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This year, the North American Serials Interest Group met in Phoenix, Arizona for its annual conference. Steve Kelley and I represented ZSR at the conference, and the weather became It may have been a “dry heat”, but 103 degrees Fahrenheit was still hot in every sense. Thankfully, the conference was mostly held indoors and away from the warming rays.

The theme of this year’s conference was “Taking the Sting out of Serials”, and there were strategy sessions, tactics sessions, and vision sessions where ideas were presented to address this issue. In the midst of these, however, were three concepts that were on the minds of many conference attendees.

•Integrated library systems- the next generation. With the aging of current library systems, questions are being asked about how an upcoming ILS will handle the next generation of library resources. Further, the market for the open source ILS (such as Evergreen, Koha and OPALS) continues to grow in relation to the current players.
•ERM systems. The open source ERM is also taking off, with libraries considering a stand-alone model (GoldRush and HERMES, for example) rather than an interconnected model with the ILS. Still, many libraries are facing how to fully incorporate an ERM into established workflows while creating new procedures around its operation.
•Staff resources toward e-resources. Electronic resource require a workflow all of their in order to guarantee access from the point of order to ongoing maintenance. Library staff is being tapped to deal with the fine points of the process, and libraries are determining the best procedures to commit librarians and support staff toward effective management. From reorganization to outsourcing, solutions are being explored to make up for the changes in personnel.

The session I attended covered a wide range of issues. The standouts for me were:
•“Taking the Sting out of Multiple Format Serials Displays”. This session, presented by two librarians at the University of Kentucky, described how they used bib linking to “join” records of differing formats together on a single OPAC display. For example, if one were searching for Library Journal and arrived at the record for the print journal, the link to the electronic version would be available within the same display. UK also used this procedure for print titles that had been canceled and linked them to their online counterparts, and they said that it had great success with the understanding of patrons. Also, UK is a Voyager site too.
•“Marketing Library Database Services”. Elsevier is developing a student training program in which graduate students are instructed on how to use Elsevier products (such as SCOPUS) as well as online services that are specific to individual libraries. When they return to their home institutions, these graduate students would become trainers for faculty and students alike about databases and journal products. I found this to be an interesting approach, although the application would definitely vary from one library to another.
•“Managing Divergence of Print and Online Journals”. The National Library of Medicine charged a working group that would investigate the differences in content between the print and online versions of its journal subscriptions. The implications included the available content between print and online, but it also involved interlibrary loan requests for content that may be restricted by the terms of a license agreement. The working group reached several conclusions but these in turn led to other questions such as article-level access and workflow reorganization.

Like Steve said in his post, I don’t see Phoenix on my short list of retirement hot spots for the future (though it is a hot spot of another kind). However, I did take some pictures from the trip, and they can be viewed at this link.