Conference Reports

Resource Description & Access (RDA) webinar

In case you have not heard, Resource Description & Access (a.k.a. RDA) is the cataloging code slated to  replace the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR) sometime in the near future. I say sometime because release dates for RDA have been moving around for years.

In the cataloging community, views on RDA are mixed. For some, RDA is the next big change in cataloging and for others it is a tool where adoption of it is iffy at best. Lately, the pricing model has received a large number of comments on various discussion lists. For more information, see RDA frequently asked questions may be found on the RDA site.

ALA Midwinter, ALCTS Scholarly Communications Discussion Group

This well attended session featured Dan Hazen from Harvard University discussing the nuts and bolts of Harvard's open access policy. Unlike K-State's K-Rex, Harvard's institutional repository began first with faculty papers and is only now starting to address ETDRs. A

And now for some fascinating background that I was unaware of until the discussion. Harvard Libraries are comprised of 10 faculty libraries that function as separately funded entities not beholden to the larger Harvard Universities umbrella.

ALA Midwinter, ALCTS PARS Intellectual Access to Preservation Metadata Interest Group

Lisa Schmidt, the electronic records archivist at Michigan State University on “Digital Curation Planning at Michigan State University.” MSU has 33,000 cubic feet of MSU records in their archives and actively works with various campus departments to gain their content. The archives at MSU are a unit separate from the libraries. Funded by a grant, the archives sought to create a plan for digital curation of content.

ALA Midwinter, ALCTS Metadata Interest Group

Jennifer Bowen, University of Rochester
Jennifer presented of the eXtensible catalog's metadata services toolkit which is now available for release in modules.

The project is completely open source and a non-profit eXtensible Cataloging Organization is being created to support the products. The project has a new interface that is FRBR-ized, faceted browse, totally customizable and based on a Drupal framework.

ALA Midwinter, ALCTS Copy Cataloging Discussion Group

The bulk of this meeting focused on an update from the Library of
Congress and a report of the results from the R2 consulting report.
The consultants report examined the economics of producing MARC records in North America (U.S.A., Canada). Respondents to the survey (libraries, vendors) were self selected and not random. The report asks, who creates original MARC records?

ALA Midwinter, LLAMA Leadership Development Seminar

Pat Wagner of Pattern Research, Inc. led attendees through a number of exercises to consider how supervisors and administrators treat their staffs. Pat's specialty is conflict management and it was a fascinating afternoon. What is your style? Beyond how you perceive yourself, how does your staff rate you? One quick way to get information is to conduct an anthropological study. How do others react when you walk into a room? What non-verbal cues are you giving? Pat's session ended with an amusing homework assignment, “Stop delegating humanity.”

ALA Midwinter, OCLC Enhance Session

Although K-State is not an enhance institution, we have considered becoming one for select formats and the information presented is always valuable. OCLC announced the Expert Community Experiment has become a permanent and is no longer an experiment. All of the functionality available during the experiment has been made permanent. Between February 15-August 2009, the Experiment Community Experiment yielded 108,000 record fixes. Enhance level authorizations will still have additional functionality. Under consideration is whether or not enhance members will be able to edit PCC records and make type code changes.

ELSUG: Voyager 7 Tomcat WebVoyage Interface for Dummies, or, What Will It Take to Customize Our New User Interface and Remain Sane?

Voyager 7 Tomcat WebVoyage Interface for Dummies, or, What Will It Take to Customize Our New User Interface and Remain Sane?
Laura Guy

The last session I attended was one given by Laura Guy of the Colorado School of Mines. Laura had served as a beta tester for Tomcat OPAC and as she put it, is not a programmer. Much of the presentation dealt with CSS files, XML/XSL and webvoyage.properties (similar to what was called opac.ini and requires work each upgrade). The order of the CSS files and which file trumps what were discussed. The take away here was all changes are doable, just be deliberate as one error can ruin multiple pages.

ELSUG 2009: Voyager—What the Heck Do I Do With It?

Voyager—What the Heck Do I Do With It?
Lesli Moore

Initially, I was not quite sure whether or not this session would be too basic, but I was pleasantly surprised. The presenter is a former ExLibris trainer and provided an explanation of options on circulation, cataloging, acquisitions, systems and reporter modules. Armed with screen shots, I am much better prepared to answer questions for folks with a much firmer working knowledge of the module than I. Often I am just a set of fresh eyes looking at a problem and these handouts will help make me better informed. In fact, there are a few options in some modules I do not believe we are using and should be in order to streamline the mundane.

ELSUG 2009: Panel Discussion

Panel Discussion
The panel discussion was new this year and gave conference goers the chance to exchange ideas and solutions. Michael Doran, Laura Guy and Elizabeth Jones sat on the panel. After spending a good deal of time in sessions on Tomcat, the new OPAC interface, I was very interested in hearing why folks had decided to move to Tomcat or why folks were planning to stick with classic WebVoyage. All of those who answered my question were either already on Tomcat or planning to move there with a future upgrade.

Reasons others migrated to Tomcat:

• Usability research went into the design of Tomcat, unlike classic Webvoyage
• ExLibris is not fixing bugs on classic, but Tomcat bugs are being fixed
• Did not require major changes on the back end, but wanted to take advantage of the visual changes on Tomcat
• Improved results page
• Tomcat allows for the use of screen readers
• Tomcat follows various Web standards

Those in the audience ranged from small academic libraries to large research libraries. Everyone in the audience who migrated to Voyager7 is using the Tomcat interface.