Sirsi NC Users Group, May 20, 2009

The Sirsi NC Users Group met at the High Point University on May 20, 2009. Those present represented a cross section of public, academic, and consortial libraries. President Drew McNaughton of NC-Piedmont Automated Library System (NC-PALS) convened the business meeting. After Ruth H. Bryan, NC Community College System, provided the treasurers report, the new officers were announced. David A. Wright of Surry Community College is moving into the presidency for the coming year. Liz Wade of Guilford College is the new vice president/ president elect, a three year position. Ruth agrees to be treasurer for another year, and I have the honor of being secretary. Drew reported that he has developed a website for the Users’ Group and will stay on as webmaster for the time being.

Stephen Abram, Vice President of Innovation (how’s that for a position title?) at SirsiDynix delivered the keynote address, “Provocations about the future of libraries.” The speech was a dynamic, entertaining riff on the familiar themes of keeping up with changing technology and the importance of marketing librarians’ skills. Playing with my new netbook, I took unnecessarily copious notes, but I’ll give you just a few interesting tidbits. Did you know that the top ten donors in the recent presidential campaign were copyright owners? Or that having a library in a school system increases its test scores by twenty percent? How about this one: two-thirds of the money spent in the presidential campaigns went to search engine optimization. Because Google is geography-based, it gives different results on college campuses, and Google can charge more for ads targeted to the college demographic. Speaking of the young, when Sirsi mapped the eye movements of different generations, they found that people under 25 move their eyes differently when looking at a website. And because they spend more time on video games, boys now do more reading than girls. (I predict some raised eyebrows, but the new games I see my kids playing do contain big chunks of text.)

Of course, Sirsi has forecasted and prepared for change as they develop their products. They are working on an “advanced and different discovery model” since most retrieval systems are “just so last century.” Stephen is excited about mobile devices and apps, like Sirsi’s “pocket circ” that lets roving librarians check books in and out as they wander the stacks. In another arena, the company made medical databases accessible from doctors’ PDAs, and saw their institution’s death rate fall by five or ten percent.

Stephen concluded with a long list of recommendations for libraries; we’re right on target with many of them. Here is a sampling: rethink the operating model; focus on user needs, continuous innovation, digital identity, vision, leadership, etc.; expand the metrics (we use their statistics tool, Director’s Station). Libraries should have “bricks, clicks, and tricks” and to “watch the kids and their toys.” Build sustainable social networks because people take questions to their friends and colleagues first. (Did you know that half the librarians in Second Life have both cleavage and wings?) Libraries’ value is in the librarians, not the books. Think about e-book readers, embedded technology, and the “23 things” of web 2.0. Invent the future! Be the change!

Following the introduction of the new president, we were treated to company and product updates from SirsiDynix representatives. Software as a Service (SaaS) is Sirsi’s “most important trend.” They offer new training programs and subscriptions to help us keep up with updates and take advantage of all features (training should, of course, be done yearly). Hyperion, their digital media archive product, will release a new version by year end. Also expected is the Web Services Application Programming Interface (WS API), which adds a layer for interoperability of APIs. Enterprise 3.0, coming soon, is a new discovery layer that works on top of Symphony, Horizon, etc. and “sets a new standard for local control in a hosted discovery tool.” Finally, Symphony 3.3, the update to our ILS software, is coming soon, with exciting features like the Acquisitions Vendor Interface Port (VIP), Enhanced Usability Wizards, Group Item Circulation, and MSSQL support.

