K-State Libraries: Conference Reports

NASIG 2008: Information Shadows

Information Shadows: Ubiquitous computing serializes everyday things
Presenter: Mike Kuniavsky, ThingM

Kuniavsky, a user experience researcher and designer, and an author, believes "...the power of information processing of a single magic window [i.e. computer]...technology should not be limited to viewing the whole world through the lens, the power of that technology, the potential of that technology, should be brought into everyday life."  He shared with serial librarians, vendors and publishers, how anything can become a serial.  By adding embedded networked computing to the simplest objects, any everyday object can exhibit new properties, allowing them to circulate just as library objects do.  Use of RFID tags and metadata, create what Kuniavsky calls shadow objects.  The id marks (RFID) let you see the information about the item, to point to it, and then add "handles" to allow you to move the object.  When you do this you may no longer need the physical object.  Consider plane tickets.

He pointed out how a journal is an agreement between a publisher and authors.  That agreement is enclosed in a wrapper or as he described it a box with dotted lines. Subscribers purchase the item with the dotted lines and whatever fills in those dotted lines (new articles each time it is published). Think of a time share where the "form" and "time" are fixed, but the contents (the owner) is variable. Kuniavsky describes it as owning the possibility of the object.

From there he moved to city car shares, bike sharing in Germany that is billed to your phone, and designer purses that circulate in a way very similar to NetFlix. The information shadow can be tracked and managed.  Traceable metadata allows for physical objects to fill in the dotted shadow lines.

The fundamental change is that we now live in the age of access.  The shift of ownership of objects is changing to the access of services.

Pointing out that serials librarians have been working with this for years, he informed the attendees that, "The world of dotted line objects need those of you who can connect the dotted line objects to the information shadows."  We are the shadow wranglers!

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: 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.

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)

ALCTS Metadata and Digital Library Development preconference

I attended the ALCTS Metadata and Digital Library Development preconference before the start of ALA Midwinter. The preconference lasted two days and included discussions and exercises on functional requirements for digital libraries, metadata assessment and analysis, metadata conversion (i.e. mapping), and metadata workflows. Those in attendance included electronic resource librarians, catalogers, metadata specialists, and a few folks in library systems. The creation and maintenance of digital libraries is a complex topic. Much depends on the local environment and the goals of the digital library. What purpose does it serve now and in the future? I found the discussions with colleagues in a variety of roles and position within libraries to be more valuable than the formal content. Many libraries are still tentatively stepping out into various digital projects. While K-State has completed numerous grant-funded digital projects with groups outside the libraries, library-wide projects have been more limited. As the libraries take a more active role in the creation and curation of digital content, the opportunities for improved tools and content exposure are vast.

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: 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.

NISO: Electronic Resource Usage Data

NISO Forum: Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data

Electronic Resource Usage Data: Defining a complex problem
Caryn Anderson
Doctoral Studies Program Manager
GSLIS, Simmons College

NISO: Building Frameworks of Organizational Intelligence

NISO Forum: Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data

"I'm sorry, we didn't know we wanted to know that!" Building frameworks of organizational intelligence
Joe Zucca
Director for Planning and Communication
University of Pennsylvania Libraries

NISO: From Shoeboxes to Mashups

NISO Forum: Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data

From Shoeboxes to Mashups: ERMs and Decision Support
Tim Jewell
Director, Information Resources and Scholarly Communication
University of Washington Libraries

Also sits on the SUSHI development committee

NISO: Searching for Value

NISO Forum: Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data

Searching for Value in a Changing Research Environment: What data do you have and how can you use it?
Patricia Brennan
Product Development Manager
Thompson Scientific

NISO: Real World Data

NISO Forum: Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data

Real World Data: Using Usage to Shape Libraries
Virginia Steel
University Librarian
University of California, Santa Cruz

NISO: Usage Statistics & Information Behaviors

NISO Forum: Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data

Usage Statistics & Information Behaviors
John McDonald
Assistant Director, User Services & Technology Innovation
The Libraries of the Claremont Colleges

NISO: Why Collect Data?

