I’ve notice a disparaging trend at both the ACM/IEEE-CS JCDL conference and at THATCamps. Digital Libraries researchers from Computer Science have never heard of THATCamp and don’t really interact with the people who attend. Conversely people at THATCamp don’t tend to think of the ACM/IEEE-CS community when they think about what is going on in digital libraries, digital archives, and digital humanities.
In fact the 2012 JCDL conference just ended at GWU the day before THATCamp V started at GMU. Here were two groups of people with similar concerns, interests, and goals across town and unaware of each other.
This session is to discuss why there is fragmentation between the more LIS DL people at THATCamp/ALA/etc and the more CS DL at JCDL/TPDL/etc and try and discuss ways to bridge the gap and bring both groups closer together.
Were you in the room when the conversation happened at JCDL about co-location of events? When someone mentioned code4lib and the reaction was “never heard of it” I could could not help but yelp audibly.
There were a few people in the room who are part of both camps. But not many.
Yes, I was there (Rick introduced me to the room about ten minutes before đ that bit). The JCDL community at times can seem very out of touch with practitioners. Both in libraries and archives and in industry.
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The disconnect is not necessarily a bad idea. JCDL focus is R&D not practice. That said, I prefer to have both communities talk to each other. “CONVERGENCE” is important.