Our much-loved Talis Insight APAC (Asia-Pacific) event returned this year as an in-person on 14th and 15th February! If you haven’t heard of Talis Insight APAC before, it’s our free, two-day event for library professionals to gather, network and discuss the role of Talis Aspire resource lists, sharing ideas for best practice.
This year the event was hosted at the University of Queensland, where thirty members of the academic community attended.
Read on for a recap of Talis Insight APAC 2024…
Day One
The event began with introductions and a keynote address by Nicola Langford, International Sales Director for Technology from Sage. Nicola expressed that it was great to be back on campus and in-person after being online for previous years. It was orientation week at University of Queensland, and the first day was ‘Market Day’ so the campus was busy with new students.
We then heard from Caroline Williams, University Librarian at University of Queensland, who gave an overview and reflected on the amount of change and progress she’s seen throughout her career. Nicola then spoke about Technology from Sage in her keynote speech, and discussed what we’ve been doing as a business to promote our new brand since it launched in 2022. Nicola talked about the products that have come together to form Technology from Sage – Talis Aspire, Talis Elevate, Lean Library, and Sciwheel, and our mission to help libraries amplify their presence on campus and across the university. We’ve come a long way since Technology from Sage launched in 2022!
Next, we had ice-breakers from our Talis User Group Reps (TAUG). The Talis User Group sessions are always a really engaging part of our Talis Insight events. We much appreciated the input of the TAUG reps on the imaginative ice-breakers, pairing up flags to find your matching country and later on a fun word and picture quiz.
Bex Carruthers from Deakin University kicked off the Reading List Reviews discussion. Reviews are central to all of us in libraries and this was a great opportunity for us to come together for a discussion. Bex started the talk with a look at the Reviews process at Deakin and there were lots of interaction from the floor with people making contributions. The session was topped off by Scott Gibbens, Head of Product for Talis, at Technology from Sage, who joined us remotely from the UK to speak about developments for Reviews and what the Talis Aspire roadmap looks like in 2024.
We ended the day with an in-depth overview of our latest Librarian Futures report, The Librarian Skills Landscape from Helen Anderson, Development Manager at Technology from Sage. There was a consensus that data skills and AI skills were important now and in the future. If you haven’t yet downloaded the report, download it here to discover more noteworthy insights regarding the emerging skills required to fulfil a library’s mission and meet the needs of today’s library patrons.
Day Two
The sun was shining on our second day of Talis Aspire APAC! We gathered again at the University of Queensland and were joined by our Technology from Sage hosts, Nicola and Helen. After introductions and ice-breakers, we had a fascinating session from Kia Owens, Library Services Officer, at University of Queensland Library on Indigenizing the Curriculum with Reading Lists. Kia spoke about how UQ Library are building a set of resources to support the indigenizing of the curriculum using Talis Aspire to construct the list. There was so much interaction from the floor with people sharing ideas to take away and put into practice at their own institutions.
The afternoon session was led by Richard Tattersall, Senior Technical Consultant at Technology from Sage, who had pre-recorded a video (as he’s based in the UK) to delve into AI and the implications for the academic library. We shared experiences of what librarians were currently doing with AI and had comments ranging as follows:
- Coding
- Using it to help with excel formulas
- Writing text/speeches
- Using it for visualizations e.g. infographics and posters
- Writing job adverts.
We then had a few workshops led by our TAUG representatives. Our session on Advanced MIS, Power BI, Tableau and ChatGPT was led by Jamie McDonald, Reading List and Resource Sharing Specialist at La Trobe University and Natalie Hull, Assistant Manager Learning Resources at University of Queensland. It was a very interactive and interesting session, following up on the ideas in the previous AI workshop.
Finally, the TUAG led user group discussions were invaluable and very interactive. They covered topics such as monitoring Open Access resources, copyright and scanning, zero cost offers, rollovers and academic adoption and data. This gave important insights into issues that affect all libraries and will continue affecting them. It was great to hear suggestions from our TAUG community on how to further improve our services to ensure best practice.
We had a great time at the University of Queensland and it was fantastic to host another year of Talis Insight APAC, especially in-person. We look forward to an ongoing discussion with the user group community throughout the year!
