by Liz Parnell.

GLAMSLAM19 was an incredible gathering of minds from within, and outside, the GLAM sector. It was a great opportunity to catch up with people I’ve met before, and meet new people in the sector.

We were challenged to use our GLAM Power to support the planet and reduce climate change, we examined the idea of value, and were treated to 20+ lightning talks from a wide range of people. My favourite lightning talks were about how to work with Indigenous collections and Indigenous communities, especially as a non-Indigenous person.

The final part of the program involved us splitting into “GLAMJAMS” – small groups that would chat about a chosen topic. The table I joined discussed the future of the catalogue. Our conclusions were – metadata is essential and without it our catalogues are useless. We need to create quality metadata, metadata that acknowledges we cannot fathom all the ways our patrons will want to use our collections, but for that we need funding/budget support. We’d also like to see evidence that the collections are being used.

Personally, I was most interested in the topics which touched on cataloguing, metadata and Indigenous issues – which was a lot. Added to that was my personal exploration of the venue – the State Library of NSW – examining realia on display, the accompanying catalogue record and the card catalogues that are still present in the Mitchell Reading Room.

To hear what others thought of GLAMSLAM19, checkout the Twitter hashtag, #GLAMSLAM19