Some tips for avoiding anxiety at conferences

Library and information industry conferences, seminars, events offer attendees valuable opportunities for networking and continuing professional development. However they can also be anxiety inducing. 

If it’s any consolation for nervous first-timers, it can be just as bad for those going for the umteenth time. The truth is, we ALL get anxiety - some of us worse than others, but it affects every single one of us. 

Virtual teams and collaborative working #BIALL2017

I've now completed my first full week of truly remote working so am reasonably well equipped to comment on and consolidate the notes taken from the various relevant sessions. As usual BIALL had ensured that although there were topic overlaps, a different perspective was given by each expert. Eleanor Windsor from LibSource presented on 'Managing a successful virtual team', whilst the entire Vinge law firm library team came in to offer insight on working together in different offices. And finally a duo from the University of Law talked about collaborative working to reduce pressure on library services.

Being Informed about Brexit #BIALL2017

The notes that follow arise out of the BIALL Conference 2017 and given the theme of the conference was 'Together or Apart? Effective ways of working'  I'm happy to share my notes! This has recently been updated to reflect the #BIALL2019 conference on Vable.

Being Informed about Brexit

The first plenary session - and Willi Steiner Memorial Lecture was entitled 'Informing the debate about Brexit', presented by David Allen Green. This is obviously a contentious topic as a whole but at least law librarians can claim to be well informed as to the arguments. After all, it is the legal chaos in which we are interested. As I have noted in the past information specialists are experts in spotting fake news. We have all the skills and expertise required to assist the general public and others who rely on us to get things right.

'Law Librarians! I want to make your role more interesting’ - #MmIT2015 Conference

Me looking professional

This is the full text of the talk I gave at the MmIT 2015 Conference 'With Power Comes Great Responsibility - How librarians can Harness the Power of Social Media for the Benefit of their Users'. This is a subject very close to my professional heart and I hope you will forgive me the length of this post.

Introduction

‘I want to make your role more interesting’ was one of the more unusual things that a lawyer has said to me in my twenty year career as a law librarian.

It was September 2013 and inspired by a talk given by commentator Helen Lewis, I had just written an article about internet trolls for my own wide ranging blog. I mentioned this in passing to the lawyer heading up a newly formed Collyer Bristow team – the official sounding ‘Cyber Investigations Unit’. This concentrates on assisting victims of cyber stalking, online harassment and abuse. After a read of my article,  he decided to make ‘trolling’ the topic of the next firm’s Cyber Matters newsletter. 

Clare Goes on a Bitchy Rant

My first non-librarian/KM conference is finally over. My experience was mixed; I'm returning with a phone full of Evernotes and a head overflowing with as yet jumbled ideas. I've not really assessed the learning yet because it's rather daunting and I've no clue where to start. But never have I encountered such cliquey unfriendliness, and in some cases pure discouraging rudeness.

Academia has a problem. You only have to regularly read the Times Higher Ed and realise that the humming halls of learning disguise a bearpit of competition, backstabbing and secrecy. I'm an outsider in this world, just standing on tiptoes looking in, like a child at a window listening to warring parents. And I've no wish to join this dysfunctional family in a professional capacity. My library training and natural inclination is for openness, collaboration, and making room for new ideas from external influences and as such, I'm clearly unwelcome.

Materiality of Art: Or is computer art, art?

It's rare that any lecture fails to spark a meteor shower of ideas but just occasionally I'm caught off guard. The LSE arranged an event to explore philosophical issues about art, and ask whether computer artworks are physical objects? Do they really qualify as art? The speaker Margaret Boden is Research Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Sussex. I'd never seriously considered the more intellectual arguments about what constitutes 'art' and it also fitted in well with one of the German sessions of the Dresden conference which had focused on modern examples of mirabilia. I obviously hadn't written up that session so felt this was a good opportunity to synchronise some images and notes.

It's a good job I had some mental images of computer art because Boden provided no slides; 'she isn't into technology'. Was it wrong that alarm bells immediately started ringing? I don't paint with oils but I know how they feel, smell, am aware of their texture and understand their material 'paintiness'. I am no computer programmer but have a reasonable understanding of the architecture which sits behind the screen. My knowledge of marquetry is restricted to memories of my father and his woodwork, as well as reading how to guides, so I know about grain, colour, texture, symbolism. Historians of art require insight into the materiality of the objects they are studying, otherwise how do you understand the challenges that face the artist? It is telling that despite my linguistic incapabilities, I gleaned far more from Verena Kuni's visual presentation than Margaret Boden's words - pretty much the way when dealing with art!

Dresden Conference: The one with Horse Blood and the Hunt

Can't resist this mirror

So this is it. The concluding session of the Dresden Conference on Cabinets of Curiosity. That two day event has provided a wealth of material, as well as making me think about the most extraordinary things. On reflection, the last three sessions were far more controversial than I originally thought; death and colonialism; classifying the unclassifiable; and this final session, which amongst other issues, discussed the blurring of boundaries regarding human and animals. I've combined Marion Endt-Jones and Sarah Wade's talks because they are relevant for my work, and they both used the Musee de la Chasse et de la Nature as a case study.

