#dlfforum

— The DLF (@CLIRDLF)

October 27, 2014

Even though it’s the last full day of the DLF Forum 2013 (so sad!), the exciting flow of people and ideas hasn’t slowed. Packed morning sessions had people sitting on the floor as eager attendees squeezed in for talks about designing a digital program for the humanities and honest conversations about starting and sustaining new projects (co-sponsored by the Taiga Forum that begins tomorrow). Aside from sitting back and appreciating the cool projects that digital librarians around the world are engaged in, such as the Bodleian Library’s Early Modern Letters Online and Dr. John Mark Ockerbloom’s Forward to Libraries software, attendees participated in meaty (read: borderline existential) discussions about the future role of libraries in digital scholarship. While thought-provoking ideas were kicked around, such as the suggestion that digital libraries do not truly exist yet and the possibility that the scholar librarian is an extinct breed that must be revived, discussions always circled back around to the fundamental concept that librarians support knowledge creation by connecting users to information in meaningful ways.

The closing keynote speaker, Char Booth, drove home the point that providing and advocating for user access is the most important responsibility of librarians. In a friendly and charismatic fashion, Booth entreated the audience to put time, money, and effort into communications because “your work doesn’t matter unless you connect it to people” and “use doesn’t happen unless people know about your stuff.” By bluntly addressing the challenges that libraries face, Booth accomplished her stated goal of sweeping up the carnage created during the conference (my brain, for one, exploded) and sending attendees home with a to-go box of useful takeaways. The two major points of her talk, access and advocacy, were a distillation of everything that makes libraries important and unique: we represent the consumers of information in an information age. We’re the only ones in the information industry whose reason for existing is to connect humans to information, to make information usable/accessible, and to help users create knowledge with said information. It was an appropriate response to and summation of the Forum’s sessions and working groups. The DLF community of makers and doers dispersed with an ample load of questions, cool ideas, new contacts and jelly beans to last through the DLF Forum 2014 in Atlanta – which is really all any of us could have asked for.