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It is now Saturday evening, the NASIG conference has finished its second full day, I have taken 12 full pages of handwritten notes, and I write small.I am struggling with how to condense all that into a blog post or two.I could just transcribe my notes straight across, but I doubt many of you would be that interested.If you are, we can talk next week.Anyway, here’s Friday … the short version.

Friday started with a “Vision” (=plenary) session, with speaker Peter Morville, author of the book Ambient Findability.His presentation dealt largely with website design and designingbetter search interfaces.It was a good presentation, and there are now a few books I want to look up (including Ambient Findability).In a world where the haystacks are becoming bigger and more numerous, he addressed some ways to create bigger needles.We need to figure out how to capture our “about-ness” and our uniqueness.He spoke some about faceted navigation as a promising trend, as well as the requisite sample websites doing cool things (e.g. Songza and Everyzing).

I attended a session where people from two different universities discussed their implementation of the CUFTS open-source electronic resource management system (ERMS).I was hoping to be impressed, but came away instead with the impression that this product isn’t quite ready for prime time.What the session did do was give me some food for thought about ERMS functionality.

Friday afternoon I went to a session about cost data for electronic resources.The presenter first spoke about a new NISO standard (currently in draft form) called CORE (= Cost of Resource Exchange), which seeks to standardize the elements and format of cost data in ILS and ERM systems and facilitate their communication between automation systems.She then explained the method she has used at her own library to extract cost data from their ILS and move it into their ERMS.

My final session Friday was presented by a librarian from U.Tennessee-Chattanooga and a representative of the non-profit organization that makes the Gold Rush suite of e-resource management tools (link resolver, A-Z list, etc.).They talked about the U.Tenn.-Chattanooga library’s recent migration from their previous vendor to Gold Rush.I took two pages of notes on this one.They talked about the selection and implementation process, and discussed lessons learned, like the importance of live product trials (not just demos), and making the vendor work for the sale.

Whew! Six pages down!In the evening was an optional event at the nearby Biltmore House.We were bussed over, had a nice dinner on site, then went on a tour of the house.Then to bed to rest up for another day of conferencing (stay tuned).