Singapore sent the largest delegation from one country to the Third International Conference on Libraries, Information and Society (ICOLIS) 2010 held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from 9-10 Nov. A total of 13 delegates from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Management University, Monetary Authority of Singapore and Temasek Polytechnic participated in the conference. The trip, organized by LAS, provided learning opportunities and a platform for professional staff to keep abreast of library trends and technology.

Themed “Towards Greater Information Accessibility”, the conference explored topics such as internationalization of libraries and information communities, management of information sources and services for greater access, as well as research in libraries, information and society.

A predominant trend is the discourse on Open Access – many papers were about the lack of aggressive growth of open access in Asia. In addition, many presenters revealed that Asian institutions were mainly concerned about archiving exam papers and dissertations; research papers were not their top priority.

Organised by the Library and Information Science Unit (Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology) of University of Malaya, the conference saw papers presented by speakers from Malaysia, Nigeria, Iran, South Korea, India and Sri Lanka. They covered wide-ranging areas, ranging from open access, impact factors, to digital libraries.

One notable presentation was done by Dr Nahyun Kwon who provided insight into the behavioral patterns of the Y-Generation in using the library.

This is notwithstanding the fact that 28 papers were compiled in a handy monograph for the participants.

The topics were very unique to the countries’ heritage setting and examples  included: “Digitization and digital preservation of cultural heritage in National Archive of India”, “Information literacy initiatives at Sri Lanka Universities”, “An instrument for accessing collection security management in university libraries [in Nigeria]”.

Besides the conference, the trip included visits to Bank Negara Malaysia Resource Centre, National Library of Malaya (on 8 Nov) and the Petronas Petroleum Resource Centre (on 10 Nov). LAS also had a knowledge sharing session on library development with the Persatuan Perpustakaan Malaysia (PPM) which is the library association of Malaysia.

Contributed by Loh Hui Hong