Dr Rónán O’Beirne’s Weblog

Education; Technology; Digital Transformation; Information & Knowledge Management; Librarianship; Digital Leadership

Ben Goldacre in full flow

Getting the speakers, the venue, the content, the tone, the audience and even the food perfect for any event is a difficult trick to pull off. But this is just what the DREaM Conference which I attended Monday at the British Library in London achieved. And they achieved it with some considerable style.

Contributions from Professor Carol Tenopir, University of Tennessee; Dr Louise Cooke, Department of Information Science, Loughborough University were excellent and very well received. Star attraction who lived up to his reputation and gave a frank and fairly hard-hitting talk was Ben Goldacre who according to his blog:
http://www.badscience.net/about-dr-ben-goldacre/
“is a best-selling author, broadcaster, medical doctor and academic who specialises in unpicking dodgy scientific claims from drug companies, newspapers, government reports, PR people and quacks. Unpicking bad science is the best way to explain good science.”

The “One Minute Madness” was good fun with some deliveries timed to perfection – very impressive.

For futher details of the conference and the Coalition go to the Library and Information Science Research Coalition

P.S. —  I won a book in the raffle!  “Dale, P., Beard, J. and Holland, M., Eds.  (2011) University Libraries and Digital Learning Environments. Ashgate,  England.

Gordon Square, Bloomsbury

On Monday I attended the Library and Information Research Group’s marketing meeting at the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) in London. The area of Bloomsbury, with which I am linked through the Russell family, my great-grand-aunt, Fanny Gallaher, author, was for many years the personal secretary to the Duchess of Bedford aka the “Flying Duchess”, looked as splendid as ever in the winter sunshine. The picture here is of Gordon Square where the ‘Bloomsbury’ group met frequently. I discovered also that poet W B Yates lived at 5 Woburn Walk – a cut-through I use regularly on my way back to Kings Cross.

So what exactly does LIRG do? LIRG seeks to increase peoples awareness and understanding of research that relates to the library and information profession across all sectors by:

Increasing its profile and influencing its direction;
Promoting the dissemination of sound research methodology and results;
Assisting in the development of emerging researchers;
Enabling networking between researchers.

The activities of the Group are co-ordinated by an elected committee of researchers, research students, lecturers and practitioners in the library and information profession. More information about the group can be found through this link LIRG

The group also publishes 3 times a year its journal LIR – Library and Information Research found here LIR