Monday 8 February, 13:30 - 14:00

More and more libraries are using freely available open source APIs to add value and functionality to their existing online collections and content.  An application programming interface (API) is an interface implemented by a software program to enable interaction with other software, similar to the way a user interface facilitates interaction between humans and computers.

Presenter: Paul Hagon

In his own words Paul Hagon is a web developer at the National Library of Australia. Before this he worked at the Australian War Memorial so he has acknowledged there is something he loves about working at cultural institutions. He has been playing around on the web since the days of Netscape 1.0 and has worked in the business professionally since 1999. When he's not on the computer you can find him out running or riding. You can follow Paul's activities here or at Flickr, Twitter or delicious..

Paul is one of the leading figures in the library mashup / API frontier in Australian. In 2010 Paul was the first Australian to be recognised by the Library Journal as a Mover and Shaker for Technical Leadership. VALA is therefore delighted Paul kindly agreed to talk to the topic of library mashups and APIs at the VALA2010 L Plate Series.

• Content from this L Plate Session will soon be made available online.

Monday 8 February, 14:00 - 14:30

As a fundamental part of what many call Web 3.0, the Semantic Web is being seen as the next big thing to hit the Internet. This presentation provides an overview of the Semantic Web from one of the internationally recognised commentators and players in the Semantic Web space.

Presenter: Tom Tague

Thomas ("Tom") Tague leads the Thomson Reuters OpenCalais initiative, spearheading strategy and product development. He also oversees the OpenCalais developer community at OpenCalais.com, evangelizing the Calais Web service and working closely with commercial and non-commercial developers alike. Tom brings more than 25 years of solutions experience and domain expertise to Thomson Reuters. Previous roles include Executive Vice President, Client Solutions for Darwin Partners – which he grew to $40 million in revenue in four years – and co-founder and chief operations officer of Tessera Enterprise Systems, a quantitative analysis and data warehousing company he helped grow to $30 million in five years. He also served in senior roles at database marketing pioneer, Epsilon and systems management company, Electronic Data Systems (EDS).

As an internationally recognised thinker and player in the semantic web space, VALA is particularly Tom agreed to introduce the topic to the VALA2010 L Plate Series.

• View the Vodcast of this L Plate Session.
• VALA2010 L-Plate Session 3 Open Semantic Web Presentation (1.58 MB)
• Listen to the Podcast of this L Plate Session.

Monday 8 February, 14:30 - 15:00

More and more libraries are using services that are not hosted within a library but that are hosted in the cloud. Increasingly, software that has been traditionally loaded onto a PC is also being accessed in the cloud. This presentation provides an overview of cloud computing and explains why it is having such a profound impact on the use of computing and the internet.

Presenter: Bart Rutherford

Bart Rutherford is very well known with the Victorian library community as a throughful, and very entertaining presenter, who is able to make the most obscure and technical topics fun, interesting, and easy to understand. In 2010 Bart was also the VALA President. When he is not busy with VALA activities Bart is the Online resources Manager at Wesley College in Melbourne.

This is Bart's second series L Plate presentations, Bart's first L Plate presentation in 2008 introduced the now famous Slinky.

• View the Vodcast of this L Plate Session.
• VALA2010 L-Plate Session 4 Cloud Computing Presentation (624.48 kB)
• Listen to the Podcast of this L Plate Session.

Monday 8 February, 15:30 - 16:00

Discovery layers is the term for the next generation of library portals with inbuilt federated search functionality, relevance ranking, and social web applications. With discovery layers metadata is no longer the only basis for discovery and libraries can include deep linking to content, enriched content, and graphic search navigation interfaces. As such discovery layers move beyond a focus on the traditional library management system and its content domain and instead focus on the broad range of components that constitute library collections

Presenter: Marshell Breeding

Marshell Breeding is the Director for Innovative Technologies and Research, Vanderbilt University Libraries, Nashville, USA. Marshell is also the creator and editor of the Library Technology Guides web site and the lib-webcats online directory of libraries on the Web. Marshall has edited or authored five books and has written many other articles and book chapters. He regularly teaches workshops and gives presentations at library conferences on a wide range topics, throughout the United States and internationally. More information is available from Marshall's website. See also his Guideposts blog on Library Technology Guides.

• View the Vodcast of this L Plate Session.
• VALA2010 L-Plate Session 5 Discovery Layers Presentation (2.46 MB)
• Listen to the Podcast of this L Plate Session.