Inside ZSR
Stephen Town, University Librarian at the University of York, UK, Tuesday’s opening keynoter, reminded librarians that library assessment has been mostly about quality and quantity, but not about value. However, libraries are under pressure to prove their value. Value he defined as the quality or fact of being excellent, useful or desirable. But what is... more ›
The 2010 Library Assessment Conference themed, Building Effective, Sustainable, Practical Assessment, is the third in a series of planned conferences devoted to building an assessment culture and community within libraries. Held every two years, the conference is co-sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), the University of Virginia and the University of Washington. This... more ›
2CUL: A Transformative Research Library Partnership Jim Neal, Columbia University, Anne Kenney, Cornell University Neal and Kenney described a radical partnership between two ARL libraries. Cornell and Columbia have similarities in that they are both private Ivy League institutions, ranked in the top 10 of the Association of Research Libraries, and are located in New... more ›
Last Thursday and Friday I attended a seminar in Washington DC sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries and Coalition for Networked Information called Achieving Strategic Change in Research Libraries. In my experience, ARL programming is first-rate and I was not disappointed. The opening keynote was by David Shulenberger, formerly Provost at Kansas and now... more ›
I attended three sessions this year and was delighted that these focused on binding and books. Martha Little spoke on “Evidence of Structure and Procedure in Books.” Martha has been the Head Conservator at the University of Michigan Libraries and Book Conservator at Yale. Her presentation was a kind of deconstruction of the historical book.... more ›
This year, the RITS (Research, Instruction & Technology Services) team stayed in Winston-Salem for our annual team retreat. We reserved the President’s Garage which is close to campus but is perfect space for a daylong retreat. We typically aim for the Friday of fall break as our team is comprised of many public service/instruction library... more ›
What, you may ask is the Guild of Bookworkers? Founded in 1906, it promotes hand binding and all the fields surrounding it. As their statement says: “The Guild still believes, as did its founders, that there is a responsibility among civilized people to sustain the crafts involved with the production of fine books.” They also... more ›
2010 NCLA RTSS Fall Workshop: Navigating the New Frontier Keynote The keynote address was given by Bradford Eden, AUL for Technical Services & Scholarly Communications at UC Santa Barbara. The topic was “The New Information Landscape: Technical Services Future”. Questions posed by Mr. Eden to the attendees were: What has changed our perspectives of libraries... more ›
Yesterday, I participated in the webinar, “The Shortest Distance Between Two Clicks: From Users to Article in No Time Flat,” sponsored by OCLC. It is ILL Direct Request for Articles, basically. WorldCat knowledge base is the impetus for making this new feature a possibility. To get started, the participating library has to upload information regarding... more ›
Here are a few notes from my first LITA National Forum: Subjective perceptions. From the opening keynote (an epistemological discussion of Wikipedia), a couple questions resonated with me – one in particular. How do we know how to resolve conflict when we don’t really agree on reality? Legitimate peripheral participation. “Through peripheral activities, novices become... more ›