2021-10
The “Yunhan Smart Sharing - Information Technology for Libraries (IT4L 2021)” conference was held at Shanghai Library October 22, 2021. This conference was sponsored by Shanghai Library Association, Shanghai Library Industry Association, Chinese Alliance for Library Service Platform (under preparation), organized by the Information Technology Committee of Shanghai Library Association, and co-organized by Shanghai Library (Shanghai Institute of Scientific and Technical Information), Shanghai Jiaotong University Library, Fudan-Afadi Smart Library Research Center, Shanghai Jiaotong University Library-Jiangsu Jiatu Future Library Smart Service Joint R&D Center.
Librarians from over 40 public and academic libraries and representatives of more than 10 companies attended the onsite conference. Over 4,000 people watched the live stream on social media.
An expert committee of 38 was officially formed at the opening ceremony. Twelve experts attended the onsite conference. Nie Hua, Chair of the committee, delivered a speech on behalf of all committee members. She thanked the Alliance for its trust and encouraged all the experts to work together to contribute to the development of smart libraries. Nie Hua is a research librarian from Beijing University Library.
Four experts gave wonderful presentations on the theme of smart libraries: Li Xinwan, Director of Shanghai Jiaotong University Library, talked about the openness of libraries, taking the practices at Shanghai Jiaotong University Library as examples. Tom Cramer, Deputy Director of Stanford University Library, introduced the choice of library platforms in the future and raised a number of open questions that were thought-provoking in his pre-recorded presentation. Xu Qiang, Deputy Director of Shanghai Library, shared his thoughts on smart space services, reading ecology and the structure of the new generation of libraries. This presentation was based on the construction of the East Building of the Shanghai Library, which will open to the public this coming December and will rely on the Yunhan/FOLIO platform to provide smart services. Xu Yibo, Director of Ningbo Library, discussed smart services at public libraries. Attendees onsite and online interacted with the speakers after each talk.
Keven Liu (Liu Wei in Chinese), Deputy Director of Shanghai Library and also a CC member of the FOLIO community, moderated the "Experts Face to Face" panel discussion. Six of the committee members, including Nie Hua, Research Librarian of Peking University Library; Xiao Dehong, Chief Information Technology Officer of Xiamen University, Malaysia; Cheng Bei, Deputy Director of Shandong University Library; Cui Yuhong, Deputy Director of Beijing Institute of Technology Library; Dong Xiaoju, Deputy Director of Shanghai Jiaotong University Library; Tan Faxiang, Deputy Director of Sichuan Provincial Library, participated in the discussion and interacted with audience on the topics of the biggest challenges facing libraries in China, how to promote new library platforms, and how to solve the pain-points.
IT4L 2021 is part of the Library Frontier Technology Forum, a brand conference of the Shanghai Library Association that has been leading the forefront of technology. In the context of library transformation, this conference provided an opportunity to discuss the development of smart libraries based on the best practices at Shanghai Library, Stanford University Library, Shanghai Jiaotong University Library and Ningbo City Library, and had a pragmatic and profound influence in reality. The Expert Committee formed at the conference and the proposed plan for developing the "Yunhan Platform" well demonstrated the determination of the library community to build smart service platforms. (Note: For the convenience of local promotion, China’s FOLIO community is using “Yunhan” as the Chinese name for FOLIO. The Yunhan Platform is based on the Goldenrod release and has a lot of features that are designed and developed locally for China’s market. )