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Today saw some interesting presentations. In the morning I went to a panel on institutional repositories which included a presentation by Tabatha Becker on the University of Colorado’s work in publishing an Undergraduate Research Journal using an open source platform. As we talk about libraries re-examining their roles it is interesting to see someone taking on the elements of review and editorship in order to produce and preserve undergraduate research.

The last session of the day for me included a presentation on the Chronopolis, a grid-based digital object preservation system. The presenter, Robert McDonald, talked also more generally about the role that grid services and cloud computing can play in library services during the question and answer section. Chronopolis is a good example of the type of service that libraries really cannot implement on their own and it made me wonder about the impact of cloud based services on leveling the playing field for libraries. On the heels of a presentation about managing IT departments which clearly demonstrated how large and complex technology is getting in libraries, it made me wonder about the impact that cloud/grid based services would have on closing the gap between the technology services that libraries need and the capacity they have to manage them.

The sunday morning poster sessions included a common theme on ‘library 2.0’ and ‘web 2.0’ concepts. Perhaps most interesting of the posters was a discussion by Bobby Goff at Mississippi State University about the beginning of the library’s work in releasing open source software.