1. A LITA Wiki — to share expertise, what people are working on, what they’re familiar with, share the knowledge of LITA members, what products they work with.
2. It was noted that attendance at regional institutes had dropped. One idea was to plan some around other organizations’ conferences.
3. Webcasting seems like a good way to go — the kind of thing where someone can pay to receive a feed and have other people view/listen to it. This would be especially good for hot topics where quickly-produced, timely coverage is needed.
4. Tap into the educational needs of public library people. If someone started a Public Library Technology IG, they could have a focus for programming, education, liaison, etc. As a follow-up note, Mary Anne Van Cura is now working on this.
5. Use the blog as a vehicle to make LITA-L conversations, announcements more permanent.
6. LITA programming at conferences should have clearer audience indicators — maybe distinctive logos.
7. LITA needs to identify programming gaps from the top down. Our programming comes from the grass roots, which is great, but it means some important topics don’t get covered.
8. LITA does well at serving the library tech world, but we need to become more nimble and effective at reaching out to the tech world — those working in library technology who are not librarians. It was noted that maybe LITA should be LEAD-A.
9. LITA needs to use many forms of communication to find out what people need in the way of educational topics and programming.
10. LITA needs to educate technology beginners as well as advanced people.
11. LITA has 2 audiences (Techies and Money Folks/Administrators) and we have to figure out how to best reach them with our resources. Within ALA, LITA is seen as being for the techies only, ALA membership includes users of technology.
12. LITA should be providing feedback to library schools about what new librarians should know about technology.
13. LITA often has a silo effect with other groups in ALA who explore technology.
14. Members have time and travel fund limitations, we need to use podcasting and online services more for people who cannot attend conferences or relevant sessions at conferences.
15. LITA can teach on the novice level. We need more training type of programming and knowledge tools.
16. More face-to-face events like Happy Hour.
17. LITA is often the membrane that transfers technology to libraries. We should act as a larger buffer that pulls more technology into the library.
18. More plugs. At conferences and National Forum—more electrical outlets and wireless.
19. Communities. LITA should form partnerships with other groups interested in technology.
20. We need ALA to give us the ability to utilize more/better online tools.

Proposed Actions

1) Assessment and Research Task Force. The Board has voted to create an Assessment & Research Task Force to systematically gather member input and data to inform strategic direction and decisions. Members of the task force are currently being appointed.
2) Education Task Force. Create a working group of the 3 committee chairs that deal most with education programming (PPC, Regional Institutes, Education) that would investigate and propose new collaborations/partnerships and models for delivery of programs and identify improvements to current programming. Susan Logue, Regional Institutes Committee Chair, will lead this working group.
a. Investigate possible collaborations with other ALA divisions, EDUCAUSE, etc.
b. Propose online delivery of education programs. (podcasting, webcasting, ALA’s WebCT)
c. Evaluate status of Regional Institutes
3) BIGWIG. Ask BIGWIG to investigate launching a LITA Wiki. The LITA Blog has been great for reporting, but not effective, yet, as a means of collecting feedback.
4) Membership Development Committee. LITA has several membership recruiting and retention opportunities. Audiences we address need to feel that we are delivering programs that meet their needs that make the membership worthwhile.
a. We are losing many members who are moving up into administrative positions to EDUCAUSE. The Assessment and Research TF could help address this issue.
b. How do we attract the non-librarian library technologists or library systems staff?
c. People who attend conferences love the informal face-to-face networking like Happy Hour.
5) PLIG. Mary Taylor has been working on encouraging the creation of a Public Library Interest Group.
6) PPC. Program Planning Committee should look at clearer articulation of the targeted audience for programs and ensuring that programs are filling gaps wherever appropriate.
7) Discussions with ALA. Several items above probably need to be addressed with discussions with ALA units to improve LITA’s voice in these areas and offer LITA’s expertise on initiatives.
a. Discuss how LITA can partner in the technology direction of the organization.
b. Emphasize the importance of technology at conferences, especially wireless.

