K-State Libraries: Conference Reports

German Librarians' Conference: Use and Abuse of Statistics

P. Büning, Düsseldorf
J. Kreische, Düsseldorf
K. Südekum, Würzburg
S. Mundt, Stuttgart
A. Knapp, Karlsruhe

Rather than writing individual posts on all of the talks on the topic of statistics, it seemed to make sense to put it all into one post.

At the center of this talk was the German library statistical rubric BIX (Bibliotheksindex). It's a voluntary tool used to make comparisons between public and academic libraries. Everyone seems a bit critical of the rankings, since as one speaker put it, they are easy to misinterpret. The stated purpose of BIX is to make library performance and evaluation transparent and accessible to politicians and administrators.

German Librarians' Conference: The Future of Subject Librarians

V. Albrink, C. Holtz, A. Rabeler, Bonn
H. Thomsen, Kiel
N. Lossau, Göttingen
M. Schröter, Rostock

The sessions at the German Bibliothekartag (Librarians' Conference or Congress) typically have multiple speakers, and last two to three hours. I'll try to provide notes on each speaker.

German Librarians' Conference: E-Book Acquisition

K. Junkes-Kirchen, Frankfurt

This talk was part of a three hour session on e-books, where the 'usual' questions arose. Lots of definitions, too, and descriptions of business models, etc. He reviewed traditional acquisition methods, parts of which overlap with e-book acquisition, but not entirely. He also showed an integrated workflow for print materials, which more or less reflects typical US practice.

German Librarians' Conference: E-Books in the Max Planck Digital Library

Tina Planck, Munich

The Max Planck Society (MPG) is a massive, private research organization, with 80 institutes and 12,600 employees, of which 4,400 are researchers. There are 72 libraries, but only 230 employees (27 are OPLs--one-person libraries). Libraries are highly autonomous, no central ILS or cataloging. The MP Digital Library has 38 employees and is a central service provider. Two sides: information provision and research/development.

German Librarians' Conference: E-Book Aggregators

Michaela Hammerl, Munich

One key advantage of purchasing via an e-book aggregator is that they offer individual titles which are only available as part of a package from the publisher direct. Many other advantages, but also disadvantages, e.g.- not everything available, not current, hosting charges, somewhat more expensive than direct purchasing, etc. Aggregators include: NetLibrary, Ebrary, Ciando, MyiLibrary, EBL, Blackwells, Dawson ERA.

Library Camp Kansas

It would be difficult to write out notes for what transpired today at the first ever library unconference in Kansas (I think it was the first, anyway). There were no papers, panels, or keynotes; rather, there were sessions chosen by the participants that took the form of discussions. The topics ranged broadly. I seemed to end up in two of the "Web 2.0" sessions, one of which I led. My goal in that session was to have a discussion revolving around one of the suggestions made in advance on the conference wiki, namely "How do you measure the success of your libraries social networking endeavors?"

It was a good group, and I appreciate both their participation and ideas, as well as their willingness to let me at least try to steer us back to the main question. Personally, I had what I described as a mini-epiphany, which was that we in libraries actually don't do much in terms of real assessment, despite much ado in this arena. Were we to really assess how we do things, we'd be forced to start making hard decisions about some of our tried and true practices that have likely outlived their usefulness given the radical transformation in the way information is created and disseminated. Some of those practices are incredibly expensive, and should therefore perhaps be subject to far closer scrutiny than low-cost social networking experiments which, after all, are only a few years old, so it should be no surprise that there are some unanswered questions that will take some time to deal with.

Understanding Fair Use

Wes Blakeslee, Johns Hopkins University,
speaking at the KU Copyright Symposium, March 7, 2008

[This was an excellent talk. It was that rare opportunity to listen to someone who has both strong opinions and expert knowledge of fair use and other copyright issues. Moreover, he's on the 'right' side of fair use; most of the strong opinions come from content firms.]

There is no case law evidence that copies of scholarly articles for classroom use have ever impacted journal subscriptions, actually the opposite is generally true.

The worst disaster ever for fair use was the Classroom Guidelines. Why?

