Inside ZSR
No, my post title isn’t a candidate for the “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks. I was one of the virtual attendees at the conference. Since Derrik and Chris have already blogged, I’ll focus my reflections on some of the topics they haven’t covered yet. What would Google Do? Elizabeth German from the University of Houston... more ›
On February 13, I arose ere the dawn to attend the ASERL Journal Retention Steering Committee meeting on the Georgia Tech campus. I don’t normally drink coffee, but I downed two cups once I arrived. (OK, really two cups of coffee-flavored sugared cream.) The opening session reviewed the project (http://www.aserl.org/programs/j-retain/ ) and introduced the WRLC... more ›
A keynote speaker used ‘gatekept’ as a past participle verb. The OED hasn’t caught on to that yet, but the Google Ngram shows a small but steady increase in the word since 1970. In “The Changing World of eBooks,” Mike Shatzkin focused on the viewpoint of trade publishers. They’ve discovered that most readers just want... more ›
The second day of the MSU LEETS conference focused on emerging technologies. These presentations overlapped more with each other so I’ll just give some general impressions. The main speaker was Nicole Hennig from MIT. NUIs (Natural User Interfaces) to replace GUIs Libraries creating “hackerspaces” or “makerspaces” which feature 3-D printers. Our own Dr. Atala got... more ›
I spent last weekend in Starkville, Mississippi at the MSU LEETS conference. LEETS stands for Libraries eResource and Emerging Technologies Summit. The first day of the conference focused on electronic resources. Tim Collins from EBSCO Publishing emphasized the development of the EDS discovery service in his opening keynote. He worries more about the erosion of... more ›
Impressions from the Electronic Resources & Libraries conference … E-books and DDA When CSU-Fullerton had a budget cut, they prioritized their DDA program and instead cut their approval plan. They skipped the intermediate step of an e-preferred approval profile. In our own presentation, Derrik and I asserted that annual spending on DDA clusters around $4-$7... more ›
Acquiring Datasets: Two speakers from the U. of Illinois (one a “Numeric and Spatial Data Librarian”) described a pilot project managed by a Data Services Committee. Purchased datasets are stored on a section of the library’s webserver and linked in the catalog. In the long run, current processes may not be scalable and may demand... more ›
NCLA marked my first experience as a member of a conference planning committee. I managed the poster sessions with my excellent co-chair and long-time friend of ZSR, Iyanna Sims. I didn’t get to attend that many concurrent sessions, since I frequently needed to help the next poster session set up. The most relevant session to... more ›
Honestly, they could’ve renamed this the “Patron-Driven Acquisitions Conference,” given the many talks on that topic. Rick Anderson’s opening plenary promoted the opposite of the Big Deal: The Tiny Deal, or, single article purchases. He reported two surprises with his library’s Espresso Book Machine: An interest in self-publishing, especially for family histories. Demand for blank... more ›
Derrik and I deliberately attended separate breakout sessions in almost every time slot. Emma Cryer of Duke spoke on Open Access Marketing. During Open Access Week 2009, Duke sponsored multiple panels targeted to different audiences, such as Librarians, Graduate Students, Faculty, and (taking advantage of Parents Weekend) Parents. Outcomes of the experience: More consultations with... more ›