US SPEAKER TALKS ABOUT LIBRARIES AND THE WEB

August 27, 2007

The United States Embassy will host the seminar “Catch the wave – Web 2.0: interacting with your users in the digital world”, presented by Nicholas Cop, international expert in information management and technology. The seminar, co-sponsored by the Argentine National Library, will be held on Monday, August 27, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. at the Biblioteca Nacional, Sala Jorge Luis Borges, Agüero 2502.

The seminar

The digital world and its users´ new “virtual” ways of using libraries are a critical challenge for librarians. These developments are forcing libraries to find new ways of interacting with their users through the web. Also, search engines are pushing a better integration of resources purchased by libraries and a better visibility of those resources in the web.

Specifically, this practical presentation discusses RSS, blogs, wikis, podcasts, web 2.0 browsers, LibraryThing, folksonomies and Second Life. Also, two essential elements for increasing and better integrating electronic resources in libraries will be presented: Open Access and OpenURL.

Participants will receive a detailed bibliography about the concepts discussed in the presentation, including an extensive list of Open Access resources.

The speaker:

Nicholas. Cop is currently President of Nicholas Cop Consulting, a firm that provides information consulting services to libraries and to networks primarily in Latin America and the Caribbean. Mr. Cop has spent his entire career working extensively with academic libraries in Latin America and the Caribbean, and on information projects with international agencies such as the United Nations and the World Bank.

Mr. Cop began his career in the information industry with IDRC (International Development Research Centre) in Canada where he headed the distribution and support in Latin America and the Caribbean of the MINISIS library automation software. Later he worked at IDRC as lead analyst on international projects to automate financial flows related to a country’s external debt.

Mr. Cop was the first director of OCLC’s division for Latin America and the Caribbean. He founded the division in 1995 to provide OCLC services to libraries in the region. He also created the subsidiary OCLC Mexico in 2003. His strong interest in libraries of the region led him to negotiate global distribution rights of Latin American and Caribbean databases and e-journals, such as Clase, Periodica and LILACS, in OCLC’s reference services. Recently Mr. Cop was named to the RedALyC Advisory Board. RedeALyC is a prominent Open Access e-journal system in Latin America.

Mr. Cop graduated in physics (B.Sc.) from McMaster University with postgraduate work in nuclear physics at the University of Toronto. He speaks English, Spanish and Portuguese and understands French and Slovenian. He currently lives in Gainesville, Florida.