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Here are a baker’s dozen of random and relative tibits from a variety of sessions I attended at ALA:

• ProQuest did a survey and in the results:
  • faculty said they want students to use “a variety of content types including video”
  • video is the largest growing category of content
  • there are a growing number of citations to newspapers
• ProQuest on discovery trends and strategy: the diversity of material has a profound effect on discovery and the single search box will remain but is not sophisticated enough to help people find what they really need; to help we need context from data relations — not just an index, but a graph database to have the relationships — and thus the services, so ProQuest has a focus on data intelligence [p.s. the webinar from Ex Libris on Advanced Intelligence fleshes this out more]
• Full report of Primo VE (Wow on p. 11: For records in Alma, changes are available for searching almost immediately ( < 15 min) within Primo VE.)
• From a presenter from an Aleph+Primo institution in New York:
  • There is a technical debt to pay for customization, e.g. the labor and expertise needed to make the customization to begin with, also have to think about Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) regulations, and what happens when someone leaves and documentation on the customization is lacking?
  • “Convert patron notices to texts instead of emails because no one reads email”
  • Ebook use went up 30% when implemented Syndetics with book cover image
  • Archives collections with the hierarchy of metadata in EAD doesn’t work with today’s discovery
• From a presenter from George Washington University: moved away from approval plans because redundancy in consortium and using DDA and EBA for purchasing — trying to save money
• ProQuest: “Usage data is a slice of user behavior data” and a bit later, “COUNTER limits quality of data for us. It can’t integrate data based on an individual user.”
• From a presenter from Yale: Students and faculty don’t have the context for library data* so you must be prepared for their questions, and from the press, if you put your data on a website.  A plan with the new Director of Communication was a must. (Here is the little bit of Yale library data I found from a quick search after the conference.) *Session moderator: “Usage, financial, or title might be included when we’re saying ‘data’ in this session.”
• George Takei pronounces the “ei” part of his last name as “ay,” contrary to popular pronunciation, and I hope we buy his forthcoming graphic novel (this summer) on his experience in a Japanese-American internment camp. (He was emphatic about not shortening to Japanese internment camp. There is a major difference in meaning!) The artwork looks like it will be absolutely amazing and the love story between his parents is a strong theme in the book. The artist is an American woman who is half Japanese and Mr. Takei and the other two collaborators on the book sang her praises throughout the panel discussion, not only on how well she conveyed emotion in her drawings and without feeling two-dimensional, but also for her sensitivity in conveying the story. The panelists said that while it is middle-school reading level (and there will be a teacher’s guide with it), adults will enjoy it. Also AMC will be broadcasting a 10 hour series  in August, “The Terror: Infamy” (season 2 of Ridley Scott’s anthology drama – 1 minute trailer here).