Smart, Inclusive, and Exceeding: Towards Metaverse Library 3.0
The Yunhan/FOLIO China Community hosted a national conference at Shanghai Library East from March 1-3, 2023. The conference was held in hybrid mode. There were over 700 hundred attendees in-person and about 20,000 attendees online, including leaders, librarians, researchers and developers from 128 public libraries, 106 academic libraries and 33 companies in the library industry.
The conference was organized by the Academic Research Committee of Library Society of China and Shanghai Library Society, was supported by Shanghai Library and Shanghai Jiaotong University Library, and was sponsored by Jiangsu Jiatu Network Technology Co., Ltd., Shanghai RFID Intelligence Digital Technology Co.,Ltd., and Beijing Wanfang Data Co., Ltd. Shanghai Library, Shanghai Jiaotu University Library, and Jiangsu Jiatu Network Technology Co., Ltd. are the three co-founders of the Yunhan/FOLIO China Community and are supporting partners of the FOLIO community.
The theme of the 3-day conference was "Smart, Inclusive, and Exceeding: Towards Metaverse Library 3.0".
Day One featured an open ceremony, organizers' welcome speeches, a certificate awarding ceremony, three keynote speeches in the morning, and an exhibit and several presentations in the afternoon. Keynote speaker Wu Jianzhong, Librarian of the University of Macau and former Director of Shanghai Library (2002-2016), talked about the three challenges that China's library industry was facing in order to achieve high-quality development. Xiaolin Zhang, Researcher of Center for Documentation and Information, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and Invited Professor of ShanghaiTech University, shared his thoughts on knowledge, scenarios, and intelligence. Xi Zhu, Professor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen) School of Science and Technology, discussed the changing roles of libraries from document management to knowledge discovery and technological innovation in the AI era, and explored how to use AI technology to provide better services in teaching, scientific research and decision-making, and to create new knowledge management and sharing platforms. In the presentation sessions, Keven Liu (Wei Liu in Chinese), Deputy Director of Shanghai Library, shared insights into Metaverse and Library 3.0. The other presentations include Yajun Mao, Director of Capital Library of China, on library innovation services; Lauri McIntosh, Channel Sales Manager of EBSCO, on BiblioGraph; Xinwan Li, Dean of Shanghai Jiaotong University Library, on ChatGPT and intelligent library services; Jilong Zhang, Associate Dean of Fudan University Library, on digital libraries; and Xichen Zhao, University Librarian of Macau University of Science and Technology, on best practices of building smart libraries at MUST.
A 3-hour seminar was scheduled for Day 2. Gang Zhou, Project Manager of Shanghai Library and Member of Product Council of the FOLIO Community, shared the experiences of implementing the Yunhan/FOLIO platform at Shanghai Library. Representatives from the Yunhan development community shared the status of developing Yunnan Library Services Platform. Yunhan LSP is the Chinese version of FOLIO. Highlight of Day 2 was the formal release of the Intelligent Library Standards and three white papers on Electronic Resource Management (ERM) requirements of the Chinese university libraries, the architecture of intelligent spaces, and online borrowing services respectively. This seminar was facilitated by Hua Nie, Researcher of Peking University Library. Additionally, a meeting of the Expert Committee of the FOLIO China community and two exhibits were also scheduled for Day 2.
Day 3 was training, focusing on the Yunhan LSP in the morning; while on Metaverse and Web 3.0 in the afternoon.