The future of the OPAC

The future of the OPAC and the ILS running it behind the scenes were hot topics. Aside from my usual committee meetings, I was able to gather some information on OPAC overlays and ILS options. An OPAC overlay is an interface that sits on top of one's existing ILS providing Library 2.0 interaction and an improved interface.

The most interesting presentation I attended was from LITA and sponsored by the Next Generation Catalog Interest Group. The topic was of great interest as the room was full with more chairs being added as the speakers began. The presentations were from three different institutions who have taken an open source route with a catalog overlay. Slides are to be posted in the future to the LITA Web site. Rather than migrating to a completely different ILS, these institutions have opted to create a new face for the OPAC. All libraries were seeking to add Library 2.0 features to their catalogs. Each overlay includes the ability to search facets. None needed support from one's ILS vendor to implement. Vufind is synchronous, whereas Solrpac is asynchronous with a 2 hour delay.

OPAC overlays

• Vufind  developed by Villanova University with a Voyager catalog as the source of data
• Solrpac by Miami University of Ohio with an Innovative catalog as the source of data and using Drupal
• Project Blacklight portal by University of Virginia with a Sirsi/Dynix catalog as the source of data

All of the above systems are XML-based and open source. The thing I found most intriguing was the fact that these overlays work with your existing ILS. While open source ILS options are gaining traction, an OPAC overlay based on an open source model provides a host of display options. Considering a migration of a large ILS is a matter not to be entered quickly or lightly. An OPAC overlay could be a solid intermediate step.

Other products beyond the above panel presentation (by no means exhaustive, but rather a reflection of the information I gathered at the exhibits)

New ILS
Koha by LibLime (open source)
AGent VERSO

OPAC overlays
WorldCat Local
Encore by Innovative Interfaces

Federated searching
AGent Search
MasterKey (open source)

Digital Curation Conference: a general comment

Hopefully I've faithfully documented and commented on the presentations I've heard here at both CNI and DCC. I hope a few souls find this useful and that this might spark a few conversations.

To close down the week, I'd like to offer a general commentary on the intersection of science and social networking as it exists on the Web. Too often, the latter is dismissed as trivial, faddish, or simply a waste of time, while the former need never defend itself or its credibility. I just spent four days hearing over and over again, however, how thousands of scientists in many countries make use of the very same technologies used by your average teenager--namely, blogs, wikis, Facebooky things, etc.--to do essential work and collaborate with their peers. The head of Web publishing ...

Digital Curation Conference: Surveying Bloggers' Perspectives

Laura Sheble, UNC

Full title: Surveying Bloggers' Perspectives on Digital Preservation: Methodological Issues

Presented the results of a survey on the topic named in the title, namely, how bloggers feel about the preservation of their medium. Their survey had 223 respondents, a fairly even male/female split, and had representatives from all age brackets, from less than 20 to over 60. Most were in their 20s and 30s.

She made a quick point about the fact that 24% of their respondents blog strictly under a pseudonym, which has implications for authority and permissions. Most work at least 1-2 hours per week on blogs, but the average was actually five hours. 80% read blogs at least once a day.

This was largely a presentation about their survey, and did not spend much time on analysis around the central point, other than to point out that about 70% of bloggers feel that their own blogs should be preserved, while only 36% feel that all blogs should be preserved.

Digital Curation Conference: Sustaining Engineering Informatics

Joshua Lubell, NIST (Nat'l Institute of Standards and Technology)

Outlined some of the specific challenges in the curation of engineering data. One example is that often, at design time, future needs or considerations are not present in the designers' minds--e.g.- biodegradability, carbon footprint, etc.--but later become critical, so it's imperative to retain all design data.

Gave an overview of LC's work with defining digital formats, which addresses a number of questions and issues.  He then assessed ISO 10303 (STEP) in terms of the LC criteria, and given that it is an international standard, it does fairly well.

He then outlined the three access scenarios (the three Rs): reference, reuse, and rationale. The first is simply the ability to view and visualize the engineering data. Reuse is what it sounds like (STEP supports this), namely, taking the data and modifying or reengineering it. Rationale is the ability to display information such as construction history, design intent, etc., which go beyond the design itself. He compared this to the chess column in a newspaper, where, in addition to a snapshot of the board at some point in the game, you get a description of the moves required to reach that state. Loosely put, it's the set of 'why' questions that can arise from a design. STEP does not include this rationale piece, which is the point behind his work.