After a great lunch (which seemed familiar – I think they repeated last year’s menu) in the Slane Conference Room, we returned to a choice of afternoon sessions. The 1:00 lineup featured “Software as a Service (SaaS) Information Sharing session” by Dr. Carol Jordan, Library Director at Queens University of Charlotte, and Sarah Greene, Youth Services & Technology Librarian of Caldwell County Public Library; “Maestro, Musician or Wannabe? Community Building and Sharing for Symphony Users” by our own Terry W. Brandsma, Information Technology Librarian; and “The Adventures of Loading Authority and Bib Records” with Mary Jane Conger and Marcie Burton, UNCG Catalogers. I attended the latter session; Mary Jane and Marcie did a terrific job, as expected. After a break for refreshments, we went back for more: a Horizon Sharing session with Tommy Joseph and Mike Maynard of the Greensboro Public Library; "Doing the Numbers: Using Sirsi Reports for the NCES, NCHED, and Other Statistical Surveys" moderated by Christine Whittington, Library Director at Greensboro College; and “Methods of Discarding in Sirsi” with Lisa Kushner (Forsyth Public Library), Linda Sparks (Forsyth Public Library), and Cindy Zaruba (UNCG). Since weeding has been a hot topic lately at Jackson Library, I attended the discarding session. Cindy Z. had agreed to a “panel discussion” and adapted beautifully as it became more of a three-part presentation on an unexpectedly complex topic – who knew there were so many ways to discard items from the catalog?

As you can see, this year's Sirsi Users Group meeting was well worth the trip. I'm looking forward to the challenge of helping, as secretary, to organize next year's meeting.

Annual meeting of the Ohio Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Association (OETDA) in Columbus, Ohio

On April 2nd and 3rd, I attended the annual meeting of the Ohio Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Association (OETDA) in lovely Columbus, Ohio. (Photo: Downtown Columbus, from http://commons.wikimedia.org )

Hosted by the Ohio State University, the conference was a veritable feast of information on every aspect of ETDs: cataloging, metadata conversion tools, embargoes, reviewing, preservation plans, repositories, file format standards, and more. (Photo: OSU campus)

Why Ohio? Aside from the fact that I have family there, this conference was worth the trip because Ohio has been a leader in the development of ETD programs and procedures. This leadership is the latest iteration of Ohio’s tradition of innovation in library automation, from the birth of OCLC in the 1960s to the 1996 debut of OhioLINK, the statewide, consortial online catalog.

In 2001 OhioLINK opened its ETD Center, a freely accessible database or shared institutional repository for scholarship from Ohio colleges and universities. The ETD Center utilizes the Open Access Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) to enable retrieval of ETD metadata in any one of three formats: Dublin Core (DC), a customized DC known as ETD Metadata Standard (ETD-MS), and now also MARCXML, the web-transmissible format for MARC catalog records.

The first morning’s program was billed as a “Cataloger’s Showcase.” We heard from Michael Farmer, head of cataloging at Ohio University, who catalogs each of their 300 ETDs per year and estimates he has now done about 5,000 of them. Michael Kreyche and Sevim McCutcheon, Systems Librarian and Catalog Librarian, described Kent State’s ETD cataloging process. Kreyche discussed the OhioLINK ETD MARC Cataloging Interface, which he recently designed to generate MARC records for ETDs. McCutcheon talked us through Kent State’s ETD cataloging process, reminding us that OCLC guidelines say “digital originals should be treated as published items,” so ETDs (unlike their paper predecessors) are considered published items rather than manuscripts. We also heard from Susan Banoun, cataloging head at the University of Cincinnati, and Rocki Strader, who catalogs ETDs at the Ohio State University.

That afternoon, Thomas Dowling talked about developments at the OhioLINK ETD Center, where he is Assistant Director of Library Services. He provided some fascinating statistical tidbits, such as the nations originating the greatest number of downloads (India and China, after the US) and which files are most often or widely downloaded. This year’s “winner” for the most downloads (9633) is “Characterization of Vertical Interconnects in 3-D Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuits (3-D MMIC)” by Qinghua (George) Kang, and with 2788 unique download locations, the most widely accessed ETD is “Flutists’ Family Tree: In Search of the American Flute School” by Demetra Baferos Fair.

