Librarians of Stellenbosch University attended the Library and Information Association of South Africa (LIASA) 15th Annual conference held on 7-11 October 2013 at CTICC. "The exciting theme Libraries in Dialogue for Transformation and Innovation challenges librarians to be pro-active and facilitate dialogue amongst themselves as well as with their clients," said Ujala Satgoor in her opening speech as the LIASA president. Libraries as hubs of information and knowledge must connect people to information who wish to change their thinking and transform the quality of life for all. In fact, the “transition to the current democracy requires librarians who drive access to information for knowledge production, innovative thinking and transformation,” she said.

Academic libraries pushing the boundaries via research librarianship was one of the dialogues. Delegates had to share insights and experiences. Lucia Schoombee, Research Support librarian from Stellenbosch University Library and Information Service pointed out that “reports and literature have provided a clear understanding of how research support has evolved and how services should look like, but the absence of standards to evaluate research support services, becomes a challenge for one to know what with-it is”.  Naomi Visser and Elbie Van Wyk, librarians from Stellenbosch, presented a paper “The undergraduate student through the maze virtually: A step-by-step guide" to show that Stellenbosch University Library and Information Service is already on track with the use of virtual tools.

Rosa Pardros’ and Clara Riera’s presentation highlighted skills and competencies needed by research librarians in a virtual environment. They highlighted that new research services and activities require a research librarian to have  knowledge of bibliometrics, interpersonal skills in a virtual environment and social networking. Prof Mary Nassimbeni from UCT agreed that there is a need for South African schools of librarianship to redesign the curriculum to teach these new skills. UCT School of librarianship has taken initiative to re-design the postgraduate curriculum to include scholarly communication, data curation and research librarianship.

Ned Potter (also known as Wikiman, from University of New York) reminded librarians about their purpose in the communities they serve. “We need to brand ourselves, enjoy what we do and let people know about us. We need to start a blog, get online, publish something, organise something, share something and present something”. Ned also re-emphasised the point that librarians are highly qualified professionals who are capable of using sophisticated tools to assist users with their information needs, therefore librarians must be pro-active.

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The opening of the LIASA Conference.

Ujala Satgoor, LIASA President. 

“From what I have gathered at this year’s conference by either engaging with colleagues from other institutions or by attending presentations, it is clear that we at Stellenbosch are in a good space in terms of service delivery to our users.” Yusuf Ras

“An opinion of Ned Potter that struck me as so true is that we should market the library’s services and resources continuously and persistently. A big marketing bash once a year is not effective. It should be an on-going never-ending process." Delene Pretorius