Digital Curation Conference: Moving Archival Practices Upstream

Jillian Wallis, UCLA (Center for Embedded Networked Sensing)

Full title: Moving Archival Practices Upstream: An Exploration of the Life Cycle of Ecological Sensing Data in Collaborative Field Research

CENS wanted to share its environmental sensing data (seismic, aquatic, urban, etc.). There are standards, but they wanted to know how the communities use the data. To get a better sense of that, they conducted interviews with scientists, and went out into the field to work directly with scientists to study their work habits. They also asked what is necessary for data interpretation (experiment design, experiment setup, calibrations, equipment performance, etc.).

They discovered that currently few researchers in their scope share data, which is the problem they seek to address with their life cycle study. Simply put, rather than stepping in at the terminus of research, i.e.- after publication, they want to intercede and participate earlier in the research process to better support the retention and preservation of research data.

They park datasets in Sensorbase, which she describes as a blog-like environment where users can create content.

Digital Curation Conference: Day Two Keynote

Carol Goble, U of Manchester

[n.b.- This talk was the highlight of DCC for me. Rather than highlighting, again, only the challenges without really offering solutions, she showed concrete examples and tools, in pretty good detail.]

Her work revolves around creating tools that handle the workflows involved in taking data, bringing it together, and making useful (put somewhat simply). One tool has been very popular (Taverna), rising to #210 on SourceForge, with a total of 40,000+ downloads. She refers to it as automated curation. The workflows are:

• reading publications
• processing the data
• part of curation pipelines
• valuable scientific assets in their own right
• etc.

Services are steps in the workflow, and a workflow can be deployed as a service.

Digital Curation Conference: Day One Closing Plenary

Rick Luce, Emory

[By this point, my enthusiasm for detailed notes was waning. He said something, however, that piqued my interest (remarkable considering when I had last consumed caffeine) and led me down a train of thought that has little to do with his talk or the conference. What appears below is that brain dump.]

Could it be that we are well enough funded to be too comfortable with our traditional roles? Rick Luce asked this question near the end of his first day closing keynote. Otherwise, his talk was a fairly standard review of what's going on and what needs to be done to solve some of the pressing issues, but this question struck me as unique. He's right, I think. Our funding is sufficient to continue operating much as we have for a long time; sure, making incremental changes, but never really taking the great leap forward to stop doing most of what we do now and really take on some major new challenges.

Digital Curation Conference: Sustainable Access to the Records of Science

Case studies presented by:

Simon Coles, U. of Southampton
Tim Hubbard, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
Robert Hanisch, Space Telescope Science Institute
Myron Gutmann, ICPSR
Sally Rumsey, Oxford U Library
Richard Moore, San Diego Supercomputer Center

Coles noted that chemists are odd and don't typically enjoy sharing data. He pointed to a discussion in the Royal Society for Chemistry about open access and data sharing as an example of this.

CNI in DC: Closing Plenary on the Future of Scholarly Communication

Timo Hannay, Nature Publishing Group

Focused on five main areas:

• audio & video
• databases
• open data
• peer review & blogs
• online collaboration

CNI in DC: Recommender Systems, BibTip

Andreas Geyer-Schulz, Uni Karlsruhe

In a rather German introduction, he noted that one of the main goals of having a recommender system is to save both the time of the user and the staff member. To that end, they've developed BibTip, which provides title recommendations. The development of this tool was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), the German analog for the NSF.

CNI in DC: LibraryThing and the Library Catalog

John Wenzler, San Francisco State University

Materials and slides

[Watching this talk, I briefly had the sensation of being at Internet Librarian, where this kind of topic is the bread and butter. I was very happy, however, to see a topic like this presented to a good-sized audience with a lot of library administrators in it, as well as to see their enthusiasm for it.]

Reviewed the service and why people might use it for personal and social reasons. He then moved into a description of the public benefits, i.e.- those that benefit all users:

• book suggestions
• book unsuggestions (people who own x don't own z; more for fun that useful)
• tag-based folksonomy

To get these benefits, you need not join LibraryThing, and those who join aren't necessarily cognizant of their role in the creation of these public benefits. They are simply derived from the massive data set that results from a service such as this.