NISO Forum: Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data

Why Collect Data?
Colleen Cook
Dean of the Texas A&M University Libraries
Sterling C. Evans Chair in Librarianship

Also co-creator of LibQUAL

NISO: ScholarlyStats

NISO Forum: Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data

ScholarlyStats: How it utilizes COUNTER and SUSHI standards, questions regarding effective use, and future strategic plans for the service
Tina Feck
Vice President, Customer Relations
Swets Information Services

NISO: Usage Data: an aggregator perspective

NISO Forum: Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data

Usage Data: An Aggregator Perspective
John Law
Director, Strategic Alliances and Platform Management
ProQuest CSA

(The conference wireless died in the middle of this post so I lost all my thoughtful analysis (ahem). This is the nutshell version posted later in the afternoon.)

NISO: SUSHI & COUNTER

NISO Forum: Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data

SUSHI & COUNTER
Oliver Pesch
Chief Strategist, E-Resources
EBSCO Information Services

(Oliver was moving fast through his slides so there are lots of items I missed)

NISO: Usage Data: seeing the full perspective

NISO Forum: Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data

Usage Data: Seeing the Full Perspective
Kevin Cohn
Product Director, Atypon

(The conference wireless was down while Kevin was speaking. These are my notes captured off-line and posted later in the afternoon.)

NISO: The MESUR Project

NISO Forum: Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data

The MESUR Project: An Update from the Trenches
Johan Bollen
Staff Researcher
Los Alamos National Laboratory Research Library

NISO: From What to Why

NISO Forum: Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data

From What to Why: Electronic Resource Usage Data in Collection Development and User Behavior
Karen Coombs
Head of Web Services
University of Houston Libraries
and
Library Web Chic

NISO: Aggregation & Analysis of Usage Data

NISO Forum: Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data

Aggregation & Analysis of Usage Data: A Structural, Quantitative Perspective
Johan Bollen
Staff Researcher
Los Alamos National Laboratory Research Library

(Johan says he is afraid of yelling into the microphone, but it's quite difficult to hear him)

NISO at the sign of the Red Pegasus

Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data
November 1-2, 2007
Dallas, Texas

Initial Impressions:
Under the Magnolia Oil Company's red pegasus, I'm meeting with a big group of library hangers-on to discuss the pressing issues of the day. It starts to sound like a political meeting, but the topic is usage data in all its use/ful/less forms. Todd Carpenter from NISO is telling us this is the largest-attended forum this year, and the room is packed. We're meeting in a fabulous old Art Deco ballroom and it's impossible to divorce the architecture of our surroundings from the topic at hand. If we can depart with the same clear sense of structure and purpose regarding our data that the architects of these buildings possessed in their design schemes, we'll be doing very well indeed.

Open Source Software as a Service: Access 2007

Joshua Ferraro
LibLime

One of his main points was to address why one might need commercial support for open source software in libraries. Mr. Ferraro worked at the Athens County Public Library, the first (US?) library to go with Koha, an open-source ILS. Showed that OPAC to start the talk. LibLime uses the Zebra indexing backend, so relevance ranking is pretty slick. Koha has a templating system, which means the interface is quite malleable.

Open ILS, Web 2.0 and Multitype Provincial Library Initiatives in BC: Access 2007

Ben Hyman
BC Libraries
Beth Jefferson
Bibliocommons

BC has the goal of a common ILS for their public libraries. Using a $1 million grant, they brought together 53 BC public libraries that had envisioned a migration to Horizon 8, 11 more which face a major migration in the next few years. Interesting in reining in their ILS chaos (over a dozen systems currently in use) and implementing Evergreen.

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.

Gathering Data: NISO E-Resources Management Forum

Oliver Pesch
EBSCO Information Services

"Gathering Data"

Working Together: NISO E-Resources Management Forum

Sandy Hurd
Innovative Interfaces
Director of Strategic Markets

"Working together to find solutions"
(presented by Todd Carpenter)

Bigger is(n't) better: NISO E-Resources Management Forum

Susan Davis
Electronic Periodicals Management Department
University of Buffalo (SUNY)

"Building you ERM Knowledge Base: Bigger isn't necessarily better, or is it? How do you decide what to add to your ERM?"