As Donna Roberts had already noted, 'cabinets of curiosity' have been the topic of many shows to greater and lesser critical success. Marion Endt-Jones suggested we were in a new age of curiosity, citing a raft of shows, from the Manchester coral show, various European exhibitions and the growth in alternative wunder- museums. She suggests that this revival is not just inspired by surreal art but a wholesale 'questioning of institutions'. It is also a reaction to the corporate nature of the white cube, an inevitable and long overdue rethink of ubiquitous bland, open, unnatural, cold galleries.

Dresden Conference: Chimeric Blobs, biological art, or where I go off script

The penultimate talk which I want to cover here marks the descent into something much darker than death and memory; the creation of life. Paradoxically, what should be the most joyous occasion is in an artistic/scientific context, the most troublesome. I can understand that the 16th century natural philosophers attempted to recreate the natural spark of life, and much has been said about this. With ingredients ranging from blood, semen and horse manure, I wasn't sure that the creation and display of modern artificial life would be as distasteful as some of the early modern alchemical recipes.

Helen Gregory's 'Curious instances and chimeric blobs: Disrupting definitions of natural history specimens through contemporary art practice' opened with a discussion about what constitutes a natural history specimen. From the historical wet and dry specimens, which served their purpose adequately, to new technology meaning that objects can be cryogenically frozen. Scientific and laboratory collections have inevitably moved away from their 19th century ancestors and, like some of the samples, evolved beyond all recognition.

Dresden Conference: Wildgoose Memorial Library

From theoretical surrealist curiosity to artistic rational enquiry, Jane Wildgoose's presentation on the work which has arisen from her 'Memorial Library' was rather interesting. I must confess to being rather sceptical at first because I wasn't sure where she was going, but in the end, the light she shed on national museums' archives was both shocking and influential on her work. I don't want to dwell too much on her own collection because, for me personally, this is the part about which I feel most ambivalent. I appreciate that her library of objects is meaningfully and obsessively collected, as well as being catalyst for her research, but I feel unhappy critically examining her collection here. I merely salute her, and suggest you look at her website.

Dresden Conference: Thinking Critically about Curiosity

Donna Roberts's paper set out to encourage us to think critically about curiosity. The world appears to have rediscovered 'cabinets of curiosity' in a big way over the past few years, turning it into the hackneyed phrase that we'd already noted. Although broadly speaking, the modern love of curiosity and rediscovering the love of 'odd collections' is a good thing, the problem with such popularity is the blurring of terminology and lack of critical thinking. To illustrate this point, the article, Museum of Curiosity set to ignite wonder with collection of 'weird' objects, stated that 'un-poetically branding his catalogue of curiosities as “weird shit”, Snelle is purveying objects all sorts of objects from the natural and man-made world'.

 

Dresden Conference: 'I was looking for bog people in Copenhagen' - the work of Rosamond Purcell

All Things Strange And Beautiful

I must confess to bunking off Robert Felfe's probably excellent second session presentation on 'ordnungsraum and labyrinth' because it was in German, and I'm not sure if I even understood the English abstract. My fault, not his. So I went off with a Hochschule student to see her term's work on smoke. It was interesting, and the photos of asphalt stuck on to the bumpy wall was rather effective. Reminded me of ash...

 

Once I'd rejoined the group after refreshments, we entered into the artistic and poetic realm of Rosamond Purcell and the shadow of things. As we saw from the first panel discussion, the conference organisers were keen to ask contemporary artists to speak about their art, not just art historical scholars.

Dresden Conference: Part One Cabinets of Curiosities / Wunderkammern / Kunstkammern

 

View from the theatre

These are the first set of many notes taken at the Dresden Conference on the Cabinet of Curiosities in Contemporary Art (16-17 Jan 2015). As background, the programme states that 'we seek an overview of current debate, artistic, and curatorial strategies. The contemporary version of the cabinet of curiosities is a machine for alternative world views, because inquiring minds and the thirst for knowledge cannot be tamed. What are the curiosities of the 21st century? The mirabilia of the digital age? What are the politics, ideologies and dynamics of today's Kunst- Wunderkammer?'

 

So why here and now? In 2014 the Academy of Fine Arts celebrated its 250th anniversary of its foundation. This conference came about as part of the celebratory events. It accompanies Mark Dion's 'Academy of Things' which is currently on show at the Hochschule. I will come to that separately. Dresden is uniquely placed to host this sort of event because of its own Kunstkammer pedigree, but also its proximity to the Hapsburg collections and the House of Wettin with its pan European connections. Not to mention the desire to cut into contemporary art debate.