Libraries, archives and museums join OCLC event in London
A wet and grey London was the location of a one day event on library, archive and museum collaboration, sponsored and hosted by OCLC and the Chartered Institute of Librarians and Information Professionals (CILIP), on 15th September 2009. The briefing drew its inspiration from the OCLC Research report “Beyond the Silos of the LAMs” and brought together an eminent group of speakers from the UK, the US and Canada to share thoughts on how libraries, archives and museums in an increasingly converged world can successfully work together.
Pooling items across curatorial, archival and bibliographic areas to meet a common informational purpose is difficult if an organisation(s) lacks the vision, the conviction of its leadership and a tangible program of incentives to make collaboration work. All three of these “collaboration catalysts”, introduced by Günter Waibel of OCLC Research at the beginning of the day as key takeaways from the Research report, were in evidence in every presentation given.
It was inspiring to hear about the results of collaboration, and how timely these discussions were for the presenters and audience alike. Anne Van Camp shared the Smithsonian’s ambitious plans for an integrated search for all Smithsonian collections. Beth McKillop announced the launch of a beta version of the V&A’s online collections tool, and informed us of their new curatorial policy to launch an online version of a collection at the same time as the opening of its physical display.
The Briefing was jam-packed with exemplars of real vision, some truly awe-inspiring in terms of the scale, such as the Taylor Digital Library at University of Calgary, which will bring together library, archive and museum functions under one high-tech roof.
All the presentations given at the event have been made available at: http://www.cilip.org.uk/interests/execbriefings/lams/EB71509.html.