It was a wonderful week, and I know we all appreciate the terrific effort of the teams at the University of Western Australia and Curtin University who created a fantastic learning and networking environment for us these past several days. What follow are a few highlights from some of the keynote addresses and plenary panels to remind us all where we have been:
Professor Dawn Freshwater Vice Chancellor of UWA in her welcome noted that knowledge has been stored in Western Australia for millennia. Librarians are today’s spiritual and cultural custodians of knowledge. When sands are shifting we need to pay attention / and when tides are rising we need to innovate. We need to act.
Gerald Beasley of Cornell University picked up on this theme by noting that “our opportunity to avoid drowning in the rising tide is to innovate intensively.” He acknowledged significant innovation is underway but characterized much of it as ‘reactive innovation’ – he challenged libraries to think about “proactive innovation” oriented toward the world we want to achieve. A world that is ‘fair’ in terms of being inclusive,...
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