2007 Code4Lib Conference Report
Antonio Barrera, Parmit Chilana, Kevin Clarke, and Michael Giarlo
4 LIBRARY HI TECH NEWS Number 6 2007, pp. 4-7, # Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 0741-9058, DOI 10.1108/07419050710823247
Introduction
The 2007 Code4Lib conference was
held at the University of Georgia,
February 27 to March 2. The event was
the second annual conference for the
Code4Lib group, which derives its
membership from an e-mail list and an
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel of the
same name. Geared toward computer
programmers, the conference revolves
around technological problems and
solutions in the context of libraries.
This year’s conference drew
approximately 120 attendees and was
sponsored locally by the University of
Georgia and the Georgia Public Library
Service. Other sponsors included library
technology firms OCLC, Talis,
LibLime, and Logical Choice
Technologies, and the past year’s host
organization, Oregon State University.
The event was organized in a
democratic fashion, with community
members voting in the open on the
location of the conference and the
program. The conference began with a
one-day pre-conference session on the
Solr search system, which was well-
attended, and also included two keynote
addresses, numerous scheduled talks,
and other activities.
Participation among attendees was
encouraged via lightning talks and
breakout sessions. Lightning talks
allowed for over two-dozen additional
speakers to participate actively in the
conference. Each speaker had a five-
minute time limit to describe some
interesting technology or give an update
on a work-in-progress. Breakout
sessions presented an opportunity for
individuals to gather in small group
settings to discuss a topic of need or
interest.
Code4Lib provided an opportunity
for library programmers to share their
experiences, knowledge, and code with
colleagues from across the globe. As
Karen G. Schneider, former Associate
Director for Technology and Research
at the Florida State University Libraries,
noted during the opening keynote,
libraries must improve their ability to
control the content they create or
license. One such way is to develop
tools to manage and provide access to
this content (Schneider, 2007b).
Code4Lib serves as a means of helping
programmers focus on finding solutions
to their libraries’ needs.
Background
The Code4Lib conference is a
relatively new introduction to the world
of library conferences but it is grounded
in pre-existing communities and
traditions. Placing the conference in
context requires a look at the broader
Code4Lib community and the events
and people around which it has
coalesced.
The Code4Lib community, as one
might deduce, is a group of computer
programmers who largely work for
libraries. Some come from the IT
industry; others are bonafide librarians.
All have a common goal of writing,
analyzing, managing, tweaking, testing,
hacking, or otherwise using code. In
2003, a number of library- and
programming-related mailing lists had
been created for very specific purposes:
one for this programming, another for
that markup language, and so forth. A
group of library programmers got
together in the fall of that year to create a
more general mailing list, one that
would be relevant to all manner of
programming and markup languages,
and it would be known as ‘‘Code4Lib’’
(Chudnov, 2007a).
Two catalysts transformed Code4Lib
from a small mailing list into an active,
international community: a chatroom
and Access, the premier library
technology conference.
The Access conference, under the
aegis of the Canadian Association of
Research Libraries, has been at the
forefront of library technology since its
inception in what was a landmark year
for the internet, 1995, when ‘‘the
government and the organizations that
built [the Internet] . . . handed [it] over to
commercial networks;’’ (Ruthfield,
1995) when sites like Amazon, Hotmail,
and eBay were created; when the Java
language was introduced; when the first
version of Internet Explorer was
released; and when Netscape went
public. Each of these events shaped the
future of the internet and the Web, and
the Access conference was well-timed
to translate these bold steps forward into
how they might solve library users’
needs. As early as 2002 (Chudnov,
2005), the Access conference added a
new feature: the Hackfest, where
programmers and librarians alike could
gather, share ideas about library
services, and create them during an
intensive (not to mention intensely fun)
day of coding, sketching, and other
interaction.
Access served as an incubator for
much of the early Code4Lib
community. Not long after the original
Code4Lib mailing list was created, the
list community decided to set up a
chatroom on the Freenode network of
IRC; in a fit of inspiration, they named it
Code4lib. The 2004 and 2005 Access
conferences provided early
Code4Libbers the opportunity to meet
face-to-face, and the community grew in
leaps and bounds during this period.
And the more the community grew, the
greater the demand became for more
regular meetings than the annual Access
offered (Chudnov, 2007a).

Hard on the heels of Access 2005, the
Code4lib regulars decided to try their
hand at hosting an Access-like
conference in the USA; it would need to
be informal, single-track, and highly
technical. It would also pull a page out
of the ‘‘unconference’’ playbook;
though attendees would not be required
to participate, as is common in
‘‘unconference’’ – style conferences,
there would be plenty of opportunities to
participate in some capacity or another
(Ohio Public Library Information
Network, 2007). Additionally, the
Code4Lib conference ‘‘was created
through a grassroots, open manner, with
members of the Code4Lib community
working together to plan, organize, and
run the conference. Community voting
decided everything from the conference
location to the accepted presentations
and the design of the conference t-
shirt’’(Chudnov and Frumkin, 2006).
