes, they have their own jargon too!).

Takeaway 3: In other areas, vendors are being challenged to justify the value of “support and maintenance” costs on top of software licensing. 

A number of SLAM participants were critical of the value for money provided by annual agreements for software maintenance and support.

I am keen to find out from our software licensing support team what alternative models are being explored for non-library software. We already have one supplier who operates under a pay-as-you-go support credits arrangement that provides total transparency about the time and cost for each support ticket. It would be interesting to see how prevalent this model is and whether this could be rolled out with other library vendors.

I am not optimistic this would be possible in the short term. I imagine our vendors will be reluctant to give up one of their biggest cash cows. It is definitely something to feed into future procurement processes and renewal negotiations though. ​

Takeaway 4: There are untapped opportunities for libraries to collaborate on software procurement and licensing, but new structures and skills are needed to progress these. 

While strategic procurement was not as much of a focus at SLAM as I had hoped, I nevertheless gained a new appreciation for the level of cooperation amongst universities in purchasing all kinds of software to support education, teaching and university administration.

As the next two to three years will (hopefully) involve some important shifts in the library systems market, the time is right for university libraries to develop medium-term technology roadmaps and to start collective considering how procurement processes could reduce costs (including the burden of large-scale tender processes), increase transparency, and open up new forms of collaboration (including shared systems, an approach taken in other jurisdictions including Wales, the US and Hong Kong).

As mentioned above there is currently a lack of basic information about how much Australian university libraries are collectively spending on software. One recommendation I will make in my report to QULOC is for the QULOC ICT Working Group annual survey of library systems to incorporate some new questions (carefully worded to ensure commercial-in-confidence agreements are not breached) to provide the community with some baseline data to support further work in this area. 

The event provided an opportunity to reflect on the enduring value of previous training I have been supported to undertake (in particular, the CAUL Negotiation and Influencing Skills workshop, which I have highly recommended before) and to consider building on this with more professional development focused on procurement skills. 

Attending this event also reinforced my commitment to the concept of a Library IT Community of Practice operating outside of the vendor-driven user groups for major products. While there are also connections that need to be made with CAUL programs, CAUDIT structures usefully facilitate cross-pollination with other technology-focused communities of practice, not just in software licensing but also in areas such as IT security, enterprise architecture and project management. 

Last night I was a  panellist at an ALIA Queensland event on blogging for library and information professionals. My co-panellists were Alisa Howlett (www.acrystelle.com) and Amy Walduck (Pineapple Glam), and the session was chaired by Michelle Hughes.

The event was streamed on Facebook Live and is available to watch if you missed it last night. My raw notes for the event are below. Not all of these thoughts made it into the panel discussion, which was a lot more free-range!



My main takeaway from the event is that there is no one 'right' way to approach blogging. Although the three of us had similar motivations for blogging (sharing with others, contributing to professional discourse, maintaining a credible online presence), the platforms we used, the ways we come up with ideas, our writing styles, and our processes from inspiration through to a final product were all totally different.

The panel discussion is making me re-think my own blog and plan some improvements to it, including possibly moving to another platform, re-theming, paying more attention to visual communication (thanks, Amy!) and considering ways to highlight popular or curated posts better (thanks, Alisa!)

Tell us about your blog - is it professional or personal?

Mostly professional, though over time I have probably started to provide a more personal take on professional issues.

I know from feedback from readers that posts that I felt were verging on the too-personal have actually resonated the most. By nature I am a private person, so sharing thoughts about things like impostor syndrome, the negative impacts of being a perfectionist, and being ambivalent about stepping into a management role does not come easily. However the thoughts and feelings that I have shared reflect my experience of the complexity of professional life as a librarian in the 21st century, and having people respond with recognition and empathy has helped me to become more comfortable with opening up in that way.

Reasons for blogging and what you hope to get out of it?

I had actually forgotten this before I started preparing for the panel, but I started regular blogging for a work project well before I had my own blog. The funding agency required the project to communicate and it was free and easy to set up a Blogger blog to do that. The project team collectively wrote thirteen posts over about a year.

Once I had jumped into blogging I realised that it was a great way to write regular shorter pieces on topics that were of interest to me and hopefully others. I liked the immediacy and the non-scholarly nature of it, which made it easier to present more provocative or ambiguous viewpoints.

Do you set goals for how much time you dedicate?

I don’t have specific goals around writing time but I do include a blog writing goal in my performance plan with my supervisor. For the past two years my goal has been to write six posts a year so it is not a particularly hard one to achieve.

I participated in #blogjune for a couple of years, where the goal was to write a blog post a day for the month of June. It is intense but fun! I did write a post a day one year and a post a week the following year. Now I just stick to my own not-very-regular schedule.

