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On May 8th I attended the SOLINET Annual meeting held this year for the first time at the quite beautiful and neatly tucked away Emory Conference Center. Michael Stephens the morning keynoter was a good opening act. He was certain to awaken the audience as it was a bit of a challenge to follow him on stage as he moved from here to there and then up and then down. He was all over the place. Hired recently as an Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Dominican University in Illinois, Stephens’ enthusiasm for Libraries is certain to rub off on at least a few of his students. While sharing with the audience his views for transforming libraries, Stephens made reference to a quote that our neighboring Davidson College used within a recent Librarian job posting. “Give us your newbie enthusiasm and your fresh ideas and we in return will mentor your growth.” Stephens also sited as an example of creative undertakings within libraries the Charlotte Public Library’s 2.0 training project.

The “Innovations in Next Generation Library Management Systems” session featured updates on three interesting developments in open-source library applications. John Little spoke on Duke University Libraries proposal for the Mellon Foundation to convene the academic library community in designing an open-source Integrated Library System. Andrew Nagy of Villanova discussed his work in developing VuFind. VuFind adds Web 2.0 functionality on top of the traditional interface and allows users to e-mail search results and save results to their favorites. Tim Daniels shared insights on Georgia Library’s PINES (Public Information Network for Electronic Services). This is the public library automation and lending network for more than 275 libraries in Georgia.

“The Other Side of the Library Coin: Georgia Tech’s Experience in Broadcasting Scholarly Information” was the title of my afternoon session. Tyler Walters discussed the transformation of scholarly communication and their development of the SMARTech institutional repository. Libraries are responding to this transformation as they in the process of adding new services are experiencing a transformation as well. “Cultivating active partnerships with faculty is how libraries will continue to transform into high value hubs of information services.” For a copy of Walters’ slide presentation and others from the SAMM meeting follow this link:
http://www.solinet.net/SAMM08/Sessions.aspx