2007 Code4Lib Conference Report
| Date | 10 July 2007 |
| Pages | 4-7 |
| Published date | 10 July 2007 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/07419050710823247 |
| Author | Antonio Barrera,Parmit Chilana,Kevin Clarke,Michael Giarlo |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
2007 Code4Lib Conference Report
Antonio Barrera, Parmit Chilana, Kevin Clarke, and Michael Giarlo
4LIBRARY HITECH NEWS Number 6 2007, pp. 4-7, #Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 0741-9058, DOI 10.1108/07419050710823247
Introduction
The 2007 Code4Lib conference was
held at the University of Georgia,
February 27 to March 2. The event was
the second annual conference for the
Code4Lib group, which derives its
membership from an e-mail list and an
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel of the
same name. Geared toward computer
programmers, the conference revolves
around technological problems and
solutions in the context of libraries.
This year’s conference drew
approximately 120 attendees and was
sponsored locally by the University of
Georgia and the Georgia Public Library
Service. Other sponsors included library
technology firms OCLC, Talis,
LibLime, and Logical Choice
Technologies, and the past year’s host
organization, Oregon State University.
The event was organized in a
democratic fashion, with community
members voting in the open on the
location of the conference and the
program. The conference began with a
one-day pre-conference session on the
Solr search system, which was well-
attended, and also included two keynote
addresses, numerous scheduled talks,
and other activities.
Participation among attendees was
encouraged via lightning talks and
breakout sessions. Lightning talks
allowed for over two-dozen additional
speakers to participate actively in the
conference. Each speaker had a five-
minute time limit to describe some
interesting technology or give an update
on a work-in-progress. Breakout
sessions presented an opportunity for
individuals to gather in small group
settings to discuss a topic of need or
interest.
Code4Lib provided an opportunity
for library programmers to share their
experiences, knowledge, and code with
colleagues from across the globe. As
Karen G. Schneider, former Associate
Director for Technology and Research
at the Florida State University Libraries,
noted during the opening keynote,
libraries must improve their ability to
control the content they create or
license. One such way is to develop
tools to manage and provide access to
this content (Schneider, 2007b).
Code4Lib serves as a means of helping
programmers focus on finding solutions
to their libraries’ needs.
Background
The Code4Lib conference is a
relatively new introduction to the world
of library conferences but it is grounded
in pre-existing communities and
traditions. Placing the conference in
context requires a look at the broader
Code4Lib community and the events
and people around which it has
coalesced.
The Code4Lib community, as one
might deduce, is a group of computer
programmers who largely work for
libraries. Some come from the IT
industry; others are bonafide librarians.
All have a common goal of writing,
analyzing, managing, tweaking, testing,
hacking, or otherwise using code. In
2003, a number of library- and
programming-related mailing lists had
been created for very specific purposes:
one for this programming, another for
that markup language, and so forth. A
group of library programmers got
together in the fall of that year to create a
more general mailing list, one that
would be relevant to all manner of
programming and markup languages,
and it would be known as ‘‘Code4Lib’’
(Chudnov, 2007a).
Two catalysts transformed Code4Lib
from a small mailing list into an active,
international community: a chatroom
and Access, the premier library
technology conference.
The Access conference, under the
aegis of the Canadian Association of
Research Libraries, has been at the
forefront of library technology since its
inception in what was a landmark year
for the internet, 1995, when ‘‘the
government and the organizations that
built [the Internet] ...handed [it] over to
commercial networks;’’ (Ruthfield,
1995) when sites like Amazon, Hotmail,
and eBay were created; when the Java
language was introduced; when the first
version of Internet Explorer was
released; and when Netscape went
public. Each of these events shaped the
future of the internet and the Web, and
the Access conference was well-timed
to translate these bold steps forward into
how they might solve library users’
needs. As early as 2002 (Chudnov,
2005), the Access conference added a
new feature: the Hackfest, where
programmers and librarians alike could
gather, share ideas about library
services, and create them during an
intensive (not to mention intensely fun)
day of coding, sketching, and other
interaction.
Access served as an incubator for
much of the early Code4Lib
community. Not long after the original
Code4Lib mailing list was created, the
list community decided to set up a
chatroom on the Freenode network of
IRC; in a fit of inspiration, they named it
Code4lib. The 2004 and 2005 Access
conferences provided early
Code4Libbers the opportunity to meet
face-to-face, and the community grew in
leaps and bounds during this period.
And the more the community grew, the
greater the demand became for more
regular meetings than the annual Access
offered (Chudnov, 2007a).
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