CAML Conference Diary #2

Katherine Penner reflects on her experience at the recent conference of the Canadian Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres (CAML). Undergraduate Services Librarian at the University of Manitoba, Katherine was the recipient of CAML’s First-Time Attendee Award for this year’s conference. She has also just become a member of the CAML Board in the role of Secretary. 

CAML 2017

This is so exciting! It isn’t often that we get to share our thoughts POST-conference so soon after getting home. I usually come back from conferences with many ideas that I want to explore, and a lot of that is due to my preferred style of journaling. This CAML 2017 journal entry consists of three main sections: My journaling style & one sessions’ notes; Post-CAML “things to read” list; Ideas to take home and things to think about. None of these sections is at all exhaustive: they’re all just portions of my learning reflections during and after the conference that I would like to share with the community. Enjoy!

About my journaling style & an example:

My personal journaling style at conferences comes in the form of mind maps and imagery of how ideas and threads might fit together, and I see conferences as a great way to allow the library synapses go wild. This type of idea-journaling has been quite beneficial to my professional development, and I encourage you to try it as a way of making connections between concepts that you pick up in your day-to-day practice. I’ve included my notes from Session 7 (Saturday morning) as an example of my journaling. I chose this page for no other reason than my handwriting actually being legible that morning. :)

My Post-CAML “things to read” list, linked to the web or WorldCat. These works were discussed in Kwende Kefentse’s Keynote Plenary on Friday, 26 May:

Benjamin, W. – Arcades Project
Le Corbusier (C. Jeanneret), CIAM – Athens Charter
Chang, J. – Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation
Lawrence, T. - Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor
Hillier, B. – Space is the Machine

Ideas to take home and things to think about (questions to ask, things to do, things to figure out):

• About digital preservation: Mind the gap between digital files and streaming audio; getting from one to the other requires buy-in from Vendor, IT, Systems, Cataloguing, and Acquisitions in a digital preservation project. Project management is key. What might preservation look like in your library?
• What kinds of great ideas do we miss out on by putting on our own brakes before we entertain possibilities? Think about what Steve Marks from the University of Toronto said about the Naxos preservation project: “the world didn’t catch on fire because we did it” (“Preserving the Music O’ Canada: Acquisition and Digital Preservation of Our Recorded Heritage,” Session 4a, CAML, 2017).
• The questions that Kallmann asked in his writings can connect with the Information Literacy Framework. What does this look like in your classroom?
• What constitutes “Canadian” music? What does Canada’s musical heritage look like, and how can we do our part in our own libraries? Does it require a delineation of collection scope between each of our libraries?
• Who can you work with at your local public library to coordinate joint collections of local music?
• How does my city retain talent? Pluralism plays a large part in city movements to “smart cities” or “informatic cities.” We need to pay more attention to the intersection of business and the creative class.
• What can we do to participate in the broader conversation of Librarianship in Canada? How do we do this at home, and as part of CAML?

Some not-so-final thoughts:

The beauty of attending this conference was the ability to connect and share the learning experience with people who speak the same language. When that language is music, it engages a different level of collaborative thought, one we do not normally have the pleasure of indulging in our regular work environments.

I would love to discuss some of these ideas with our community between conferences too! If you have time, send me an email and we will set up some time to chat! This was my first CAML conference, so I would like to thank the CAML community for being so welcoming. Congratulations to everyone (organizers, presenters, fellow learners) on a great conference!