Conference Reports

Online Audiovisual Catalogers (OLAC) Conference

It is better to post late than not at all! October 27-29, 2006, Margaret, Merry, and I attended the biennial Online Audiovisual Catalogers (OLAC) conference in sunny Mesa Arizona. The theme of the conference was Preparing for a brave new world: Media cataloging on the threshold of RDA. At this point you may be wondering of how OLAC, a group with a name that might be mistaken for a cholesterol lowering drug and RDA, another odd sounding acronym to those outside of cataloging circles might be of interest. I'll explain.

OLAC is a group of catalogers who specialize in cataloging anything that is not a book. While this occasionally veers into the serial realm, most of the time it involves video recordings (VHS, DVD, streaming videos, etc.), sound recordings (LPs, compact discs, etc.), scores, maps, electronic resources (including remote), and anything else that does not fit well in another venue (realia, games, puppets, etc.). If the format is new or out of the ordinary, chances are this group has already cataloged it and is happy to provide collective advice.I have attended multiple OLAC conferences over the years and return to my institution with great ideas for cataloging the less mundane.

This year's keynote address was given by Jennifer Bowen of the University of Rochester. Ms. Bowen gave a brief history of cataloging standards and discussed the need for RDA or Resource Description and Access, what will replace the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules in 2008. The general organization of the new rules as well as some of the differences were discussed. RDA is an attempt by the cataloging community to reach out to other metadata communities in order to promote a shared content standard. Better content standards mean more record sharing and enhanced access for all. In my opinion, it is too soon to tell how RDA will be received beyond the cataloging community.

Beyond the keynote session, I attended a number of smaller breakout sessions including electronic resources, advanced videorecordings, sound recordings, and map cataloging. While I learned a great deal in all of the sessions, I think I benefited the most from the session on map cataloging. Map cataloging is a specialty unto itself and one that requires a certain number of tools. The speaker, Paige Andrew of Pennsylvania State University of  provided numerous handouts as well as a scale finder. Scale finders allow a cataloger to measure a map to determine scale when not printed on the map. I feel much more comfortable with basic map cataloging after attending the session.

The location for the next OLAC Conference is yet to be determined, but rumor has it coming to the Midwest in the fall of 2008. Many thanks to all of the speakers and organizers of this year's conference for a great cataloging continuing education opportunity.

USAIN 2006

USAIN (United States Agricultural Information Network)

“Delivering Information for the New Life Sciences…”

Ithaca, NY, October 8-11, 2006

http://usain.mannlib.cornell.edu/

            

Attendees:

            Diana Farmer

            Mike Haddock

            Livia Olsen

            Mohan Ramaswamy

            Yongli Zhou

            

About:

            The United States Agricultural Information Network connects agricultural librarians and others concerned with agricultural information to address common issues.  The conference is held biennially.  This year’s conference focused on “Delivering Information for the New Life Sciences…”  Topics addressed included bioinformatics, technology trends, digitization projects, digital repositories, AgNIC, the National Agricultural Library, and AGRICOLA.  An extensive discussion of the National Digital Library for Agriculture initiative was also undertaken.  Participants attempted to reach a consensus on what the goals should be so that the initiative could take the next steps.

            

Presentations, etc.:

            Diana arrived to the conference early to fulfill her role as a member of the USAIN executive council.  On Sunday, October 8, she attended the USAIN executive council meeting.

Yongli, Diana, and Mohan presented a paper titled “Winnowing the chaff: Designing and building a grain milling and processing web library”.  The paper overviewed the process the team went through to create the dynamic web site “Grain Milling & Processing” (http://www.grainmilling.org/).  The website is a part of the AgNIC alliance and features resources that are important to KSU’s grain milling and processing curriculum.  It also contains information of interest to educators and the general public.  They discussed various issues in creating the website and how they resolved those issues.  The presentation was very well received.  The audience asked numerous questions and was particularly interested in learning more about the dynamic portion of the website.

            Mike served as panel convener for the AgNIC Interest Group.  The Panel’s theme was “Cooperative Agreements to Build Digital Resources”.  The six panelists gave brief presentations about the work that they did as recipients of National Agricultural Library’s cooperative agreements.  Livia was one of the presenters.  She talked about the grain sorghum digitization project she worked on in her presentation titled: “Digitizing and preserving rare images of pathological disorders of grain sorghum (Sorghum bicolor)”.  Her presentation was unique as it was the only one on the panel to deal with images.  The audience was quite interested in the project and asked questions about problems with image age and quality.

            In addition to presenting, at the conference banquet Yongli and Livia accepted $750. USAIN Conference Scholarships for New Professionals.

            

Fun stuff:

            Ithaca, NY is a beautiful place, especially in the fall.  The trees are turning and Cornell’s campus is home to numerous waterfalls which the group visited during their spare moments.  The Cornell campus is also quite picturesque with many historic buildings and large trees.  One evening a reception was hosted at the world-famous Moosewood Restaurant.  The numerous vegetarian hor d’oeuvres were delicious. 

            On Wednesday, after the official portion of the conference was over, conference attendees took a tour of several sites on the Cornell campus and surrounding areas.  The first stop was Mann Library which is Cornell’s library for the Colleges of Agriculture and Human Ecology.  The older portion is under renovation and the recently completed new edition features numerous computers, study rooms, and lots of windows that look into the trees. 

            The next stop on the tour was Cornell’s famous Lab of Ornithology whose researchers recently rediscovered the ivory-billed woodpecker.  Unfortunately the group didn’t have much time so we briefly ran through the lab’s library, research facilities, saw 18’ snake skeleton, and gazed at the beautiful scenery and many birds which can be see from the lab. 

            The final stop was Cornell’s apple store which sells fruit and other products from Cornell Plantations.  The group enjoyed tasting apples, pears, and apple cider.

- Livia