Blue Growth: Motivating Innovations in Aquatic Information Management
41st IAMSLIC Annual Conference, September 7-11, 2015
FAO
Rome, Italy
http://www.iamslic.org/conf2015/
Organization:
The International Association of Aquatic and Marine Science Libraries and Information Centers (IAMSLIC)
is an association of individuals and organizations interested in library and information science, especially
as these are applied to the recording, retrieval and dissemination of knowledge and information in all
aspects of aquatic and marine sciences and their allied disciplines. The association provides a forum for
exchange and exploration of ideas and issues of mutual concern. (http://www.iamslic.org)
IAMSLIC Conference Sessions
Stephanie Ronan of Oceanus Library in Ireland is the official tweeter for the conference and wants
everyone to tweet and follow: #iameura15. The meeting was a joint conference with the 16th EURASLIC
Biennial meeting.
Tuesday, September 8th
The conference opened with welcome greetings from the IAMSLIC Conference Host, the AssistantDirector General of the FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Department, the IAMSLIC president and the
IAMSLIC Conference Convener. The keynote speaker was Devin Bartley, FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture
Department, speaking on the Complex Information Needs for Inland Fisheries and Aquaculture to Grow
Blue. He is an advocate for inland fisheries being used as protein resources in food stability, monetary
value and land use. Dried fish should be an important component of disaster relief supplies.
The morning continued with an update on the collaborative accomplishments of IAMSLIC/IODE GEMIM
by Linda Pikula from the NOAA/Miami Regional Library. After a short break, we continued with
presentations on two projects, Recent Developments in European Copyright by Marcel Brannemann,
Alfred Wegner Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany. SEND 2.0 is an in-house tool for
interlibrary loan being used by Sofija Konjevic from the Rudjer Boskovic Institute Library in Croatia.
The first afternoon sessions were Sponsor Presentations featuring Inter-Research and NHBS Gratis Book
Scheme. We also heard brief talks from the poster presenters.
The day ended with presentations on two open source tools. The Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine
Ecology is using the Doctor-Doc tool to handle literature requests, http://www.doctor-doc.com. The
Research Institute for Nature and Forest is an open research institute. They manage biodiversity data
under a Creative Commons license, https://www.inbo.be/en/node/38538
Wednesday, September 9th
The morning began with a presentation explaining Blue Growth. It is an FAO initiative to address
sustainability in food from the ocean. It focuses on four areas: capture fisheries, aquaculture,
processing, and cultural importance. The Initiative addresses environmental and socio-economic
considerations related to the four areas of focus. Blue Growth focuses on food security where Blue
Economy involves ALL uses of the oceans. FAO offers much information on related websites for our
use. An example is: http://www.fao.org/biodiversity/cross-sectoral-issues/ecosystem-approach/en/.
Suzette Soomai spoke on her work in advancing the Blue Growth agenda. She is working on her PhD and
focusing on scientific information use in influencing/driving policy. There is a need to bridge the gap
between conceptual use of science and engagement of data support in creating policy. In between
scientists and policy are lobbyists, media, boundary organizations, information and knowledge brokers
and diverse communication tools. FAO plays the role of a boundary organization and helps build bridges
and frame advice. The Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) is another agency involved in
the production of advice for decision making taking into account the needs of science and management.
The rest of the morning was spent learning about open access and data initiatives in Europe as well as
discussing the issues involved in providing access and creating these resources.
 iMarine Dataset Citation, http://www.i-marine.eu, which is a data e-Infrastructure Initiative for
Fisheries Management and Conservation of Marine Living Resources. The next step is
BlueBridge, new European initiative funded under the H2020 framework to further develop and
exploit the iMarine e-Infrastructure data services for an ecosystem approach to
fisheries. http://tinyurl.com/pu4pogl
 OpenAIRE, European multi-disciplinary partnership to promote open scholarship and improve
the discoverability and reusability of research publications and data. It is an interoperable
network of publication repositories. They are also looking to BlueBridge with their work on
research products (articles, datasets, software). This is also the home of NOADS (National Open
Access Desk) who connect researchers and policy makers with open access, copyright and
OpenAire concerns within their country. OpenAire is also promoting a change in how research is
reported called Science 2.0 Repositories. i-Marine is an example of this.
https://www.openaire.eu
 A project is under development to collate Codes of Practice (COP) or Better Management
Practices (BMP) for Aquaculture. They have compiled 350 documents from around the world
thus far. The ultimate goal is to make these documents available online on the FAO/FI site and
also in Aquatic Commons.
