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Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Future of Libraries and Archives: Convergence or Divergence

Today, I attended the following talk organised by NLB Professional & International Relations (PIR).  The topic for today's  Professional Talk Series (Panel Discussion) is:

“Future of Libraries and Archives: Convergence or Divergence?”.

Date         : 30 January 2013, Wednesday
Time        : 3.30pm – 5.15pm 
Venue     : The Pod, L16, National Library Building

Speakers’ Profile

Hans Jansen is the Head of the Innovation & Development Division at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), the National Library of the Netherlands.

In the past 20 years, he has been involved in numerous National and European projects in the library field. He has been project manager for the Dutch national programs for preservation (Metamorfoze) and digitisation (Memory of the Netherlands).

In his present position he is responsible for the Digital Library Programme of the KB with a focus on the ICT development projects and overall programme management. The area of research and development into methods and techniques for the long-term preservation of and permanent access to digital objects stored in the e-Depot has his special interest.

Bill Macnaught is the National Librarian and as ex officio member of LIAC. He came to the National Library in 2011 from Puke Ariki, a position held since 2005.

Before coming to New Zealand, he was the Director, Libraries and Arts and later Head of Cultural Development at Gateshead Council in the north of England. He was awarded a CBE in the UK for services to public libraries and cultural life.

He was Chair of the UK Advisory Council on Libraries and was a visiting Professor (Librarianship) at the University of Northumbria.

Marie-Christine Doffey has been Director of the Swiss National Library (NL) since 1 April 2005.

She completed her degree in Antiquity Studies at the University of Fribourg in 1983 and a Master of Advanced Studies in Arts Management at the University of Basel in 2002.

She has worked for the NL since 1991 and held various management positions, including that of Vice Director from 2003 to March 2005.

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Source of above info: Email from NLB dated 25 Jan 2013

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I like the way this seminar was chaired. Mr Gene Tan, Director of NLB was the Chair for the event and the session was well planned and with some humours that made the official event not that heavy going.

NLB Singapore is walking the same path of merging "Libraries and Archive", there are some similar issues facing library management among these three libraries.  The sharing in this professional talk do lights up some thought on common issues/concerns.

Like all the future trends are something that make us look forwards to, the discussion today is just the being of the exchange, and I see the journey for convergence or divergence is a just a task handled in different ways, nothing is right, nothing is wrong, so long it suits the parties concerns!


Dexterine Ho Soo Miang


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