The program had four significant segments:

• Introductions and Bill Johnson (New Orleans PL Director)




• Andrei Codrescu prepared remarks




• Michael Gorman prepared remarks




• Q & A for both

Part 1: Introductions and Bill Johnson

This important program had more than just a little schizophrenic feel to it. People obviously came to hear big name author and PBS commentator Andrei Codrescu, but his remarks had little to do with the title of the event, or with Michael Gorman’s focus on library education. That was as it should be (I’m sure no one came to hear Codrescu discuss education for librarians), but it divided the program focus quite dramatically creating an event with a marked split personality.

ALA President Michael Gorman led off by introducing his yearlong presidential focus on key issues in library education, expressing his desire to engage in a dialogue on the subject of education for librarianship.

• Are students receiving the skills, knowledge and values they need?
• Is the “L” in LIS receiving the attention it deserves?

Gorman stated that the captioned text from the program would be posted on the ALA website after the conference, but warned that this process takes several weeks. (I could find no information about this on the ALA website on Feb. 1 while editing this posting from my notes.)

C-SPAN’s Book-TV filmed the event for later broadcast. The president’s web page on the ALA site will post the broadcast date when it becomes available.

Note: I can’t even locate an ALA President’s Page for Gorman on the ALA site using either the Google-based search engine, or following the site’s own hierarchy. Under “ALA Governance” one is linked to Gorman’s page at California State University, Fresno, much of which (including Gorman’s list of appearances) doesn’t appear to have been updated since August, 2005. Although the page on Gorman’s Forum on Education for Librarianship has been updated more recently, it contains no information about the Codrescu event.

Gorman recognized his Presidential Advisory Committee members. He then talked about New Orleans and ALA’s decision to honor “our commitment” to hold our next conference there. According to him, this will be the first major national conference held in New Orleans since Katrina.

Gorman introduced Bill Johnson, Director of the New Orleans Public Library, who spoke for a few minutes about the library situation there. He thanked the people of San Antonio and Texas for their response to the Katrina disaster, also people in the library community for bringing the ALA convention to New Orleans. He also expressed thanks to libraries around the country that helped.

What was it [Katrina] like? It was like having a massive heart attack and then having to get up and go to work the next day, said Johnson. Initially they opened 3 libraries with 19 people.

Johnson also stressed that ALA will be the first convention coming into the city, giving the library leverage with the city authorities. However, “You won’t be the first event because we’re going to have Mardi Gras!” said Johnson. “All the bugs will be worked out then. I’d like to see you all there!”

Gorman announced several programs ALA has undertaken to aid libraries in New Orleans including the “adopt a library” program. Thanks to donors, $270,000 has been raised for the Katrina library relief fund. New Orleans conference-goers will be able to volunteer for a full day either before or after the conference to help in rebuilding efforts via the “Libraries Build Communities” program.

Next Gorman requested that the audience stand for a moment of silence honoring the passing of Gerald Hodges. Hodges joined ALA staff in 1989 and served as Director of Member Services. He will be sorely missed, said Gorman.

Finally, Gorman introduced the featured speaker, Andrei Codrescu, mentioning his role as a weekly commentator on NPR’s All Things Considered and as editor of The Exquisite Corpse. Recent efforts include a movie “Road Scholar,” and his latest book New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings from the City, copies of which were available for purchase and signing by the author after the event.

Part 2: Andrei Codrescu

Blogger’s note: There is absolutely no way I can even pretend to do justice to Codrescu’s remarks here. I will only try to provide a small sampling of bons mots for your delectation.

Codrescu began by stating that he wished to add to what his fellow Louisianan (Bill Johnson) had told us, expressing his hope that his audience would all be in New Orleans for ALA. “If anything,” he quipped, “it will be less dangerous, since the criminals have left, gone to other places to practice their craft.”

(C. later took flack over that remark during the Q & A from someone who found it insensitive and insulting to N.O. residents. C. responded that only a small percentage of the N.O. population were criminals, just like everywhere else.)

Codrescu began, as many celebs do, by declaring his affinity for libraries and librarians. Librarians are some of his favorite people, he insisted. In his case, he backed it up by pointing to the prominent role of librarians in his published work. His work is “filled with librarians, keeping the flame of literacy flickering in these pixilated times.” In Casanova in Bohemia, an old man is a librarian. In Wakefield, the protagonist’s daughter (I think it was) is one.

