One of the highlights of the 85th IFLA Conference and Assembly was the joint section program “Data Mining and Artificial Intelligence: Artificial Intelligence and Data Mining to transform knowledge management and information services in libraries and information organizations.” The program was cosponsored by the KM and IT standing committees with support from the Big Data SIG. The co-chairs were Frank Cervone from the KM SC and Leda Bultrini from the IT SC. The program was so popular that people were standing in the aisles of one of the largest auditoriums at the conference center.
Exploring the topic of artificial intelligence (AI) and how it is having a pervasive impact on many aspects of our lives, the program featured presentations from libraries and information organizations from around the globe. Cervone gave the opening talk which provided an overview of current topics related to data mining and AI. Additional speakers from Standard University, the Helsinki Central Library, the National Library Board of Singapore, and the National Diet Library in Japan discussed the real-world impact AI is already having to transform traditional knowledge management and information service practices in libraries and other information agencies.
Papers from the talks are available in the IFLA library at https://library.ifla.org. Papers from the talks include:
· Yewno: Transforming Data into Information, Transforming Information into Knowledge. P. E. Schreur, Stanford University, Stanford, United States
· Virtual information assistants on mobile app to serve visitors at Helsinki Central Library Oodi, Hammais E., Ketamo H., Koivisto A.
· Mining Text, Linking Entities - NLB's Journey. Hoon E.M., National Library Board of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
· Future digital library prototype: Approaches by the National Diet Library of Japan for improving information discoverability. Aoike T., Satomi W., Kawashima T., National Diet Library of Japan, Tokyo, Japan