What's Right for Me: NISO E-Resources Management Forum

Wendy Shelburne
Electronic Resources Librarian
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"Finding the ERM system that fits now...and later"

ERM Context: NISO E-Resource Management Forum

Marshall Breeding
Director for Innovative Technologies & Research
Vanderbilt University

"ERMS: A Review"

Value: NISO E-Resource Management Forum

Norm Medeiros
Associate Librarian of the College
Haverford College

"The ERMS Value Proposition"

Opening Plenary: NISO E-Resource Management Forum

Jill Grogg
Electronic Resources Librarian & Associate Professor
University of Alabama Libraries

"Challenges & Opportunities for E-Resource Management"

(audio of presentation was recorded)

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!

Acquistions Institute at Timberline

This was a very interesting conference with about 60 people attending (including vendors, acquisitions librairans, publishers, and others).  No selling allowed, so the vendors and publishers participated in the meetings and presented.  Clever way to broaden the perspective of the conference by adding voices outside of libraries who participate in the acquisitions process.

Presentations ranged from

• Bonnie Allen (Dean of Libraries at University of Montana) talking about the Long Tail and how libraries can reclaim lost content because of budget woes and increasing costs
• to a panel of publishers including David Jackson from Stanford UP, Mehdi Khosrow-Pour from IGI Group (formerlyIdea Group), and Pascal Schwarzer from Springer-Verlag talking about publishing trends (including e-books)
• to Sheila Bair from Western Michigan talking about Metadata Planning and capturing different viewpoints with controlled vocabulary
• to Linda DiBiase, Susan Hinken, and Mark Watson talking about creating a shared print repository among Washington and Oregon academic libraries
• to yours truly talking about swarms, linear workflows, and capturing the best of both worlds to make more flexible organizations.

There were many other presentations as well.

I particularly enjoyed the intimacy of this conference.  The camaraderie and the willingness to have conversations brought out many ideas and helped make good connections between librarians who are dealing with similar issues.

A couple of big things that I heard at the conference:

1. Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate -- we are in an era where isolation won't help us... and it may even hurt us financially. Long-term thinking demands that libraries begin to think of themselves as part of something bigger.
2. Technology is increasing our ability to distribute information more quickly, freely, and customizably (is that even a word?).
3. Libraries are questioning the value of print collections, particularly in serials.  They are beginning to trust digital... a little.
4. Technical services needs to lean toward the digital by putting money and workforce behind digital content management.
5. Other schools have:

• gotten rid of their review rooms
• stopped cataloging on series records and gone cat-sep on everything
• gone fully EDI in their ordering and invoicing
• merged copy cataloging and receiving so that firm orders can be cataloged as they walk in the door
• created personalized library web pages for professors which pull relevant article content from RSS feeds, point to relevant databases, and create one-click access to relevant library services -- see one here!
• created blogs for departments to announce books and to work with them on collection development -- see one here!
• started keeping E-Book statistics that might even show that e-books get more use than their print counterparts... (what?!?)

Adam

2007 ACRL Conference in Baltimore

After a major conference, people are usually left with a “conference high”.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, but after reflecting back on the ACRL conference for a few weeks, I decided to share some of my thoughts and experiences.

I went to the Conference Luncheon with no particular expectations about the film maker and Keynote Speaker—John Waters.  But as the speech proceeded I was fascinated with the charming, almost childlike, characteristics Waters exhibited, as he aimed to shock and titillate the audience.

The Library Journal, 5/1/2007, captured the spirit of his commentary:

Waters’s rollicking and often blue talk had librarians rolling in the aisles—and, in a few cases, walking out of the room. “I know you belie the fuddy-duddy perception of librarians,” Waters said, opening his push-the-boundaries performance. “You’ve read too much, you’re twisted people.”

Waters also offered advice for making libraries cool again: highlight the dirty parts in books, urge librarians to go nude for a day or pretend they’re on drugs, and suggest people sleep only with librarians for a year. “

…And my view? I can assure you that these comments mentioned by the Library Journal were on the mild side.  Prudish idealism wins over fascination for someone who has washed her sister’s mouth out with soap.  Is this the right path for getting people into the library?  Yes, some of the message John Waters conveyed about using provocative and out-of-the-box measures to attract patrons was very important, but how far will we go?  Libraries have always had a comfort level for all those who enter.  Do we throw that out with MySpace, Facebook, and Gaming?  Those will all change, mutate or die out within a limited time frame and be replaced with something else.  Or can we mix the wild with the sedate?  I have to admit to a certain amount of fascination for some of these new “things” myself, but… who are we as an organization?  What do we want to accomplish?  I think these decisions need to be decided very quickly, because those decisions will be too late coming within possibly 5 years.