C. hates repeating himself, which is why he’s not an actor. In preparing for this talk, C. had three questions he put to himself:

1. How is a librarian better than a mouse click? A: Not much and much more. A machine doesn’t waste time thinking about the quality of the information it provides.
2. What can library buildings do besides holding books? A: Libraries are cultural centers for those who don’t fall prey to television and video games.

   There are homeless and mentally ill people who think of libraries as their churches.

   In addition to being a poet, a social worker and a nurse, the modern librarian must maintain the library’s collections of esoteric literature.

   Libraries are useful for sheltering great numbers of people, even in a storm that rips the roof right off the poverty in our city.

   Take away the library, and what you have is a mindless shopping mall.

   Caveat: the bookshelves get in the way of things like poetry reading. This sometimes results in wine spillage.

   Libraries should promote circuses and music.

   Libraries should transform themselves into producers of culture, feeding back into Google, instead of turning people into Googleing gophers.

3. What does Freedom to Read mean to ALA? Answer: “I became a writer because I read forbidden books.” He cited an elderly man in Romania who provided all the proscribed works of literature to the younger generation including C. He credited this “unofficial” librarian with his having become a writer.

C. referred to Section 215 of the Patriot Act, and quoted from the Library Bill of Rights.

In what was undoubtedly the most controversial aspect of his speech, C. took ALA to task for not supporting the independent libraries and librarians that are being persecuted in Cuba. When he visited Cuba he was appalled by the lack of books. “Cuba today is the Romania of my growing up,” he said. “I hope the ALA will pass a resolution condemning Castro’s regime for flagrant violations of human rights.”

All three questions resolve into one question: Do we believe we can survive in the 20th century? Can we make a difference to people who forget to read and those who are forbidden to do so?

For the rest of Codrescu’s remarks, you’ll have to wait for the transcript (parts of which at least are apparently available on the ALACOUN list archives, and elsewhere), or wait for the Book-TV broadcast. There are also postings on other blogs, such as the PLA Blog.

Part 3: Michael Gorman

Once C. concluded his talk, Gorman took the podium, and in a particularly schizophrenic moment, read his prepared remarks, which were almost completely unrelated to Codrescu’s, but instead related to the program’s announced title: “The Future of Our Profession: Educating Tomorrow’s Librarians.”

There are 3 ways in which people learn, said Gorman:

1. by experience
2. by listening to people who are wiser and know more than they
3. through interaction with the human record, i.e. by reading

This is a positive and affirming profession, said G.

Historically there have been 3 main reasons for restricting access to the human record:

1. blasphemy
2. indecency
3. sedition

G. spoke against these kinds of restrictions by any government.

Some questions to ponder:

• Can we as ALA define the elements of our profession in the 21st century so that they can be passed down to future generations?
• Are we carrying out the duty of our profession to control our professional education?
• Is ALA sufficiently responsible in relation to its professional education, as regards accreditation, curriculum, etc.?

The stakes are high and failure cannot be contemplated, said G.

Part 4: Q&A with Gorman and Codrescu

Index cards were handed out as people entered the theater. Questions for C or G were written on the cards and passed to Gorman by ALA volunteers.

Gorman began by attempting to respond to Codrescu’s attack on ALA for not denouncing the Cuban gov’t. He talked about the dispute over the activity, and whether the individuals in question are really librarians or not.

G: Having a book in your house and lending it to another person doesn’t mean you’re a librarian.

C: ALA should make a stronger statement of solidarity with these people. Cubans have nothing to read. ALA is already involved in all kinds of politics and should condemn the Cuban gov’t.

C. thinks ALA is one of the most articulate associations in the US in defending freedom of speech and should continue to do so.

A question was asked about China. Is the situation there as extreme as in Cuba? C. said no, because they can’t control the Internet, but that we should condemn restrictions on freedom to read there also.

A question asked if these kinds of political issues should be our [i.e. ALA’s] business. Certainly it’s your business, said C.

