Blog - Improve your Current Awareness Strategy

It’s that time of year again. The stores are filled with tempting stationery supplies, the weather is turning a little cooler, the kids are heading back to school with shiny new backpacks and we’re reflecting on what a wonderful summer it’s been. Summer 2017 saw a whole host of intriguing and innovative conferences, ready to fill you with plenty of fresh inspiration for the new season.

Putting together your library budget can be a daunting task to say the least. With few Librarians coming from a business background, it’s all too easy to feel out of your depth. Yet, a strong budget is an integral part of running a successful and productive library service. Organisations today need a highly detailed and accurate budget from all of their departments. Our Head of Marketing, Nico Watson, went along to a fantastic session from Marcia Burris, Senior Consultant at HBR Consulting, and Carissa J. Vogel, Associate Dean for Library Services at Yeshiva University, last week at #AALL2017 “How to Develop a Budget That You and Your Organisation Can Live with - and Still Achieve Your Strategic Goals”. This is what he learnt.

Now you know where to go in Austin, what will you do at #AALL2017 itself? From library marketing to the very latest in artificial intelligence, there’s something for everyone in Austin. But with so many sessions on the agenda, and world-class speakers flying in from across the States and abroad, it can be tricky deciding how to plan your time at conference. So, we’ve trawled the schedule to give you our highlights - from the must-see sessions to the debates that simply can’t be missed, read on for your #AALL2017 guide.

The fastest growing city in the United States is playing host to #AALL2017. With a population growth rate of 3.15% in 2015, the Texas capital is under pressure to deliver plenty of entertainment for its growing number of residents and visitors. And deliver it sure does! 

Continuing the theme of recapping #BIALL2017 we’re back this week to relive another fantastic session, this time from Nick West, Chief Strategy Officer and all round tech genius at Mishcon de Reya. This year’s BIALL conference focussed on the theme of “together or apart” which flowed quite neatly into Nick’s talk exploring the narrative of human vs. machine or human and machine.

Last week at #BIALL2017 I was lucky enough to find the time to attend some of the sessions from this year’s excellent speakers. One that particularly caught my attention was from Hilary Smith and Miriam Davis, where they recounted their experience of working together to provide an enquiry service to Shell’s legal community. Kudos to both Hilary and Miriam for delivering such an insightful and engaging talk, one which we are happily able to recap below.

Following the events of May 22nd, Manchester has been in the thoughts of many of us around the world - not just for the horrific consequences of that day but also because of the clear strength and resistance of the city that has shone through. It is that grit and determination that makes Manchester such a key city in the landscape of Britain, and I’m sure is one of the reasons that the BIALL Committee selected it as the host of the #BIALL2017 Conference.

To succeed in life, in fact to simply live, we need food to fuel our bodies. This food must be of sufficient quality and contain the right nutrients to nourish us appropriately and efficiently. Information works in a similar way - it needs to be prepared properly in order to fuel our businesses. So, what if we thought of information as food? In a 2012 TED talk, Technologist and Deutsche Bank’s Chief Data Officer JP Rangaswami¹ posited just that.

Last week I attended a fascinating webinar from the team at LibSource, exploring the theme of the deep web and its importance to Librarians (you can view the full recording here¹). It struck me throughout how key a Librarian is in order to reap the full potential of the deep web for your organisation, and so it seemed only natural to recap the session on the Vable blog.

As the holiday festivities draw to a close and the new year celebrations fade away, we find ourselves facing 365 (or rather, 360 now) days of clean blank pages ready to plan. How do you know what conference to attend? Will you get the budget? Should you just go to the tried and tested, or is it time to experiment with something new? It’s no surprise that it can be hard to know where begin.