As I mentioned last week, a couple of weeks ago I travelled to the city of Porto in Portugal to attend the 27th Annual IATUL conference. This trip was made possible as I was awarded the first Tony Evans Travel Grant for young librarians, and also thanks to the very generous support of my employer.

To be able to attend an internationally-focused conference (the delegates were from all over the world), in Europe, with the support of a grant at this stage in my career was incredible. It was a wonderful experience, and I would recommend that all eligible librarians apply for the grant next year, and also to consider other grants for attending conferences. What I particularly liked about this grant that it was specifically for young librarians - there are not that many of these types of grants around (most well known is probably the 3M/NMRT Professional Development Grant which funds attendance at ALA) so it is great to see more becoming available.

I’ve always been what I would consider a bit of an ‘internationalist’, I like to keep up with what’s happening in libraries around the world and am a member of IFLA. But being in Australia, one doesn’t always have the opportunity to meet in person with librarians from Europe, South America and Asia. So it was fantastic to be able to spend some time finding out what’s happening in Bulgaria, Argentina, Greece, Spain, Finland, Egypt etc. And to practice my Italian and French, both of which have become incredibly rusty.

There were several big takeaways for me from the conference:
- The importance of providing instruction in existing and emerging citation analysis and impact factor databases and methods
- Data mining in all disciplines
- The growth of datasets which in some disciplines are becoming as important as traditional articles and publications
- The need for librarians to organise and promote discovery tools

Those were the big ones for me, but there were many other important issues that came up during the conference.

It was also great to hear Herbert Van de Sompel discuss citation and linking and the future of subject repositories. I wrote a big (yes!) next to his discussion of overlay journals. Something I am definitely planning on investigating further.

Overall, it was a fantastic experience. I met fascinating people from all over the world, listen to talks about great ideas and project, ate some delicious food, and saw a country I had never visited before.

I’m not back in Australia for long, Sunday week I fly out for ALA.