The 60th International Library Association Conference

On 8-10th April 2015, Taylor & Francis attended the ILA Conference at Punjab University, Chandigarh. This year, the conference celebrated its diamond jubilee with the theme, Embedded Librarianship and the Technological Challenges in the Digital Age. The conference aimed to focus on the challenges and future of a library in the e-environment and the new technological innovations in librarianship today. Over 450 librarians from across the country attended the conference.

We gave a presentation on Social Media in Academic Libraries - Challenges and Opportunities & won the best presentation award both in terms of content as well as delivery. We were presented with a special gesture trophy for the invited speaker at the ILA. The content of this presentation was in sync with the key note address of Dr Jagdish Arora, Director of INFLIBNET, as he spoke about how libraries and librarians today need to ensure that they move with the times and use digital mediums to touch base with their users.

The event was also linked to the news coverage: 
http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/chandigarh/government-launches-web-scale-service-at-university-library/ 

User Awareness & Knowledge Sharing Session, University of Allahabad

Taylor & Francis India conducted a User Awareness & Knowledge Sharing Session at the University of Allahabad on 20 April 2015. The two-hour session was aimed at training the users on:

-          The South Asia Archive (SAA)

-          English Historical Documents (EHD)

-          & sharing information on how to get published in a journal

It was a packed hall with 252 participants that included the Vice Chancellor, Head of Departments, academicians, faculty, research scholars, librarians and students.

The strategy:

The day was interspersed with three quizzes, based on the three presentations that we were scheduled to give. That was done to ensure that the participants understood the content and the nuances of operating the sites for SAA & EHD.

The talk on ‘How to get published in a journal’ was received with great interest. Participants were seen scribbling notes in their diaries and there were many queries.

1.       Registering the participants: The purpose is to get an original & robust mailing list. We handed over our delegate bags to them containing information about e books that we hope to pitch to them and material on Journal archives as well as user guides for SAA and postcards on EHD plus author/editor services. 

  

2.       The inaugural ceremony: We arranged for the session in a way that the Vice Chancellor for the Allahabad University, Professor Farooqi inaugurated the session and endorsed the SAA. He said:

“The South Asia Archive will lend itself a lot to value for the research students and I am very happy that we have invested in this product. I have personally gone through the archive and I know that we are on the right track.”

Vice Chancellor Prof. Farooqi was the guest of honor. Prof. Manjula Tripathi and Prof. Vishvakarma presided over the inaugural ceremony. Dr B. K. Singh, Librarian gave the welcome address and greeted Taylor & Francis. The inaugural ceremony gave us a chance to reiterate Taylor & Francis’s commitment to the university and talk about our services that make the company stand out from the competition. The vice chancellor’s endorsement of the product also helped us create a brand value for ourselves for further business.

Presentations: The training presentations on SAA and How to get published in a journal were given by Shafina and Ashwani gave the presentation on EHD. A medium of Hindi and English languages were used to explain the concept to the audience. 
      

        How to get published: The talk on ‘How to get published in a journal’ was received with great interest. Participants were seen scribbling notes in their diaries and there were many queries related to journal article publishing. 

2.       Motivators: The day was interspersed with three quizzes, based on the three presentations that we were scheduled to give. That was done to ensure that the participants understood the content and the nuances of operating the sites for SAA & EHD. Everyone participated very enthusiastically. We gave away prizes for every quiz winner. There was a grand prize at the end of the session which also ensured full participation in the hall for us.

**The event was also ably supported by the books sales through Sanjay Yadav, who assisted us in making the event a success. We displayed books catalogues at the event and Sanjay networked with the faculty.

 

The event also received good media coverage. Some of the snippets are attached:

 

The session ended with all the registered attendees receiving a certificate of participation. The discussion was led further over a cup of tea where participants had a lot of queries and questions regarding the products.

Shafina Segon & Sonali Bhardwaj