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Weech, Students Attend BOBCATSSS

April 7, 2009

Seven GSLIS students attended the BOBCATSSS conference in Porto, Portugal along with Associate Professor Terry Weech. The conference was held in January.

GSLIS has suppored student participation in this unique library and information science event for the past seven years, and Weech has worked with the students in their development of posters, papers, and workshops.

The students who participated this year are:

• Michelle Chronister presented a poster titled "Librarian 2.0 and Collection Development: Is There Benefit to Adding User Generated Content to Collections?"
• Mara Degnan-Rojeski presented a poster titled "The Impact of Institutional of Institutional Repositories on the Life of the Information Professionals and the Scholars they Serve."
• Sarah Jackman presented a poster titled "Collections and Calamity – Disaster preparedness and preservation for threatened physical libraries and archives."
• Joseph Lenkart delivered a paper titled "Information Literacy and International Students: cultural barriers and language preferences."
• Jonathan McMichael delivered a paper titled "Culture and Copyright, Coexisting? - Preserving Culture in a Digital World."
• Natalie Sapkarov presented a poster titled "Wikis Connect the World."
• Claudia Serbanuta, Sarah Jackman, and Terry Weech conducted a workshop titled "Community Informatics and the New Information Professional."

BOBCATSSS gave these students the opportunity not only to share their research with others, but also to discover what kind of research in library and information science is being conducted throughout the world. Claudia Serbanuta, who presented at the Symposium, said “It felt good to meet and interact with LIS students and faculty from different parts of the world. Sharing my research interest, for example, with students and librarians from Finland, Czech-Republic, Germany, Morocco, the UK, Norway and Portugal provided me with in depth understanding of my work but also assured me that LIS professionals face similar problems and hopes independent of their culture, language, or economic development. I learned though that being open to and acknowledging the cultural differences is a must (at times an uncomfortable one) if you are to fully enjoy a unique experience like BOBCATSSS.”

Every year since 1993 library and information studies students from European universities organize the symposium on current issues in library and information science. The name of the conference, BOBCATSSS, is an acronym representing the first letter of the cities where the universities which originally established the annual conference were located. Teams of students plan and implement both the content and the management of these conferences as a part of their studies.

Photos of GSLIS participation in BOBCATSSS 2009 can be found online.

BOBCATSSS 2010 will be held in Parma, Italy from January 25-27, 2010. The theme is "Bridging the Digital Divide: Libraries Providing Access for All?"

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