The 30th Annual Charleston Conference (Nov.3-6 at Charleston, S.C.) included a packed schedule of thought-provoking keynote speakers, news from vendors, and concurrent sessions of interest to individuals working in acquisitions or collection development.
Rick Anderson from the University of Utah began the program by talking about "sane" and "less sane" practices in the library world. Among the "less sane" in his opinion are big deal subscription and approval plans, redundant cataloging, and print runs. More sane practices include article purchase, Wikipedia, shared cataloging, ease of use, patron-driven acquisition and print-on-demand. See the notes/slides here.
There were discussions about the current model of access to research (authors, sponsors, peer reviewers, editors, brand and process) and what is the public trust level. Raised questions included: whose responsibility is it to curate raw data; where is the infrastructure for stewardship; how do we capture scholarly inquiry/discourse using unstable and emergent technology such as blogs, wikis, open notebooks? Several contributors to the Scholarly Kitchen spoke during the conference.
Concurrent sessions covered everything from Patron Driven Acquisition models (successes and challenges), to what user statistics really mean, to various APIs available from vendors, to trends in publishing. A real value and learning experience at this conference is the opportunity for publishers, vendors, and librarians to have open, honest discussions in an attempt to reach the common goal of providing access to information. The Conference program can be found here.
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