NZCCM 2009 conference

David Ashman, our preservation manager attended the "NZCCM Annual Conference" at the St Columba Centre, Ponsonby, 22-23 October 2009.

David Reports:

As the current President of the NZCCM and a member of the organising committee, this years’ conference held more responsibility for me than in previous years. This proved to be both rewarding and time consuming.

From an organisers point of view the conference was an outstanding success. In my view, there were three elements that made this so:

1. a reliable, committed and enthusiastic organising committee that shared the load and took responsibility for getting tasks done;
2. a fabulous venue/location – the St Columba Centre on Vermont Street, with a wonderfully helpful and unflappable manager;
3. an eclectic range of speakers that included artists, curators, architects, managers and of course conservators.

The theme ‘Conservation In Public’ was inspired by the work of John Holden who released a publication last year called ‘It’s a material world: the importance of conservation and its place in the wider culture.’ You can also check out the video on you tube.

There were 14 presentations over one and half days, covering a wide variety of subject matter.

Catherine Smith, a conservator from Dunedin, was the first of our two keynote speakers. She gave us an overview of how conservation had grown up in New Zealand during the past 40 years. She challenged us to look forward by raising our profile and to demonstrate the value of conservation to a wider audience. This would require that we address some widely held misconceptions about our profession, low professional standing in some quarters and lack of representation at policy level. Whilst Catherine wasn’t offering solutions she was suggesting we look for opportunities to engage with the public and in particular supporting those in more remote areas who don’t have access to conservation services.

Dean Whiting talked abut the interconnectedness between communities, the past and conservators. He described how beneficial the development of community skills had been when working on conservation of marae. As with Catherine, he raised many questions and suggested we explore ways of working collaboratively alongside the communities that are concerned with the materials being cared for.

Phillipa Tocker, Executive Director of Museums Aotearoa, invited us (NZCCM) to work together to raise the profile of conservation as a core function.

Kate Roberts, whilst Manager of Service Delivery at Puke Ariki was involved in the design of three major exhibitions showcasing the history of Taranaki and displaying the collections of Puke Ariki. During this beautifully illustrated presentation she spoke of the challenges of engaging the local audience in their own troubled and complicated history.

Our other keynote speaker, John Holden, gave an hour long presentation that came to us via a video link from the UK. He made a call to action for us to engage with the public and politicians to tell them what we do, why we do it and why it is important. For too long conservation has been seen in narrow terms. Now is the time to make the case for conservation not just being about the objects and the past but also in its role of shaping values and creating the world of tomorrow.

In addition we had presentations that included, an art curator on the subject of “Arts knowing disintegration: Contemporary art and wilful decay”; an architect on “Issues of Authenticity in NZ Built Heritage Conservation”; an artist presenting from the front (without PowerPoint) in a very entertaining end to the first day on the subject of “B-Sides & Rarities; How to Look at the back of a Painting”. Conservators talked about their experiences in Antarctica; we heard about the treatment of a 19^th century paper globe, and about experiments using zinc alginate for the consolidation of dyed black phormium.

The message I took from this conference was that now is the time to forge ahead, building on the excellent work already begun, to tell the wider community what conservation is, why it is important and how we can work together to create a future shaped by our past.

So all in all an extremely full, interesting and inspiring conference augmented by an AGM, organised visits and the all important conference dinner.

I would like to say thank-you to Sue Cooper for her support and encouragement during the year of planning and organising and to the rest of the Lead Team and Jayne Gutry for supporting me and two members of my team to attend this conference.

Damen Joe, from the Preservation Unit, both attended the conference, here’s what Damen had to say:

I thought the variety of topics was great, and easy for me, as a relative new-comer, to understand what they were talking about. That was also balanced by some more technical talks and discussions, and John Reynolds' talk which was great to introduce a more lateral take on conservation practice.

Paper highlights were… Lizzie Meek's, Kate Robert's, Dean Whiting, Ute Larsen and Camilla Baskcomb, and John Reynolds… and more, I'm sure!