CNI in DC: Electronic Publishing Systems

Mark Cyzyk, Johns Hopkins

In the scope of his study, Cyzyk did not interview the developers. His methodology began with an environmental scan, seeking any possible product and system. He showed a rather long list, many of which I've never heard of in the US context. From the many candidates, he chose seven: DPubS, GNU EPrints, Hyperjournal, OJS, Connextions/Rhaptos, DiVA, and Topaz. The first four are those that he installed and evaluated; for the latter three, he gathered data, but did not use the product.

CNI in DC: Digital Humanities Centers

John Unsworth, UIUC
Daniel Cohen, George Mason
Katherine Walter, U of Nebraska
Neil Fraistat, U of Maryland
Mark Kornbluh, Michigan State

Walter offered, by proxy, since Unsworth was unavailable, a commentary on the eight recommendations of the ACLS report on cyberinfrastructure for the humanities. As usual, when this is the topic, I mused on the question of how many humanities scholars even grasp the ramifications of the report, or, frankly, even know or care about developments in the field. Most of them are at institutions that do not have the luxury of a humanities computing center and are, at best, consumers of work done elsewhere. What is missing, I think, is a discussion about or study of the attitudes of humanities scholars toward the development of a humanities cyberinfrastructure. It's telling that I hear more about this topic at library conferences, while when I ask humanities scholars about their conferences and this topic, I generally get blank stares. This is not a function of being at K-State, either; this pattern repeats itself ad nauseum regardless of the scholar's home.

IL2007 Closing Keynote

Internet Librarian 2007

Closing Keynote
From Physical to Virtual and Back Again - Blurring the Boundaries.
Liz Lawley

IL2007: Tech Tools for Library Outreach

Internet Librarian 2007

Tech Tools for Library Outreach
Chad Boeninger, Ohio University
Paul R. Pival, University of Calgary

IL2007: Content Management Systems

Internet Librarian 2007

From Static to Dynamic: Choosing and Implementing a CMS
Ruth Kneale, National Solar Observatory

and

CMS Experiences at CSP and UST: Same Application, Different Libraries
Amy Radermacher, Concordia University
May Chang, UMBC Library

IL2007: Trends in Mobile Tools and Applications for Libraries

Internet Librarian 2007

Trends in Mobile Tools and Applications for Libraries
Megan Fox, Simmons College

IL2007: How to Lose Your New Tech Librarian

Internet Librarian 2007

How to Lose Your New Tech Librarian
Jenny Benevento, Associated Press

and

Building Your Techie Team: Tips for Training Staff
Sarah Houghton-Jan and Michael Stephens

IL2007: Screencasting and eLearning on a Shoestring

Internet Librarian 2007

Screencasting and eLearning on a Shoestring
Michelle Boule and Karen Coombs, University of Houston

IL2007: Promoting Play Through Online Discovery: Lego Building

Internet Librarian 2007

Promoting Play Through Online Discovery: Lego Building
Meredith Farkas, Norwich University
Helene Blowers, Public Library of Charlotte Mecklenburg (PLCMC)

IL2007: Have You Got a Game Plan?

Internet Librarian 2007

Have You Got a Game Plan? Adapting Library Services to the Needs of Gamers
Chad Boeninger, Ohio University
Randy Christensen, Southern Utah University Library

IL2007: Reference 2.0

Internet Librarian 2007

Opening Keynote, 10/30/2007
Reference 2.0
Joe Janes, iSchool at University of Washington

IL2007: User-Generated Content

Internet Librarian 2007

User-Generated Content
Meredith Farkas and Josh Petrusa, Norwich University

IL2007: Cool Tools for Library Webmasters

Internet Librarian 2007

Cool Tools for Library Webmasters
Frank Cervone, Northwestern University
Darlene Fichter, University of Saskatchewan

My notes were tragically lost, but please see this post, which sums things up nicely. This was another great session, and many of the tools are pretty cool even if you're not an official "webmaster."