C. listed what he described as the two main propaganda points that have come from Cuba, and that used to come from the now defunct Eastern European communist regimes:

• High literacy rates
• Free medical care

Both of these were false he said. Regarding free medical care, yes, it’s free but there are no machines. Basically the level of care was so low as to be non-existent, or useless. Likewise, if there is nothing available to read, literacy rates are meaningless.

A question asked if we should support people who were paid to overthrow the Cuban government. Codrescu: “I think people should overthrow ALL governments.”

Gorman: I can can see the headlines now: “Anarchist Addresses Pinko Communist Librarians.”

Gorman: This will be televised, you know.

Codrescu: Good—we’ll be retiring soon.

Another question asked about the future of printed books. C: Book technology has lasted from the 16th to the 21st centuries. But he essentially said that books will probably go away fairly soon, preserved as historically relevant objects.

C: I may be the last writer.

Someone asked if C. remembered 20 years ago speaking to the NMRT for a small sum. Everyone loved him, so he (the person who arranged for C. to speak) would like to claim responsibility for C’s later success. C. did not remember the speaking engagement, but said that 20 years ago he was just beginning to live in and write about New Orleans.

G. responded to a question about library education by stating that we need at least a 2-year LIS curriculum, maybe more. How can we overcome the financial barriers to have a vibrant profession and a stream of new librarians coming into the profession he asked? You can’t graduate from medical school without a course in anatomy, or from law school without a course in contracts, but you CAN graduate from an LIS degree program without a course in cataloging.

Asked about his latest book, New Orleans, Mon Amour, C. described himself as a dybbuk, a genie or spirit, a local genius who inhabits a place. He stated that he didn’t revisit or revise the older pieces that went into the collection.

New Orleans, he said, has never quite been an American city. First of all, the French built it. New Orleans is characterized by laissez-faire, lassitude, leisure, not efficient things. America doesn’t like New Orleans. The culture of N.O. came from poverty, said C. Do we now recreate that poverty?

A question asked: What are you currently reading? C. cited Michael Harington (according to the posts on the ALACOUN list, he was apparently referring to Donald Harington. )

Gorman said he’d just finished a wonderful book by Francis Wheen: Idiot-Proof, which in the UK was released as How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World. Wheen also wrote a biography of Karl Marx, Gorman noted. Which led to another headline: “Pinko Librarian Praises Commie Author.”

After the session was over, Codrescu signed books in the theater lobby, and then attended the President’s Reception.

Table of Contents

• NISO’s Strategic Direction
• SUSHI
• License Expression Working Group
• RFID
• Web Services and Practices
• ISBN-13 Transition

Yan Han, Systems Librarian at The University of Arizona Libraries, Tucson, AZ and current chair of the LITA Standards IG introduced the program and the first speaker.

Note: LITA will post all presenter PowerPoint files on the LITA website, if they provide them for this purpose. Not all presenters used ppt, however.

Part 1: New Standards Update

NISO’s Strategic Direction

Patricia Stevens, Interim director of NISO, spoke first. She reported that the NISO Board has been involved in strategic planning over the past 18 months or so. As a part of this process, the NISO mission statement was revised as follows: “NISO fosters the development and maintenance of standards that facilitate the creation, persistent management, and effective interchange of information so that it can be trusted for use in research and learning.“

NISO works with intersecting communities of interest. The Mellon Foundation funded a blue-ribbon panel which said that NISO should work strategically rather than reactively. As a result, NISO has developed a strategic map.

Report of the NISO “Blue Ribbon” Strategic Planning Panel Presented to the NISO Board of Directors May 3, 2005

NISO Strategic Direction approved by the NISO Board of Directors, June 30, 2005

NISO works across the full life cycle of a standard from pre-standard activities right through until a standard becomes obsolete. Roy Tennant was commissioned by NISO as an independent agent to review the standards process. His report, released on Dec. 15, 2005, listed key recommendations to the NISO Board: NISO should

• register members in their various areas of interest, and have members only vote on standards that come within the purview of those areas, rather than having all members vote on all standards as they do now, even if they individually aren’t knowledgeable in some areas.
• create a standards path that anyone can follow.
• hold a substantial annual meeting.
• hire a standards coordinator (where will the funding come from?).
• expand its patent policy.