Conference Presentations

As a whole, I wasn’t too impressed with many of the presentations.  At first I felt somewhat like the “Grinch”, but post-conference conversations indicate that a number of attendees shared this feeling that the presentations could have been much better.

All was not lost, however.  Three stood out and two of those were by presented by a couple of seasoned presenters I have seen at other conferences.

Charting Your Course to Success—Nancy Davenport, presenter

She talked about marketing your successes, and her suggestion is to begin at the end.  Write the press release announcing the project’s launch into production – who, what, where, when, why, and how; be realistic about the timeline, costs, benefits, and partners; manage expectations which would include everyone’s expectations; then build on success.  Most importantly set your benchmarks and celebrate your success.  Be sure to announce and share this success.  Next, start all over on another project.

Technology and Change in Academic Libraries: What Does the Future Hold?

Steven Bell, moderator 

The common theme, strongly presented was –CHANGE.  Libraries are dealing with change, whether we admit it or not.  The difference is acknowledging that we have choices.  We can choose to be victims or leaders.  Our perception of our own achievements can be based on a philosophy of either half empty or half full.

 

Building the European Digital Library—An Insider’s Point of View

Olaf D. Janssen, Presenter

This was my favorite presentation.  Why, because this is where I think the “world” is headed--toward the Foundation series by Arthur C. Clarke.  Despite almost losing half an hour of the presentation because of equipment problems or whatever, the concept really grabbed me.  Someday this type of project will eventually happen everywhere.  Access will be collective except for the unique collections in libraries all over the world.  At the end of the program, though, the presenter mentioned the project had very few staff and needed new partners to advance.  Oh well, we may have to wait for someday.

Gay Youngman

EndUser 2007

I think I may have picked one of the most interesting years to attend EndUser. Being as it was my first time attending this conference, I had nothing to gauge it against. For those unaware, Endeavor sold Voyager to ExLibris. The EndUser Board met with their ExLibris user group counterparts (ELUNA and IGeLU, North American and International respectively). No formal action was taken at conference, but given the change in ownership, the EndUser group will be merging with ELUNA and the international Voyager clients will be joining IGeLU. ELUNA and IGeLU are organized around working product groups who provide product feedback. This approach seems different than the focus I saw at EndUser, but hopefully the merging of groups will bring out the best in each approach. ELUNA and IGeLU are fee based organizations (fees paid by either institution or consortium) in order to vote and participate in the enhancement process. From what I have gathered, this differs significantly from how EndUser has operated and this has folks talking.

The conference had many interesting sessions and I was able to bring back some great ideas to share. The presentation that Margaret and I gave went well and we had some good questions from the audience. The presentation was an extension of the one given at SCVUGM 2006 only now we had 7 months of data and new work flows to add to the discussion. The presentation focused on our outsourcing of authority control and database maintenance and how we are approaching the vast number of reports being generated and training.

Sessions I attended included one on enhancing WebVoyage using Google and Yahoo APIs to address misspellings in searches, analysis of WebVoyage logs to reorder the default search boxes and try to see what types of searches are being done as well as addressing search failures, and two sessions on improving Access report writing skills. With a continued nod to technology, I attended a session on implementing EDI and another on creating a database to track status of order requests.

I hope LIT or another group would consider forming an ad hoc group to examine the latest wave of integrated finding tools with their nod to social network tagging. They take the notion of a library portal another step. These new tools make the best of all present finding technologies (federated searching, better displays, Open-URL resolvers, deep linking, etc.). The ExLibris product is called Primo and was quite impressive in demo. Two universities, University of Minnesota and University of Vanderbilt are currently using it. Competitors to Primo include Endeca and an Open Source product being developed by the University of Rochester called eXtentsible Catalog (XC). I am sure there are other products I am unaware of that do the same sort of things.

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).

DigCCurr 2007: Selection and Appraisal

Speakers: Richard Cox (Pitt), Michael Moss (U of Glasgow), William Underwood (Georgia Tech Res Inst)

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.