I really appreciated being able to see and hear from such a wide variety of speakers who had some interest in conserving cultural materials. Working in the library, primarily with paper means that my concept of conservation is somewhat limited. Hearing people talk about topics ranging from the Antarctic hut objects, to Museum practice, to the more technical piupiu talk, allowed me to see how the area of conservation is an extremely wide and continually innovative area to be in. This was evidenced by the questions after floor talks, which gave a sense of the community and willingness to share knowledge. While in some ways, (due to my inexperience), I was more of a spectator, I enjoyed participating in the conference, and look forward to continuing to learn more in the area.

Catherine Perry wrote

One of the highlights of the conference for me was the chance to go on a tour of the Auckland City Art Gallery building site with the architect and guilder foreman. It was interesting to hear the architect's ideas, and see the realities of how the old parts of the building are being married with the new. The tour was enhanced having heard a number of papers at the conference concerning architectural conservation. Whether you are conserving a book or a building, the concerns and challenges can be similar, just on a different scale. It was great to be able to get a glimpse into other areas of conservation, particularly architectural conservation.

National digital forum

Keziah Singleton, digital collections coordinator attended the National Digital Forum in Wellington on 23/24 November 2009

NDF stands for National Digital Forum - a coalition of museums, archives, art galleries, libraries and government departments working together to enhance electronic access to New Zealand’s culture and heritage.

The National Digital Forum runs an annual conference, bringing together people working with digital collections. The conference attendees primarily come from the GLAM sector (GLAM stands for Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums). This year’s NDF conference was held in Wellington, and had a record number of attendees.

I came away from the conference thinking about three key concepts: finding content; connecting content; and how technology could have a personality.

Finding Content

How we can make our digital content (like the photographs in Heritage Images Online) more easily found? One of the most important factors in finding information is content metadata. Content metadata is information like titles, creators, subjects and locations which in an ideal world would be attached to every digital object. Unfortunately there are plenty of objects out there with insufficient content metadata. One way to improve the metadata is to allow members of the wider community to add information about objects (a process similar to tagging). This is known as user-contributed metadata. Digital NZ presented a session about tools they are developing to allow user-contributed metadata to be added to their records. At the moment they are working on location data – providing a map where users can pinpoint locations associated with the object (and leave comments explaining why). If users add information to Digital NZ’s ACL-sourced records, we would have the option of importing that information back into our own databases.

Connecting Content

Another way to make our digital content more easily found is to improve the connections between our separate objects. This means finding ways to reduce the divisions and differences between all the databases, tools and portals we are producing. This concept generated a lot of discussion but no answers.

One suggestion was to improve the consistency of our policies and the way they are explained, especially around the ability to reuse content. At present most institutions lock their content down and publish a variety of statements restricting re-use – even though a lot of the content is actually in the public domain. Lewis Brown from Digital NZ called very passionately for a global change to all our policies on reuse, but other attendees disagreed (also passionately). There was however general agreement that we could all at least provide more plain English information about what exactly is permissable and what is not – and we could develop a consistent lexicon and iconography, so that users receive this information in a standard format.

Reflecting personality in technology

Daniel Incandela from the Indianapolis Museum of Art opened the conference with a call for us to allow our technology to “reflect a personality”. The museum’s website has a range of content produced by many of the museum staff – by engaging staff they give ‘personality’ to the site. They also aren’t afraid to try different ways of showing information about the museum and their collections – here’s one example. Daniel argued that institutions can be far too conservative and unwilling to take even small risks. He showed us some videos he made for the museum which at the time of filming seemed hugely risky, but now just seem like interesting videos!

Nina Simon from Museum 2.0 expanded on this theme, talking about the importance of creating a conversation with your audience – by all means ask questions, but it’s even more important to actually care about the answers! And we heard about the National Library of New Zealand’s experiments with Twitter. NLNZ use Twitter to send out ‘teaser’ tweets which link back to items in their digital collections. Another example of how taking a risk can engage audiences in new ways.

NDF 2009 was challenging but rewarding. Thanks ACL for sending me.