The audience was encouraged to contribute to the NISO strategic planning process by communicating with the Board. Some of Tennant’s recommendations will be voted on by the entire NISO membership.

Pat encouraged interested parties to attend a program from 4-6 on Sunday which will provide an update on other standards.

SUSHI: the Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative

Tim Jewell, Head of Collection Management Services, the University of Washington, spoke on SUSHI: the Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative and the work of the NISO SUSHI Working Group. Providing a brief historical backdrop, he described the Digital Library Federation (DLF) Electronic Resource Management Initiative (ERMI) which sought to define what electronic resource management systems ought to do. ERMI didn’t tackle statistics because COUNTER was working on that and they wished to avoid duplication of effort. ERMI II involves license expression and data dictionary revision.

Tim also provided a brief recap of COUNTER and its Release 2 of the code of practice for journals and databases. Release 2 has four required reports as well as optional ones that focus on journals. There are 3 reports defined for databases, and 5 for books and reference works.

Some of the problems involved with usage data include

• The expanding scope of e-resources
• The resulting proliferation of data
• COUNTER is helpful, but
• There is a lack of standardized containers
• It is time consuming to pull the data together from the many different sources

Tim listed the members of the working group, both the founding members, and the newer members. He presented a slide which provided a graphical illustration of how SUSHI should change the current manual collection of usage data into an automated process. For some of the technical details, he handed off to another member of the SUSHI working group, Ted Fons of Innovative Interfaces.

Ted mentioned that a small group of stakeholders has developed a client-server model in which a client can request information from the server (the database aggregator or producer, or publisher). COUNTER’s XML schema wraps the SUSHI data. The goal is to get the data into the ERM. SOAP is involved because these are designed as web services. They kept it simple and light-weight.

There is lots of information on the SUSHI web site. The Journal Report 1 prototype is finished. A security wrapper will be added, and they plan to test with live data soon.

Next steps include:

• Publicize the effort, and push for its adoption by data providers
• Write a NISO “draft standard for trial use”
• Hold a stakeholder meeting in the spring
• Gather input, revise the draft into a real standard
• Expand the effort to encompass other COUNTER reports

License Expression Working Group

The next speaker was Nathan Robertson of the Maryland School of Law. He talked about the work of the License Expression Working Group. The Publishers Licensing Society (PLS), DLF and NISO are cosponsors. The goal is to create a way to communicate license information back and forth. Currently you have to manually encode license terms into your ERM. They are trying to automate this process. You could then, for example, send encoded versions back and forth during license negotiations. You could use the process to communicate with an open link resolver, to communicate license terms to the end user. They are working with ONIX on encoding license values.

Robertson wished to make it abundantly clear that the working group is NOT building a rights expression language that could be used for purposes of DRM. Those systems begin with NO rights, and then only allow those specific rights that the provider wishes to allow. They are NOT DOING THAT.

They are only attempting to express exactly what the licenses say. Silence [in regards to a given right or area] means absolutely nothing either positively or negatively. Their system cannot be used to enable machine language type enforcement.

Their system includes rights statements in ONIX format. It covers ERMI and other things, but will be more granular than ERMI. The working group is evaluating existing licenses and identifying ERMI and other elements and deciding which need to be rigidly encoded in XML and which can be handled by notes.

RFID standards and Issues Progress Report

The next speaker was Dr. Vinod Chachra, CEO VTLS Inc and Chairman of NISO’s working group on RFID standards.

The objective of the working group is to look at RFID standards as used in the United States in regard to the following issues:

