Fantastic news about the next Conference!

Hi all - it's been a while since I last blogged news from the Arlis/ANZ Executive - but I have some great news hot of the press!

We have a conference date for 2008!

Mark you diaries for the 2nd, 3rd and 4th of October 2008 for some conference fun in the glorious sunshine of a Brisbane spring. That's a Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

We are still finalising where, but are looking to take advantage of some of the wonderful cultural and educational institutions along the Brisbane river - more info will be realsed when we have secured venues.

As for a name, we have a working title: Cultural Connections: MySpace is an ArtSpace

The Queensland members are very excited about all the ideas this theme encapsulates. We feel we can build an exciting, innovative and attractive conference programme around this theme which will reflect the dynamic and forward-thinking society that is Arlis/ANZ.

For instance, some of the sub-themes we discussed revolved around ideas such as:

• the role of arts libraries and information services in connecting people with cultures and cultural expression
• the varied forms cultural and artistic expression might be taking in this new, technology-rich millennium
• the collection, preservation and appropriate management of and access to cultural artifacts and documents from indigenous creative and cultural traditions
• The role of arts libraries and information services in enabling appropiate connections between indigenous and non-indigenous cultural and creative traditions
• the connections and interrelationships between the creative disciplines - connections which blur the traditional divisions between visual, kinetic, performing and computational creative arts sectors - and what this means for the information services which support them
• social networking and corresponding technologies as cultural phenomena
  the use of new social technologies in cultural production, and what that means for arts libraries in terms of collecting, preserving and enabling access to digitally and collaboratively produced creative content
• and the use of new social technologies within the arts libraries and information sector itself and what that means for our members and our future
  

These are just a few ideas that spring to mind, and of course, there's lots more work yet to be done before a draft conference programme will be ready. The Queensland Chapter will be working on the conference programme and conference website during the next few months, with a call for papers due out either late 2007 or early 2008 - so stay tuned.

Any suggestions or comments about the conference title, or ideas for the programme are most welcome and you can get in touch either with the Coordinator of the Conference Programme, Alice Steiner a.steiner@qut.edu.au or just leave a comment to this post.

cheers
Ellen