BOBCATSSS 2009

The website of the next BOBCATSSS symposium has recently opened! BOBCATSSS 2010 is to be held in Parma, Italy between the 25th and 28th of January 2010. Mark the dates in your calendar. The theme is “Bridging the digital divide: libraries providing access for all?”, and the call for papers is open until 15th of July 2009.

Further information and updates can be found at the BOBCATSSS 2010 website, and we recommend you to visit often or to subscribe to their RSS feed.

Regarding this BOBCATSSS 2009 website and its future: links to the full papers have been added to the abstracts page and to the list of full papers for easy access.

We will soon transfer an archived version of these pages to a new, permanent location (from www.bobcatsss2009.org to www.uta.fi/conference/bobcatsss2009). After the transition the old domain will redirect you to the new address for a while, but please update any links to point to the new location.

Updates to the content will not be made after the move.

We recently received a web questionnaire from the organisers of BOBCATSSS 2011, which will be a cooperative effort between Austria and Hungary. The multiple-choice questionnaire was directed to the organisers. The questions and answers may still be of interest to the general audience as well, so I will take a look at some of them in some detail and provide commentary from my personal point of view.

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Greetings from Porto!

Breathtaking landscapes, delicious cuisine, and rich culture. Porto is such a wonderful city! That’s what I heard people say about Porto, and I just had to see it myself.

So, here I am, a Finnish information science student, a member of the BOBCATSSS 2009 organizing committee, having the time of my life in Porto. I arrived in Porto in August 2008, five months before my Finnish colleagues’ arrival.

Besides studying at the University of Porto and getting acquainted with the city, I’ve had the chance to get to know the Portuguese team members. By frequently being in contact with my Finnish colleagues, I believe, the communication between the two teams has improved. The organizers both in Finland and in Portugal are working hard on creating yet another great BOBCATSSS.

And I have to tell you, everything I heard about Porto beforehand is true. Porto is amazing and I’m sure you’ll love it too. Looking forward to seeing you in Porto in only 7 weeks!

Até já.

Johanna Varpila
Porto & Tampere

Hi everyone!

Organizing BOBCATSSS has been a real adventure. It all started when we were given the opportunity to participate in BOBCATSSS 2008, at Zadar, in Croatia, thanks to the University of Porto, which financed the trip for one lecturer and a student. There we met our Finnish colleagues from the University of Tampere, with whom we had already exchanged a few ideas via MSN Messenger. I think it was only then that we truly realized the sheer dimension and complexity which organizing such a symposium implied. Thus, I fervently advise the future BOBCATSSS organizers to come to Porto in January 2009, as only then will they have direct contact with the work involved. The trip to Zadar was also an excellent opportunity for us to publicize the city which is going to host the upcoming BOBCATSSS, to present the theme and sub-themes and to captivate participants. We were loaded with information to distribute and there was high interest and curiosity in our stand, which was kindly conceded by our hosts.

The meeting we had with the BOB’2008 organizing team was very important, as we were able to clarify all the doubts that came up during the 3 days of the symposium. We exchanged contacts and these have proved very useful. We use them when we need to and we always get ready answers. I would thus like to thank everyone for all their help.

Once we were back in Porto, it was down to work. We had to get together with the team and show them what BOBCATSSS was really all about. We had to discuss what we had seen in Zadar so that everyone could have an idea as to what we were getting into. We organized the team into work groups, with two general coordinators and sub-coordinators, who are responsible for each of the areas. There are meetings between coordinators and sub-coordinators whenever necessary. We contact our colleagues in Finland regularly, through MSN, Moodle and we’ve also had a video-conference session with them. I think so far everything is going very well and that we have put together an excellent team.

Time stands still for no man, we’re already going on the 2nd Call for Papers and sponsors have been showing up. We hope Porto will be invaded in January 2009, that participants will benefit from the issues to be discussed and, obviously, that they will truly enjoy their stay in the magnificent and captivating city of Porto.

All the best,

Susana

We have been adding new content and altogether new pages to the website. You can now read the frequently asked questions (and their answers), there’s information for the press, and you can get to know the organisers. A summary in Finnish is available, too.

The deadline for the sending of the extended abstracts is approaching! Please keep in mind that you can send your submission through the OpenConf system and still edit it until the deadline closes. See the contributions page for details.

June 12: Posters created by Team Porto have been added to the press page. Print them out and spread the word!

June 15: Most of the website has been translated into Portuguese.

June 17: Information added about the city, flights, hotels and hostels.

June 26: Some updates to the FAQ.

In case you would like to get familiar with the BOBCATSSS symposium and its end results in general, you can read the full papers of the previous conference, BOBCATSSS 2008.

Posters can be found at the programme section (under the “attached files” header on individual pages), as well as workshops. And photos of the symposium have been uploaded to Flickr.

The journal Libreas has also published an article on the conference. The concept of an academic conference has a page on Wikipedia.