The afternoon session focused on the importance of fisheries in Asia and the Phillipines.
 Central Institure of Brackish Water Aquaculture
 Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center
 There is interest in forming an Asian regional group within IAMSLIC.
The first IAMSLIC business meeting ended the day on Wednesday.
Thursday, September 10
Thursday’s theme of the day was linked data.
The Monteray Bay Aquarium collect deep-sea data from their remotely operated vehicles (ROV). The
samples, whether physical or visual, have metadata that including where it was collected. The videos
are all annotated. They have an open source Video Annotation and Reference System
(VARS). www.mbari.org/vars MBARI just released a new Deep Sea Guide (dsg.mbari.org), a web
interface that allows one to search the VARS data with a visual interface which includes taxonomic info,
images, site collection data. You can overlay the data on Google maps
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute is developing a semantic integration product to link open access
data through repositories to make searching across all available materials more seamless. Earthcube
OceanLink is their first project. They also have the Rolling Deck to Repository (http://www.rvdata.us)
collecting data from research vessels. Encourage your scientists to get an ORCID ID!
The Freshwater Biological Association's has developed the AEDA repository
http://www.environmentdata.org and FISH.Link the linked data initiative. The repository includes FBA
publications and datasets, images, and NGO publications related to the environment.
FishBase, http://www.fishbase.org, is an e-library of aquatic biodiversity documents housed in the
Philippines. It is very useful for anyone interested in fish as it contains almost all known fish species.
Besides the documents in FishBase and SeaLifeBase, the FIN library will be searchable by GIS
mapping. http://www.fin.ph
CEERMar (CEERMar.org) is a joint repository project joining 13 libraries in 5 countries. Also the Institute
of Biology of the Southern Seas (IBSS) has a repository http://repository.ibss.org.ua/dspace/. VNIRO
also has a repository http://dspace.vniro.ru/.
The International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF) both produces and collects documents in a
database that uses the WinISIS software. Information in any format which affects fishworkers is
gathered by ICSF and disseminated through the website, through trainings, and through push
technology of the SAMUDRA news. http://www.icsf.net
Metadata creation practices for repositories in the Pacific and Asia have been surveyed to see who was
responsible for the repositories, training, attention to copyright, distribution of file types, metadata
choice and selection, controlled vocabulary used, and interoperability standard. Standardization is to
local norms so that creates issues. The Ugandan National Fisheries Resources Research Institute
(NaFIRRI) library found it necessary to create their own data division plan based on how their scientists
thought. The Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources in Malawi is digitizing local
materials and adding them to Aquatic Commons.
Finally our attention turned to project management and sustainable collection assessment. Jennifer
Walton, MBL WHOI, presented the case of why project management is an important practice for
libraries to follow. Scrum and Base Camp are tools for project management.
Closing out this last full day of the conference was Michelle Leonard talking about sustainable collection
assessment. She talked about the information you need for assessment, reasons why assessment is
important, the uses of assessment and how to progress. I particularly liked their use of white boards as
a tool to survey their users by asking a different question every week.
Friday, September 11th
The last day of the conference included a diverse program of speakers. We heard about a
Medical Library Association award to investigate the history of information science in marine medical
research. A corporate librarian, Kristen Metzger, reminded us that librarians need to be able to think
beyond their area of specialty. The last presentation of the conference was given by David Baca. He
talked about high impact practices and student employees. "High impact activities are those that allow
students to apply learning to real life, to make connections, reflect and integrate learning." An example
is Iowa GROW program https://vp.studentlife.uiowa.edu/initiatives/grow/
The final business meeting was opened by Guillermina Cosulich, IAMSLIC President. Conference hosting
proposals will be forthcoming from Uganda and Crete.
The 2016 conference will be in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico - 16-20 October 2016
Current officers
Steve Watkins, President
California State University Monterey Bay Library
swatkins@csumb.edu
David Baca, President-Elect
Texas A&M University at Galveston
bacad@tamug.edu
Brian Voss, Secretary
U.S. NOAA Seattle Library
brian.voss@noaa.gov
Kristen LaBonte, Treasurer
University of California Santa Barbara Library
IAMSLIC.treasury@gmail.com
Kristen Anderson, Past President
University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine
krisa@hawaii.edu