VALA2012: eM-powering eFutures

VALA is excited to announce that Liz Lyon, Jason Griffey and Xiaolin Zhang will be keynote speakers for the VALA2012 Conference.

Liz Lyon is the Director of UKOLN, a research organisation that aims to inform practice and influence policy in the areas of: digital libraries, information systems, bibliographic management, and web technologies.

In 2009, she published the "Open Science at Web-Scale Report", which considered a range of issues associated with open data, citizen science and participative technologies for science. She also co-authored the "Scaling Up Report", which presents the results of a JISC-funded scoping study to assess the feasibility of a federated model for data repositories in the domain of crystallography.

In 2007, Liz completed a piece of consultancy for JISC, to investigate the relationships between data centres and institutions which may develop data repositories. This consultancy resulted in the direction-setting report "Dealing with Data". For further details on Liz, go to http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/e.j.lyon/

Jason Griffey is Associate Professor / Head of Library Information Technology, Lupton Library, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

Jason is a librarian, technologist, writer and speaker.

His most recent print publication is an issue of Library Technology Reviews entitled Gadgets & Gizmos: Personal Electronics and the Library.

His latest book is  Mobile Technologies and Libraries and he was the co-author of Library Blogging. He has a blog at  Pattern Recognition.

For further details about Jason, go to http://jasongriffey.net/.

Xiaolin Zhang is Executive Director of the National Science Library of Chinese Academy of Sciences, one of the largest research libraries in China. He has also been active at the national level for coordinated and collaborative development of digital libraries, for strategic planning of the National Scientific Information Platform, for promotion and experimentation of knowledge-oriented services, and for leading the national effort in digital library standards.

He led the large scale study of copyright issues and policies for the Chinese Science Digital Library, was one of the first to be involved in the Open Access movement, and was instrumental in organising Chinese studies on digital preservation policies and infrastructure.

He has been a Governing Board Member of IFLA and is a Standing Committee Member of Asia and Oceania Section on 2005.

For further details, see http://www.las.ac.cn/zxl/.

Colleagues may recall that Xiaolin was unable to attend VALA2010; VALA has renewed our invitation to him, and is delighted that he has accepted.

With the theme eM-powering eFutures, VALA2012 will take place at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre from Tuesday 7 February to Thursday 9 February 2012, with Boot Camps and L-Plate Series on Monday 6 February. Monday and Friday are also available for associated events, meetings or workshops - contact the VALA Conference Office at vala@wsm.com.auif you are interested in holding a workshop or associated event.

The Main Announcement and Registration Brochure will be available in September 2011. Go to http://www.vala.org.au/vala2012/expression-of-interestand provide your details if you would like to be added to the list to receive a copy.

Remember, you and your organisation will be able to get best value for money by being full members of VALA and paying for your registrations by 30 November 2011, so make your budget plans for the rest of this year accordingly!

And if you know a vendor you would like to see at the trade exhibition, the sponsorship and exhibition proposal will shortly be available - follow the links from the VALA2012 Home page for a copy.