Inside ZSR

Achieving Strategic Change in Research Libraries II

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

Achieving Strategic Change in Research Libraries I

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

GBW Standards of Excellence- Presentations

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

RITS Annual Team Retreat 2010

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

Guild of Bookworkers Standards of Excellence Seminar- Tucson

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

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

ILL Direct Request for Articles

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

Kevin at LITA National Forum

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

Giz at LITA National Forum 2010-Wrapup

My first LITA National Forum was an excellent experience and I would encourage anyone interested to try to attend. I enjoyed how the theme of cloud computing carried on through the entire conference. Unlike some larger conferences with multiple themes, this focus on a primary theme at a smaller conference really gave the participants some... more

My first time at LITA

This blog post gives an overview of my first experience at LITA. It also highlights some of the important points of the conference and demonstrates why some of the topics discussed made LITA Forum 2010 in Atlanta, GA, a wonderful experience. I had the opportunity to attend the preconference on Virtualize IT presented by Maurice... more