IATUL 2008

My latest excitement is that I get to go to Auckland, New Zealand for a conference in April. As part of my job, I get one education leave a year to go to a conference. The one exception is that typically things which are happening in the Gulf Region don't count toward your education leave. We had a Millennium (http://www.iii.com) conference in December in Doha, which was good to attend. (Millennium is one example of an integrated library system.) Then in April (I better check the dates...) we will have a Special Libraries Association (SLA) Gulf Chapter meeting here, which I am eligible to attend.

But anyway, the conference is the IATUL (International Association of Technological University Libraries) meeting. It looks like it will have good information on digital discovery, and building information depositories for particular user groups.

WCMC-Q is unique in that it is an American institution whose primary user group originates in the Middle East. Although our linguistic focus is English (in fact, the official language of Education City is English), a vast majority of our student population speaks Arabic as its first language. In thinking about our obligation to provide physician and consumer-level health information to the Doha/GCC community, it is imperative to remember that not everyone speaks or reads English at a high level. Thus, I feel that a long-term focus should be expanding our consumer health information to include languages other than English.

So I plan to take some holiday time after the conference to enjoy New Zealand. I'm currently deciding where to go. It's actually quite far to go to Auckland from here. I am probably going to fly with Emirates. In that case, I will fly to Dubai (1 hour), and then from Dubai to Auckland. You make at least one stop during this part. The timetables have listed Bangkok, Singapore, and Melbourne, depending on which flight you take. Even so, the total time is roughly 20 hours to Auckland. It's a good thing I'm in business class, but the travel will still be pretty hard.