IL2007: Inspiration for Your Library Redesign

Internet Librarian 2007

Inspiration for Your Library Redesign
Bennett Ponsford and Christina Hoffman Gola, Texas A&M University
and
Erica Reynolds, Johnson County Public Library

IL2007: The New Rules of Web Design

Internet Librarian 2007

The New Rules of Web Design
Jeff Wisniewski, University of Pittsburg

Internet Librarian 2007

I'm back from Internet Librarian 2007 and am going to start posting my notes shortly. Various technologies all teamed up to conspire against me, so I have to type up a few sets of notes, but I'll start with what I've got! A colleague from Baylor who attended with me also blogged notes about sessions that I was unable to attend. You can find these at Instructional Design Resources.

Thunder Talks : Access 2007

There were 6 in all. 

1. Open Journal Systems (OJS) by Kevin Stranack , Simon Fraser University.

OJS is an open access publishing platform with journal management functions built-in. It supports the journal publishing life cycle starting from creation, to assigning reviewers, to content editing and finally publishing. Its a product of the Public Knowledge Project that has released other products including Open Conference System (OCS). The speaker described how OJS was having a local impact (libraries can do this, they are the local publishers on their campus), national impact (different universities are hosting open access journals using OJS) and global impact (250+ journals online, internationally?). Its based on php/mysql and they are looking for php ninjas.

Alouette Canada Update: Access 2007

Brian Bell
Mark Jordan
Walter Lewis

AlouetteCanada is intended to be a national heritage site. It's supported by CARL (Canadian ARL), not federally, other than a grant provided to create the toolset.

METS is used for document import and export. Descriptive metadata uses DC, MODS, and/or EAD. They may add to this list as more organizations join the project and begin submitting data.

They plan to open source the toolset they are developing (for ingest and metadata handling, among other tasks) using the Lesser GNU public license.

Darth Vader, Open Access, and Digital Libraries: Access 2007

Shawn Martin
University of Michigan, TCP (Text Creation Partnership)

Char would have been disappointed by this talk, since he really didn't do a good job using Vader as a motif or trope.

He opened by discussing the typical binary dichotomy one finds in libraries/academia: open access is good, licensed is bad. In his opinion, the commercially published model is flawed and doomed since it is not sustainable. Similarly, grant-funded open access projects are doomed. Glorious, but doomed. TCP strives to find a middle ground, where vendors work together with academic institutions to create the underlying textual objects in their products, such as EEBO, ECCO, Evans, etc.

Scholarly Reading Interface: Access 2007

Ray Siemens
University of Victoria

The full title of his talk was "A Scholarly Reading Interface for a Renaissance English Knowledgebase (REKn) and a Professional Reading Environment (PReE)." I simply wanted to avoid a post with an overly long title. Did I mention that Siemens is an English professor? With a title like that, it's likely obvious. It also means that is presentation was textually rich (much came from a prepared text, I believe), so it was difficult to both listen and take notes.

Searching the OPAC: The State of Play: Access 2007

Peter Binkley
U of Alberta

Addressing five areas of functionality: clumping, ordering, exploiting, contributing, deploying. Gave an overview of innovations over the last six or seven years, showing some good ideas and some odd ideas (e.g.- antarcti.ca, a visualized catalog from 1999 now gone). He notes that visualization is no longer a hot topic, and it appears to have waned as a means for presenting an OPAC. Vendors have attempted to react, such as Ex Libris with Primo, III's Encore, etc. Evergreen emerges as a viable OS alternative, too.

He asked if we know what we really want from our next gen OPAC, which strikes me as a key question. He thinks we don't know, and are much less advanced in our thinking than we think we are. He then turned to the five areas he mentioned at the outset.

ILS Options for Academic Libraries: Access 2007

Allan Bell
Susan Cleyle
Slavko Manojlovich
Brian Owen
All AULs at Canadian universities

Disclaimer: all comments are those of the individuals, not their institutions.