Claire Scott, community librarian of Grey Lynn Library also attended the LIANZA conference. Following are her posts:

From the opening keynote address by Sir Tipene and Hana O’Regan, it seemed that the conference would indeed be all about people. As chairman of the Ngai Tahu Trust Board, Sir Tipene led what became one of the most significant Treaty settlements in 1998. It was only natural that daughter Hana would inherit some of her father’s passion for Treaty issues and identity politics. She completed her MA with a thesis about Maori tribal identity, and this later became the subject of her first book. Together Sir Tipene and Hana discussed the intergenerational transmission of knowledge and the practicalities of accurate and comprehensive transference over time. What is lost is often immeasurable, but in the case of Ngai Tahu, and Maori people in general, clearly it is language.

ePortfolios

Another extremely interesting presentation which focused on people was the Australian ePortfolio Project by Associate Professor Gillian Hallam of the Queensland University of Technology. ePortfolios enable tertiary students to track their personal development while also keeping their body of learning in an employer-ready format. While all QUT students have access to t he ePortfolio platform from PebblePad in the UK (www.pebblepad.co.uk ), 26 library students trialled this tool, with support from ALIA. Managers and mentors were also involved. An ePortfolio can be as detailed and elaborate as the user chooses. Some that we saw included video clips and interactive tools created by the student and included in the ePortfolio. Such a toll would certainly assist New Zealand library students and practising professionals to maintain registration body of knowledge information.

Social media

Also about people was Brenda Chawner’s presentation on social media. Brenda is in the mid stages of undertaking research into the use of social media by information and communication professionals. She compared her 2007 survey results with those taken earlier this year which showed some predictable advances in the uptake. For example, in 2007, 57.5% of respondents read blogs at least once a week (5.4% - never, 12.9% - wrote their own blogs). In 2009, 70.4% of respondents read blogs (4.1% - never, and 20.2% - write their own). With regard to social networking, in 2007 only ¼ of respondents had any kind of profile and many faced institutional barriers. In 2009, this number has jumped to 84.4%, and a number of respondents now actually use their social networking profile for business purposes rather than facing barriers from their employers.

Most people saw the advantages of maintaining a social networking profile as enabling them to keep in touch and connected, as well as being able to present a human side to their commercial profile. Drawbacks included issues such as being time consuming, a loss of privacy, and a lack of face to face contact. Others cited a poor quality of information while some felt pressured to keep their profiles up to date. In addition, some organisations find themselves represented unofficially by unauthorised staff. However, not many places of employment have yet developed a policy regarding social media.

Customer education programme

Kim Clayton from Wellington City Libraries presented a very informative session about the revamp that WCL recently undertook of their customer education programmes, To ensure a clean slate, they started back at the very beginning and asked both themselves whether they were meeting the needs of their customers, and they asked their customers what they wanted to learn. As with public libraries everywhere, key barriers to finding this information involved gaining access to customers, budget constraints, and staffing issues. In the end they surveyed 100 customers and the result was universal – what the customers want are one-on-one sessions rather than group classes. They want the information when they need it, and not before.

Implications of providing a service such as this are, of course, numerous. Firstly, staff need to be fully trained and competent with all of the tools that they are required to demonstrate. Staff are the key point of difference. But how do you train over 200 staff to be experts? Wellington City Libraries did this by having their information team promote a “database of the fortnight” with three to four questions. Managers committed to ensuring that staff had the time and access to participate, and the project received very good feedback from staff. The questions have become a new tool, useful in training new staff.

In addition, simple business cards were created which included popular topics such as “My Gateway” (account access) and which were blank on the reverse in order for staff to add notes or key tips for the customer to remember. These are available at all sites for staff use, and are an inexpensive and effective tool for customers to take away with them.

The point of need was also pre-empted with the use of “mini-expos” – a staff member with a laptop out in the library at high peak times demonstrating various things in the body of the library and available for questions and assistance. The next step is to move this out to the branches where both the needs and the peak times are different. But a complete coverage of the network is seen as a vital part of getting this right for customers.

