Stephen Abram, MLS
Stephen Abram, MLS, is President 2008 of SLA and the past-President of the Canadian and Ontario Library Associations. He is Vice President Innovation for SirsiDynix and Chief Strategist for the SirsiDynix Institute. He was Publisher Electronic Information at Thomson after managing several libraries. Stephen was listed by Library Journal as one of the top 50 people influencing the future of libraries. He has received numerous honours and speaks regularly internationally. His columns appear in Information Outlook and Multimedia and Internet @ Schools, OneSource, Feliciter, Access, as well writing for Library Journal. He is the author of ALA Editions bestselling' Out Front with Stephen Abram.
Can our libraries be more open? Can we be more open to our users; our learning and research communitie; to new technologies; to our neighbourhoods? Can we be more open to change? How? Are there technologies that we should be trying and piloting to see if they improve the library's mandate and value? Which ones are worth investigating? What are the emerging learning technologies? Are there different ways to build community or to attract new community segments? What about books? Are they still the gold standard? Stephen Abram is an inveterate library watcher and strategic technology futurist. In this session he shares the top technologies that we should think about 'playing' with and finding a way to make our libraries more open to our learning communities and scholars.