Moreover, much of the discussion and
voting was done out in the open, either
on public mailing lists or on publicly
available, unrestricted websites,
enabling every potential attendee to
become an active part of the Code4Lib
community even months in advance of
the conference. These characteristics, its
focus on practical innovation
(Schneider, 2006), and its commitment
to affordability – the conference
registration fee was $125 – would set it
apart from other library technology
conferences.
In February 2006, just three short
months later, the first Code4Lib
conference was held in Corvallis,
Oregon, where it was hosted by Oregon
State University. The format of the
conference was similar to that of the
Access conferences (Datema, 2007),
with sessions divided as follows: 15 20-
minute presentations; three rounds of
successive five-minute talks, known as
‘‘lightning talks,’’ totaling nearly three
hours over the course of the conference;
two half-hour breakout (or ‘‘Birds of a
Feather’’) sessions; and two keynotes,
the first of which was, in Code4Lib
fashion, delivered via teleconference by
the Georgia PINES development team.
While the keynotes and 20-minute
presentations were voted on prior to the
conference, the lightning talks and
breakout sessions were mostly on-the-
spot creations, which was highly
conducive to the participatory spirit the
organizers had intended.
Despite having been conceived and
planned over a three-month period,
largely by individuals who had little
experience in planning and organizing
conferences, the initial Code4Lib
conference was a hit, drawing over 80
attendees (Schneider, 2006). Some were
Access conference regulars; some were
members of the growing Code4lib
community; and many more were new
to the community. The conference drew
rave reviews, living up to its billing as
‘‘the’’ event for technologists building
digital libraries (Schneider, 2005).
Perhaps the biggest question at the end
of the 2006 conference was if there
would be another in 2007.
One issue that needed addressing
after the 2006 conference was the ratio
of male to female attendees which
though perhaps not disproportionate in
technology industry circles was
nonetheless skewed for a library
conference. While organizers were not
necessarily chasing a golden ratio, there
was a desire to have a more diverse
audience. Oregon State University
sponsored one scholarship for a person
in a ‘‘principal minority group’’
(Frumkin, 2007) and another for a
female. The recipients of the
scholarships, Nicole Engard of Jenkins
Law Library (now of Princeton
Theological Seminary) and Joshua
Gomez of the Getty Research Institute
(Schneider, 2005), received funds to
cover the cost of the conference. Some
might criticize this as a small step but it
was a step in the right direction, and the
community looks forward to similar
sponsorships and other methods of
ensuring attendee diversity in future
conferences.
When voting on the venue for the
2006 conference concluded, Oregon
State University came out on top, with
the Georgia Public Library Service
taking second. It was only natural that
they would get to host the second annual
Code4Lib conference, this time held on
the University of Georgia campus in
Athens, GA. Building upon the
reputation it had earned a year earlier,
the 2007 conference attracted
approximately 75 per cent more
attendees (Chudnov, 2007b) without
losing the informal community feeling;
the pool of proposed talks grew to 50
(Chuduov, 2007a), of which 16 were
chosen; and a pre-conference workshop
was added.
Major themes
This year’s conference covered a
range of topics with many interesting
presentations, lightning talks, and break
out sessions. One of the purposes of the
Code4Lib mailing list and IRC channel
is to provide a shared participatory
environment where people can learn
from others’ works in progress. The
conference did not disappoint those who
have come to expect this type of
experience.
Like one would expect, the
presentations at the conference were
geared toward a technical audience.
They consisted mostly of
demonstrations of practical applications
with introductions to relevant emerging
technologies. Challenges that were
addressed throughout the conference
included:
(1) meeting the expectations of users
familiar with Web 2.0 sites like
Google, Netflix, Flickr, and Ama-
zon;
(2) securing institutional resources for
the development of library applica-
tions; and
(3) learning new tools and program-
ming languages in a rapidly chan-
ging environment.
Of the many themes explored at
Code4Lib 2007, there seemed to be
three major ones that resonated
throughout the presentations, lightning
talks, and break out sessions. The first
theme was new developments related to
online public access catalogs (OPACs)
and integrated library systems (ILSes).
Schneider, the opening keynote speaker,
spoke about ‘‘five things we can fix’’
leading her to the observation that the
open source software Evergreen, with
some minor marketing problems, is very
well positioned in the ILS market
(Schneider, 2007a).
OPACs and ILS
The topic of OPACs and ILSes
stirred discussion at this year’s
conference. Desires for improvements
in the existing features of our current
ILSes were mixed with issues of use and
usability, our patrons’ demands for
newer social software like features,
and the high price tag of many of the
more innovative retrieval systems.
LIBRARY HI TECH NEWS Number 6 2007 5