1. Interoperability
2. Isolation
3. Privacy concerns
4. Cost considerations (affordability)

1. Interoperability: the goal would be to have an RFID tag for a book in one library work in another library, regardless of the vendor(s) or ILS involved.
2. Isolation: application isolation is what they’re interested in; library tags should not set off alarms in the grocery or video store, or vice versa. Application “family” identifiers are used to tell the software what kind of place (library, grocery store, pharmacy) the tags belong to. Further, there are 2 zones: public and private. ISO groups are setting up 2 family identifiers for libraries, one for items that are checked out, and one for those that are not, since it is important to know which class any given item is in. Another way of handling this piece is to use a specific bit setting instead of separate family identifiers. But if some vendors do it one way, some the other, then there goes your interoperability.
3. Privacy concerns: what content should be on the RFID tag, or on the bar code? Some privacy concerns are clearly exaggerated; others are real. RFID tags operating at 13.5 mhz can only be read 2-4 inches away from the item, so the idea that someone walking down the street can determine what book you’re reading is exaggerated, and not realistic. The privacy concerns that are valid may apply equally to today’s bar codes, but just haven’t been that much of a concern in the past. The heightened privacy concerns surrounding RFID have made issues that were ignored in the past seemingly more relevant today, and has forced RFID developers to address concerns that have been ignored with bar codes. The working group is working to identify the REAL privacy issues and suggest solutions.
4. Cost considerations: some groups want more information stored on the RFID tag, such as location info, which would make automatic sorting mechanisms more feasible, and which could aid inventory functions; determining which books are misshelved, etc. The group is looking at which data elements to include while keeping cost down. The more data elements, the more costly the system. The group is attempting to work out compromises in order to make a recommendation.

The Europeans have already done a lot of work in this area. Rather than reinvent the wheel, the group is taking the Danish model and using it as a basis for their work.

Web Services and Practices

Candy Zemon, Senior Product Strategist at Polaris Library Systems and a member of the NISO Web Services and Practices Working Group, spoke about web services interoperability. She defined the problem:

• The goal is cross-vendor cross-language cross-platform limited purpose communication
• There are a large variety of web-based and non-web-based methods
• Do we need standards?
• Is there time to develop them?

Zemon described VIEWS (Vendor Initiative for Enabling Web Services) which did a lot of work in 2004-5. See www.views-consortia.org. The NISO Web Services and Practices (WSP) Working Group kind of took over this effort from VIEWS. There are both a working group and an interest group (which is larger). The missions are different. NISO is trying to define best practices. Whether or not to produce a standard is not a done deal:

• These services develop rapidly and readily
• W3C is also working on it
• These services are very narrow individually and can be used for lots of stuff

The WSP is charged with producing a best practices document which will

• ID web services used in the library world
• Group these services into categories
• Define best practices for them

See http://www.niso.org/committees/Services/Services_comm.html#charge

Part 2: ISBN-13 Transition

The second section of the program was devoted to the ISBN-13 transition, and featured three speakers.

ISBN-13 ILS Challenges

Theodore “Ted” Fons, Senior Product Manager at Innovative spoke on ISBN-13 ILS challenges.

The ISBN number is scheduled to change from the current 10-digit format to a 13-digit format on Jan. 1, 2007. Fons addressed challenges for

1. Cataloging
• Indexing
• User searching
• Matching

For cataloging, you have to deal with two kinds of numbers: the old 10-digit ISBNs and the new 13-digit ones. For previously published numbers, you calculate the 13-digit number from the 10-digit one.

2. Acquisitions
3. EDI
• EDIFACT
• BISAC: no further work is being done on BISAC (fixed digit)
4. Timing of interface changes with book vendors
5. Documentation
• Industry guides
• Vendor-provided documentation

ISBN-13 implementations should observe this rule: the burden is always on the system to interpret the number that the user supplies, and respond appropriately, regardless of whether the supplied number is 10 or 13 digits.

Timing is important: the transition period is 1/1/2006 to 12/31/2006. In EDIFACT messages, PIA segments carry 10-digit numbers, LIN segments carry 13-digit numbers. During the transition period, systems should read either type of segment; after the sunrise date, only LIN segments should be read.

For additional information, Google ISBN-13. Some useful sources include:

• EDITEUR
• International ISBN Standard Revision
• BISG has lots of information, and they do webinars
• ISBN-13 for Dummies was recommended and can be downloaded in PDF format

ISBN-13 and LC

David Williamson, a Cataloging Automation Specialist at the Library of Congress, spoke on the topic of ISBN-13 and LC. LC has developed an implementation plan for ISBN-13 . OCLC’s implementation date was Oct. 1, 2004. LC has been recording ISBNs in pairs for the same manifestation, using separate 020 fields (because subfield a is not a repeatable field). The 13-digit ISBN first, followed by the 10-digit one.

