We could not miss attending the 24th PanHellenic Conference of Academic Libraries (PALC) that took place in the city of Larisa from 1 to 2 November. The Library and Information Center of the Technological Institution of Thessaly welcomed this year PALC, for the second time since 2002.
Titled “Sm@rt Libraries: A Digital World of Infinite Opportunities”, the aim of PALC24 was the exploration of new technologies and their application to the contemporary Academic Libraries. The main thematic area of PALC24 was the advancement of automatization of services, the integration of new ones and the improvement of those already provided using the affordances the new digital age offers.
Sm@rt libraries are the future of Libraries, both at academic level- Smart Campus- and at social level -Smart Community- through the support of technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), in which small computing units or sensors, interconnected to the Net, are able to collect, process and transmit information independently. At the same time, they are able to gain intelligence and interact autonomously with their environment. Academic libraries are required to exploit this type of technology for the benefit of their users by improving their physical and digital infrastructures.
Vasilis Batalas, Library and Information System Manager at DataScouting had a joint presentation with Ms Aggeliki Garoufali and Ms Eleni Ntrogouli, about “Libraries as ‘third place’ of socialization and collaborative learning in the new digital era”.
The PanHellenic Conference of Academic Libraries has been held annually over the past 25 years.