I have been along to the ALIA Shut Up and Write sessions and used some of those for blogging. It was great to have some external impetus!

It’s probably important to note that there is also non-writing work involved in maintaining a blog, such as:

• Sourcing images (with appropriate licences for re-use, of course!)
• Setting up and renewing your domain name
• Responding to comments (including dealing with spam, which is mostly filtered but not always)
• Keeping static pages up to date and fixing broken links. 

Do you have a specific theme/subject you stick to?

Most of my posts are about career or professional development issues of one kind or another.

I sometimes use the NewCardigan Glam Blog Club theme as a starter.

At times I’ve used my blog for a 'behind the scenes' look at other people’s jobs. I find it really fun to do Q&As with colleagues that have jobs that are maybe a bit mysterious to other people. When research data management was still emerging, I did a couple of Q&As on that. Last year I did another series featuring colleagues of mine that include non-coding IT skills as part of their professional practice.

I’ve also used my blog as a place to publish submissions that I have made on industry issues, such as ALIA’s publishing strategy consultation and a letter to my MP about the de-funding of Trove.

I also often include references to further reading. Sometimes I wonder if a bibliography is unnecessarily nerdy, but a lot of my ideas for writing come from what I'm reading. Sometimes I like to review or reflect on the literature in a bit more depth, rather than just sharing a link on Twitter. Acknowledging that inspiration and encouraging others to do more professional reading is something I am always happy to do.

How do you keep motivated to write?

I don’t have to try that hard to stay motivated. I usually enjoy the writing and editing process. Unlike more academic publishing you also get the satisfaction of hitting the ‘publish’ button yourself when you are done and not having to wait months and months to see it appear in a journal.

I don’t really force myself to write now if I don’t feel I have something to say that people would be interested in. I would rather write fewer more substantive pieces on things that I hope will really resonate with people.

How do you attract people to read your blog?

I usually include the web address for my blog in my biography for events and publications and in my social media profiles.

Twitter is the main channel I use to promote specific posts. Three quarters of the traffic to my blog comes directly from Twitter. I also sometime link to my posts on LinkedIn.

I am pretty sure a significant amount of my Twitter traffic comes from the Aus GLAM Blog Bot, which autotweets my new posts several times on the day of publication. One thing that I have noticed is that the time of publication makes a difference to the size of the audience, so having a notification go out a few times at different times of the day really helps.

I try to provide reasonably descriptive titles. Looking at the stats for my blog, I can definitely see that a more provocative headline draws people in.

I’m not much of a visual communicator, but I do try to include at least one image in each post to make it more visually interesting.

Has blogging improved and made you feel more confident in your writing and is it a completely different style?

I’ve always enjoyed writing and I did a journalism major as part of my first degree. Although I realised quickly that journalism wasn’t going to be a career path for me, news writing training provided me with a good grounding in non-academic writing.

I’ve also done writing-for-the-web training with different employers, and that’s been helpful too. I would recommend writing-for-the-web training for anyone in the library sector as the principles will make all your writing better.

Blogging is different from other professional writing that I do. Scholarly writing requires a lot more time and a lot more effort to comply with style guides, referencing systems, and the general requirements such as including a literature review. If I am submitting to a journal or conference proceedings, I would usually run a draft past a writing mentor or peer reader when doing that kind of writing, as the standard is very high.

I also have to do a lot of business writing at work e.g. reports and project documents. There are a lot of similarities between blogging and that kind of writing, in terms of keeping paragraphs short, using plain English, and making use of headings and bullet points to structure your writing for easy reading by busy people.

Any interesting connections or opportunities that have come out of a blog post you wrote?

Last year I published a series of posts based on a presentation that I gave at the New Librarians Symposium. One of the things I showcased in that series was the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA), a widely-used IT competency framework.

I received an email from one of the senior people at the SFIA Foundation saying that they found my application of SFIA to the library world interesting to read. As a result of that series of posts, I also had a number of students and recent graduates get in touch with me via Twitter, which was really gratifying and expanded my Twitter network quite a bit.

What tips would you give to someone who is wanting to start a blog?

I would encourage anyone starting out to think more about the audience than about yourself. Rather than thinking about writing as self-expression (what do I want to say?), think about what your audience needs or wants, and what new or interesting perspective you can bring that no-one else is currently providing.

You could try guest blogging or writing short pieces for newsletters like ALIA's InCite first to get a feel for the effort that is required. It is also possible to publish pieces via LinkedIn now; this could be a good way to get started on a smaller scale with your existing professional network.

Always be ethical and professional and make it explicit somewhere on your site that your views do not represent those of your employer. Being aware of any formal social media policies that your organisation may have is really important, as these policies can differ quite a bit depending on where you work.