For CIP data they made some exceptions. They provide a maximum of 2 pairs per CIP record; this relates to multi-volume works which would have multiple pairs. All the ISBNs would appear in the cataloging record, just not in the CIP data, as publishers don’t have space for long CIP records.

Back cover EANs (bar code UPC numbers) will not be treated as ISBNs by LC, even though the number could be an ISBN.

LC has put up a handy-dandy ISBN converter which converts in both directions, with or without hyphens.

Currently LC is processing 2000 ISBN-13s per month. 25% of CIP records now include ISBN-13s. It has been an easy translation at LC. They’ve encountered no real problems. The biggest problem has been partners that can’t handle the 13-digit ISBNs, which leads to work-arounds.

Send questions about the presentation to dawi@loc.gov (the speaker’s e-mail address).

ISBN-13 and OCLC

The final speaker was Glenn Patton, Director of the OCLC WorldCat Management Division. OCLC moved WorldCat onto a new platform during the transition period which complicated issues. They didn’t want to waste coding on the old system that was about to become obsolete. Some of Patton’s points:

• The ISBN is one of the highest-used searches in WorldCat
• It is a primary matching point for
1. record loading,
2. with vendors,
3. for linking to evaluative content (book covers, tables of content, etc.) in FirstSearch WorldCat.

OCLC’s interim solution (until they moved to the new platform):

• They told member libraries to put ISBN-13s in the 024 field for now, and code them as EANs (this posed problems for LC, as they were putting them in 020)
• They converted incoming 13s to 024
• They recommended searching using the “standard number” field, not ISBN fields

OCLC’s plans include:

• They may convert all WorldCat 10-digit ISBNs to 13-digit ones, or they may convert only the more recent ones
• They will inform members on how and when to get their interim records replaced with final corrected ones

Some of what will happen with an approved dues increase:

ALA Staffing improvements

-filling the staff positions that have been “held open” — some of which are development positions tasked with raising non-dues revenue
-Administrivia (salaries, etc for ALA staff – not a whole lot of this, though)

Several identified improvements that require $3,000 – $7,000 each (which have been needed for a long time but were impossible due to lack of funds)

-website and http://communities.ala.org improvements
-streamlining several member benefits processes
-better Round Table and Divisional support
-improved legislative advocacy support (the research portions of this are mostly grant funded, btw)

Currently ALA generates $4 for every $1 generated from dues, plans for some revenue from the raised dues are targeted at generating an additional $2 for each extra $1 from dues.

My impressions for what *won’t* happen if we choose to not increase dues:

Important pieces of ALA 2010, which was developed with input from a large majority of ALA members will fail, possibly spectacularly – depending on which fail.

-Development will fall off
-Legislative Advocacy (including research as the ground support withers) will suffer
-Intra-Association communication will not systematically improve

In short, from my exalted view (not *in* my exalted view -grin-) of the larger ALA organization on the Membership Committee, the organization needs a dues increase (in my apparently unpopular opinion, we are not making a large enough increase and we should just do it rather than attempt to ease the pain over a few years).

I urge you to review the ALA 2010 site. Read what we, the members, told ALA staff they ought to work toward for us. There should be a stream of Keith Fiels making the presentation he made to many ALA and Divisional Committee meetings at MidWinter at some point in the near future.

For the record I understand, and sympathize with many, arguments put forward opposing this increase. However, we are at a critical juncture – both within and outside our profession and our professional association. If we fail to stand for the broad ideals which underpin what we do (and live) we will have done a vast disservice to our future.

If you’re wondering, I will be voting for the increase – it is a minor burden on my home budget (one extra family dinner out per year for three years), but I feel we cannot afford to mark time and lose the ground we have maintained and gained in recent years.

Panel participants included Jonathan Band, Esq., a copyright attorney; Liz Bishoff, Executive Director, Colorado Digitization Project; and, Dan Greenstein, University Librarian for Systemwide Planning and the California Digital Library.

