Latest News

Virtual Academic Library in Conference!

Three Virtual Academic Library presentations at conferences took place during 2009.

In April, Swansea University co-hosted (with PTFS Europe Ltd) a conference for librarians in Wales on open source software in libraries.  Paul Johnson, Virtual Academic Library Project Manager, gave a presentation on VuFind, the Open Source discovery portal being implemented by the project; and Mark Hughes, the former project manager and now Head of Collections at Swansea University, spoke about the Open RFID in Libraries Specification (ORILS), a UK community initiative to assist other UK libraries in their RFID procurements. The specification arose from the Virtual Academic Library’s own procurement exercise and has now been used by a number of other libraries across the UK.

In May, Paul Johnson and Mark Hughes gave a joint presentation on the project’s implementation of VuFind to a national conference on open source software in London – Breaking the Barriers. They also wrote a report on the conference for Panlibus magazine.

In November, Mark Hughes gave a presentation on RFID procurement, based on the project’s experience, to the national RFID in Libaries conference in London. Along with Mark, the new project system officer, Luke O’Sullivan, joined the panel for an open forum discussion.