Children's bookshop

Finally I would like to comment on the present by John McIntyre of the Children’s Bookshop in Wellington. John is one of the best advocates for books and literacy in children that I have ever listened to. Although he is a businessman, he has an immense genuine love of books, and a desire to enrich the lives of children though them. John speaks publically at a number of events, and works tirelessly with young people who have had difficult lives to date. He spoke of one young woman he had met who had returned to school after a failed first attempt. In the meantime, she had produced two young babies, and although still a teenager, she had decided to try and turn her life around. John read some children’s books to the class, and he talked to them about literacy and words, and bringing them alive for children. Some time later he received a letter from this young woman that still moves him when he reads it aloud. She credited his visit to her class as one of the key areas that changed the way she parents her own young children, how they now have books in their lives, and the immense difference that this has made to them all.

To meet a man so passionate about books was very warming, and his passion for children’s and teen literature has made me want to read it again for the first time since I worked as a school librarian.

IAML conference

Marilyn Portman, music librarian attended the IAML conference on 5-6 November 2009 in Wellington.

What is IAML??
IAML stands for International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres. This is an organisation that promotes, encourages and helps to facilitate projects in music bibliography, music librarianship and information science at an international and local level.

The New Zealand branch meet every year for a conference and AGM. This year it was held in Wellington at the Massey University and also at St Paul's Cathedral and I had the pleasure of meeting with colleagues and fellow music librarians from around the country.
I will share a couple of sessions that were or real interest.

Session one: Music in the school curriculum
speaker Vicki Thorpe, Music advisor, faculty of Education at Victoria University

Vicki covered the NZ Curriculum 2007 and the Arts and the NCEA requirements for music. She looked at the current issues and challenges for music education in N.Z. Changes to the NCEA 2011 were explained and general changes in music education explored in line with rapid changes in technology. There are big issues in NZ music education at primary level especially with no more arts advisers in primary schools and a great lack of teacher knowledge and skill in the arts. Issues facing secondary schools lie with the teachers having to be very adaptable and figure out whether they want formal or informal learning, inside or outside of the classroom. Where and how does music learning actually happen?

• Libraries are in a key position to be able to provide support and resources for teachers and students in their life long musical learning. By having a varied and interesting collection of music at their library, a whole new world can open up to them that they may not have known existed.

Here are some websites to check out and explore:

http://arts.unitec.ac.nz
http://www.tki.org.nz/e/community (arts kete)
http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz (learning areas/achievement objectives)


Session two: Focusing on copyright - the RIANZ perspective
speaker Campbell Smith, CEO of RIANZ

What is RIANZ??
It stands for Recording Industry Association of NZ. It is a not-for-profit organisation who represents the rights of the recording industry as a whole.
RIANZ works alongside PPNZ(Phonographic performances of NZ) and APRA (Australasian Performing Rights Association) however, what is becoming evident is that confusion reigns with the number of different licences required and there are moves afoot to unifying the licences to make a more efficient and logical model.

What does RIANZ do?

• maintains the NZ charts, gold/platinum sales
• controls ISRC (same as an ISBN number)
• Runs the NZ music awards
• Polices piracy

Now we are in the digital world

The recording industry is commercially unstable at present and income is declining. The major contributing factors are file sharing and RIANZ have been looking at ways to approach this problem. They would like to work with the ISPS to have a staged approach as they feel the user has a right to due process. The ISP would send out issue notices to infringers, basically educating them and pointing out legal down lad avenues and then if behaviour hasn't improved would suspend their account.

RIANZ would like to have a three pronged appropach to their business:

• gain legal certainty for the protection of rights
• Education of users - go into the highschools and teach about intellectual property
• stop sulking! look at new opportunities to sell content to generate income. Come up with more ways and means of getting music into users hands.

RIANZ and libraries;

RIANZ have basically buried their heads in the sand when it has come to libraries and pretend that we don't have music. However, they are keen to talk and explore different options. There is the "Authors Fund" that compensates authors for having books in libraries, why couldn't there be a similar thing for musicians?

IAML(NZ) are very keen to spear head dialogue with RIANZ and so hopefully this will bear positive fruit for libraries and musicians alike in the future.

Thankyou to Auckland City Libraries for enabling me to attend this conference