• Started by reviewing developments in 2006-2007 in the ILS market:
• Francisco Partners buying both Ex Libris and Endeavor
• Vista Equity Partners buys SirsiDynix
• SirsiDynix announces one platform (Rome)

Endeca makeover for an OPAC @ McMaster: Access 2007

Amanda Etches-Johnson
McMaster University

McMaster opted to go the NC State route and contract with Endeca to makeover their OPAC and add faceted browsing. This move was based on their dissatisfaction with their existing catalog, backed up by LibQual results. Known-item searching was fine, but noodling around on a topic was hard.

More about NASIG 2007

NASIG just gets better every year and this years speakers and presenters were really great.  While Char was busy preparing agenda's and the "Presidents guide..." I met with the new Conference Planning Committee and spent some time with the 2007 registrar in preparation for the job of registrar for 2008. 

Each day started with a vision speaker, and what a way to start!  Eye opening, refreshing and just like having a great cup of coffee, your brain and thoughts started to perculate with completley new ideas.  Each day ended with with net-working opportunities, including a cruise down the Ohio River on the riverboat Spirit of Jefferson.

Sessions I attended included:

• What's different about the Social Sciences - a comparison study on how the social science and science journals are used differently, and why the social scientists are less likely to care if their mateials are on the web. Publishers models and pricing are changing, yet this gave some insight into why science materials are changing so much faster, and why there seems to be no push to move the social sciences and humanities into some of those models.  Bottom line, "One size does not fit all!"
• Successive Entry, Latest Entry or None of the Above- was on using FRBR to revitalize serials management.  Two catalogers explained why for the sake of the user, FRBR could be used to create a one record approach to serial title changes.  As long as the journals intent is the same and the scope doesn't change one record could be used to show the current and previous titles, with all their many changes on one record.  From the users point of view this is an interesting idea, one that I would like to see some user studies done on before adapting. Of course along with all the cataloging changes, there would need to be some OPAC (or ILS) changes also.  It probably won't happen any time soon.
• Tumbling Dice: Publishing, Aggregators and ERM interelationships.  Presented by an ILS vendor, a LOC librarian and a library and information systems consultant, this updated the audience on several new standards and how critical it is for accurate metadata be input into the ERM.   
• We are all Winners :Training Silents to Millennials to work as a Team.  This session left the realm of serials to focus on training our staff.  Our workforce at this time includes 4 generations from the Silent Generation (who just turned 65) to our Millennial student assistants.  These groups work, think, learn and approach new ideas very differently.  One of the best all around sessions that would be of benefit everyone. Sources available at Download we_are_all_winners_references.doc

NASIG 2007

Great conference. Bob Stein, Karen Schneider, & Dan Chudnov were our vision speakers, and each one made us think. (Isn't that what visionaries should do?) I particularly enjoyed Bob showing us software that allows authors' and readers' marginalia to be maintained and his thoughts on "authorized version", Dan's non-techie description (hallelujah) of COinS, which I have struggled to read about, and Karen's thoughts on the Google book project.

Other sessions I attended:

• Betting a Strong Hand in the Game of Electronic Resource Management - presenters described their experiences with staffing and workflows; discussed using data once for multiple purposes - sounds like what we are doing (and will add to once we get Verde up & running)
• Column People: What’s Their Future in a World of Blogs? The Role of Columnists in Academic Journals - many attendees reported they are getting more of their library-related news through blogs, rss feeds; don't have much time to read the journal literature; most agree columns won't go away anytime soon
• On Your Mark, Get Set.... Talk! The First Ever NASIG Speed-Rounds - I was supposed to participate in this session but because of the initial incorrect published time, I secured the door in order to tell late-comers how the session worked and when they could 'scoot' in. The session got really good feedback from what I heard. There were 10 (or so) tables in the room: publishers sat at different tables, attendees picked one table then every 5 minutes rotated to the next table, etc. Discussion was supposed to be generic rather than specific to a library's account.
• Academic Journal Publishing - one of NASIG's purposes is to educate serialsts on all aspects of the serials information chain. This session was a panel discussion with 4 presenters from different publishers who covered the publishing process from inception of a journal to peer-review to editorial to marketing. Very interesting.
• A Needle in a Haystack: Finding that First Academic Serials Job... - This session was the final session on Sunday before the closing ceremonies so it wasn't too well attended. Presenters discussed the resume, how to dress for an interview, what NOT to do in your cover letter & during the interview, the tenure & promotion process. It might have been useful if they had included a sample interview day.

