Derek Law

The closing session featured Derek Law, Emeritus Professor, Information Sciences, University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. He used an extensive collection of slides to summarize the conference in his very well received presentation.

Why do we keep returning to Charleston?

• Professional reasons: Equality, intimacy, meeting old friends, making new friends, and learning new acronyms.
• Personal reasons: A week of gluttony, oysters, a week’s vacation without kids, socializing, weather, and more.

There were 112 sessions and 605 speakers. Darrell Gunter won the whova leaderboard competition with 120,000 points. (The leaderboard awards points for various activities done at the conference.) He was awarded a stuffed swamp fox (named after the restaurant in the Francis Marion Hotel)

Darrell Gunter Awarded a Swamp Fox

Major themes of the conference:

• New products from old companies.
• New companies,
• New tools to add access, and
• New forms of data (audio, video, archives, etc.)

AI and Chat GPT: Artificial Intelligence Giving Part Truth: It is mono-cultural (knows about only 1 civil war, 1 declaration of independence, and 1 sport), and depends on limited sources (Facebook, Wikipedia, Mirriam-Webster). Derek asked Chat GPT about other people with his name and it returned an American baseball player, a Scottish football player (Denis Law), and several others. So he asked for librarians with his name and was happy to see that it said he was “a renowned scholar in library science” who has authored several publications. 

Derek was very complimentary about James Daunt’s keynote address and suggested that visitors skip visiting 221b Baker St. and go to Daunt’s Bookshop instead. 

He closed with a vote of thanks to sponsors, attendees, and speakers, as well as the “behind the scenes” people: registration, kitchen staff, drinks servers, shuttle drivers, the IT crew, the Francis Marion Hotel team, and especially Katina Strauch, the founder of the conference and an inspiration to all of us. His final slide showed the old (himself) and the new (Robert Gallagher), so we will have to wait until next year to see if Derek presents the closing session.

Don Hawkins, Conference Blogger