The first day’s session concluded with the enthusiastic John Hagen, Manager of West Virginia University’s Institutional Repository, providing updates on the ETD 2009 annual conference of the Networked Digital Libraries of Thesis and Dissertation (NDLTD), which I will attend next week in Pittsburgh, PA. (Photo: downtown Pittsburgh.)

After a great dinner at the Faculty Club, I enjoyed another night’s stay at the luxurious Blackwell Inn, “the only on-campus hotel and conference center at The Ohio State University.”

The following day’s program began with a talk by Kristy Webber, Survey Director at the Survey of Earned Doctorates, with updates and information on data collection and processing issues. She was followed by Angela McCutcheon, Director of ETD at Ohio University, who shared their methods for assuring manuscripts are placed online accurately, reducing rework, and establishing procedures and policies for highly functional ETD operations. The next presenter was a ProQuest/UMI representative who described the process used to handle and review thesis/dissertation documents, and the conference concluded with an Adobe representative who did his utmost to persuade us of our need for the latest version of Acrobat.

Once again, the OETDA conference (my second) provided useful and timely information, great networking, and a generally pleasant experience. If you want to know even more, many presentation materials are available online!

OLAC-MOUG Conference Highlights

The OLAC-MOUG Joint Conference took place in Cleveland, Ohio, September 26-28, 2008. The OnLine Audiovisual Catalogers (OLAC) association meets biennially in various cities. Because of the overlap between the two groups’ areas of focus, the Music OCLC Users Group (MOUG) meets jointly with OLAC every six to eight years or so. This year’s event was well worth the trip, both personally and professionally. I had the privilege of staying with old friends who provided meals, chauffeur service, and good company as well as a bed.

And I enjoyed making new professional contacts, renewing old ones, and attending informative presentations in the beautiful, historic Renaissance Cleveland hotel.

from hotel’s website

Lynne Howarth’s opening keynote speech, Rocking the Metaverse, set the tone for the following discussions of exciting cataloging trends. The fields of audiovisual, music, and online resource cataloging, built on the hoary traditions of the card catalog, are rushing headlong into the digital future. I’ll spare you non-catalogers the details of fixed fields, delimiters, and so on – if you’re interested, you can find handouts for all the workshops and presentations at http://www.notsl.org/olac-moug/Handouts.html. I attended workshops titled Integrating Resources Cataloging, Metadata for Audiovisual Materials and its Role in Digital Projects, Electronic Resources Cataloging, and Advanced Sound Recordings. All of these workshops were excellent, informative and thorough. Although I learned plenty, I was also reassured to find that our practices for these types of resources are mostly up-to-date. Poster session topics included digital project metadata workflows, the use of Macro Express, cataloging for video game collections, RFID implementation, Web 2.0 tools for catalogers, and more. A particularly hot topic was FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) and its incorporation in the elusive RDA (Resource Description and Access), which is the controversial successor to AACR2 cataloging rules and which may (or may not) be coming soon to a library near you. A large group session on the final day offered two speakers with contrasting views on RDA. Glenn Patton, a 25-year veteran of OCLC and liaison to ALA’s ALCTS Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access, shared an insider’s official perspective. He confidently described the history and current status of RDA’s creation along with the timetable for its testing and implementation. Patton was followed by Heidi Hoerman of the School of Library and Information Science at the University of South Carolina. Hoerman, who claims to have “no horse in this race,” explained why she believes RDA is actually destined for a slow death.

Friday night, the conference held a reception at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

I missed the actual reception because I was happy to wander the museum, absorbing the beauty of the works in its collection.

I also missed the tour of the Ingalls Library and Archives, which support and document the museum's current and future collections, research, exhibitions, publications, lectures, programs and activities. Ingalls Library participates with Case Western Reserve University in a joint art history program and maintains collections that include over 100,000 volumes and 500,000 art slides.

I’ll end with an image of my friend Ruth’s gorgeous garden. A few more photos from the trip are available for your viewing pleasure on my Facebook page.