The opening reception took place at the Frazier International History Museum a few blocks from the Galt House. The sword-fighting demonstration was a lot of fun and we also had an interpreter describe the execution of Anne Boleyn.

I also spent some training time with incoming treasurer & conference registrar Peter Whiting, secretary Joyce Tenney, and president Denise Novak to get a handle on the daily hotel bills reconciliation process. Apparently, the Galt did a stellar job with their record-keeping so it wasn't too difficult. I understand that is not always the case.

Denise and I also worked on the agendas for the opening & closing ceremonies. She didn't have any written documentation so we were basing the agendas off memory! Considering that others are involved in these events, we decided it would be good to create a "President's guide to the annual conference" so we can ensure that everyone involved is notified well in advance!

DigCCurr 2007: Collection Development

Speakers: Michael Day (UKOLN), Janice Ruth (LC), Kathleen Murray/Mark Phillips (North Texas), Victoria Reich (Stanford)

Day:

Spoke on UKOLN's efforts to assist various institutions with the issues facing them in the realm of digital curation and preservation. The Digital Curation Centre for which he works is taking steps toward this end.

DigCCurr 2007: Designing and Implementing IRs Within Institutions

Speakers: Leslie Johnston (VIrginia), Sarah Michalak (UNC-Chapel Hill), Deborah Thomas (LC)

Johnston:

Virginia was one of the two lead development sites for Fedora (Cornell the other), funded by Mellon on two occasions. She wanted to be clear that Fedora is not a repository, but a toolkit to build one (a digital asset management system).

CNI Phoenix: Google at UMich Update

Speaker: Paul Courant (UMich)

CNI site for this talk

Courant offered a review of the origin of the project, which has been widely reported and analyzed elsewhere. He pointed out that a project such as this fits their mission statement, and should fit anyone's mission statement.

The digitization began in July 2004, which the first large upload to Google Book Search taking place in November 2005. Books are gone for about 5-7 days for scanning, and are returned in the same condition in which they left. Of course, both the process and technology used are confidential, and he made something of a joke of this.

CNI Phoenix: Open Access Publishing

Speakers: Nancy John (UI Chicago), Edward Valauskas (First Monday)

CNI site for this talk

The full title for this talk was "Trying the Gold Road on a Shoestring Budget: Open Access Publishing with PKP's Open Journal System." Needless to say, I was drawn to this session not only because I am quite familiar with PKP/OJS from attending Access in Canada, but because we in K-State Libraries have discussed moving into the role of publisher, and this desire recently found expression in our strategic plan. While Cornell and other partners (including the U of Utah as I learned at dinner last night) are busy at work on DPubs, it has yet to become a full-fledged publishing platform, as opposed to OJS, which can handle the full lifecycle of journal publishing, from submission to archiving.

CNI Phoenix: Gaming for the Ages

Speakers: David Ward, Lisa Hinchcliffe, and Karen Schmidt, all UIUC

CNI site for this talk

Started with an overview of gamers, age and sex demographics (average age 33, 38% women). Ward's point is that gaming isn't necessarily a teen phenomenon. Pointed out that World of Warcraft alone has 8.5 million players. Points out that gaming is more social than one would assume; players may play alone in their house, but often in groups online.

No, I'm not at ACRL but...

...since half (okay, maybe not half) of our staff are at ACRL this week, I thought I'd provide a link to some info.  StevenB over at ACRLog has posted a bit on ACRL's opening keynote and some other little tidbits.  Interesting stuff!

Electronic Resources & Libraries : Project Transfer

The Transfer Initiative: Creating Best Practice guidelines for the transfer of journal titles between publishers.
Elizabeth Winter - Georgia Tech

Each year numerous scholarly journals transfer from one publisher to another.  These transfers tend to create a variety of problems for libraries, publishers, and everyone else.  Project Transfer is sponsored by the United Kingdom Serials Group and began in April 2006.  Members in the group include vendors, publishers, librarians, software providers such as CrossRef and scholarly publishing groups. The purpose was to help the publishers get communication into a standard form that can be provided to all users.