As part of Erik’s and my Summer Technology Exploration grant (where we are exploring data sets) we are attending CurateCamp, an “Unconference” on data curation being held at Stanford University. This is my first Unconference experience, where there are no preplanned sessions and participants’ current interests drive the program. The picture above shows how the... more ›
Yesterday I participated in LYRASIS’ Ideas and Insights series. It was a really good event. The theme was Positioning Your Library in the Mobile Ecosystem: Content and Delivery. It was a rather small group, 25, but two were from out of the state, and for this time of year it wasn’t too bad. I was... more ›
Over the past few years, I’ve recognized an increasing need and desire to understand the ins and outs of how finances work in higher education. Our library’s ability to obtain the resources to meet our mission is tightly interwoven in the larger university financial maze! However, unless you have a position where finances are part... more ›
To borrow and slightly change a line from Ben Stiller in Meet the Parents, I’d say this workshop was “strong… to very strong.” The Preservation Institute is taught by top specialists from the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress brought out some of their big guns for this week-long workshop. The sessions were held... more ›
This weekend, I had the pleasure of giving a talk at the American Association of Law Librarians in Philadelphia, PA. Some of you may remember that my last trip to Philly resulted in theft of my phone 🙁 so I exercised my best big-city behavior this time and kept my phone in my pocket –... more ›
Today Lynn, Carolyn, Tim, Steve, Susan, Leslie, Jean-Paul, Kevin and Erik got together to attend the ASERL webinar on discovery services. We hear from Wally Grotophorst at George Mason University and Marshall Breeding at Vanderbilt. Wally talked about the George Mason University experience with Aquabrowser. He discussed some approaches to cross data indexing including just... more ›
On Wednesday morning, five of the members of ZSR Library’s leadership group (Lynn, Wanda, Lauren C., Mary Beth and Susan) left Winston-Salem and headed to Beaufort, NC for the first ever ZSR Library Leadership Retreat. Although we all work closely together and meet regularly through Administrative Council and other in-library venues, we had never had... more ›
This afternoon, I participated in the OCLC Resource Sharing User Group Meeting, which was facilitated by OCLC and Atlas staff. The webinar was a follow-up to the User Group Meeting at ALA, but several new tools were introduced. One of the most relevant is the Lender String Report. This assessment tool is used to evaluate... more ›
I’m a bit late in writing up my report about the 2011 ALA in New Orleans, because I’ve been trying to find the best way to explain a statement that profoundly affected my thinking about cataloging. I heard it at the MARC Formats Interest Group session, which I chaired and moderated. The topic of the... more ›
I felt I had a very productive conference at ALA Annual this year. Once again, the conversations with vendors were the best part. I stayed very busy and came home exhausted. I’m currently on two ALCTS committees-the Acquisitions Section Technology Committee and the ALCTS Task Force on Transforming Collections. The Transforming Collections meeting was covered... more ›