Clifford Lynch gave a short introductory statement laying out the context for the discussion at hand: large-scale digitzation and its implications for libraries and other cultural memory institutions, such as museums, historical societies, and even public broadcasting. The Google program has captured the most press recently, but it is not the first and it won’t be the last large-scale digitization program. Since 1971, Project Gutenberg has been making out-of-copyright works of literature and social science available online. It has been going systematically for 30+ years, with tens of thousands of works. A great deal of digitization is going on within libraries as well. Major examples are American Memory and NYPL’s image library as well as numerous projects that go on with grant funding or local funding. We are moving into a period where massive collections will be available. How do these relate to library collections? What does it mean to make the material available? What is appropriate to make available, beyond just in/out of copyright? Example of criteria for American Memory. What technically does it mean to make these things available?

The three panelists then shared short statements on the subject at hand.

Jonathan Band:
Jonathan’s goal was to lay out four different approaches to the problem of copyright and mass digitization that various projects have adopted. The first is to digitize only works in the public domain, for example, the Microsoft deal with the British Library to digitize 100,000 books. This is a valid approach, but limited, since only about 20% of the world’s books are now public domain, and that number is not likely to grow anytime in the near future. The copyright terms keep getting extended, perhaps indefinitely, and there is no way to know when a large portion of these will become available under public domain.

Another approach is to digitize works with the permission of authors and to use tools such as creative commons licensing. Google and Amazon both do this with their publisher programs.

The third approach is best exemplified by Google’s library project, and is the most controversial. This approach relies on the Fair Use argument to assert that the copying of entire works is legal since only “snippets” are ever displayed to users.

The fourth approach tries to take up the question of orphaned works. These are the works that are technically still within copyright, but whose owners cannot be located for whatever reason. These tend to be works of high cultural but low economic value. The ALA Copyright Office is expected to come out with proposal on how to deal with orphaned works at the end of this month. Will deliver recommendation, which hopefully will go to legislation. The recommendation would be that we should encourage the use and reuse of these works of cultural value that have limited economic value. There would potentially be some kind of agreement in the legislation that if the owner reappeared and claimed their copyright, the library could take the items down with no damages owed (currently minimum fines for copyright infringement could run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars for, say, a collection of photographs from the 1930s, a major disincentive to a historical society or other institution thinking of digitizing them).

Liz Bishoff:
Liz wanted to turn attention not only to the legal and ethical issues, but to the pragmantic issues of mass digitization. We have moved into a transition time in which the question is no longer “can we digitize on a massive scale,” but can we do it on a massive scale that is economical. We have proven that it can be done technically. Now we have to find ways of working with publishers, as well as ways of building interfaces to make the collections usable.

In a landscape of digitization that includes parties outside of cultural heritage institutions, we need to build on our expertise to provide what other institutions and corporations cannot. We need to bring our archives and special collections out of the catacombs where we have preserved them for 100 years to our users. Staff need to be retrained, redirected. We need new funding and digital assets management to deliver these collections.

Liz pointed out that these archival collections must be drawn together with the products being created by students and faculty, by the members of the community, to establish open access strategies and build institutional repositories. We can’t believe that the library catalog is the gateway to all knowledge anymore.

As for what this means to ALA, the association needs to address this issue in education above all. The digital library curriculum needs to be taken up in earnest in our graduate programs–no one is talking about it. We also need legislation at the federal level that will make mass digitization by cultural institutions easier. Most of all, ALA needs to develop policy statements on these issues so that we do not have to leave it to the President to make statements that are his own “personal view and not the association’s.”

Dan Greenstein:
Dan rounded off the panel by taking up the question of what all this means to libraries. He made the case that libraries need to be much smarter about how we manage our collections and how we allocate resources in light of the potential of mass digital collections. His points were strong and well-reasoned. While not many librarians would argue with his points, we have yet to come close to putting any of it into practice.

We need to stop renting content (Dan wanted to be clear that he was purposely using the term “renting” instead of “licensing”, since “license” gives some impression that we own the content) to realize substantial annual savings. There are major opportunities in collection management if we do this right. OCLC indicates that over 26 million items are held by 10 institutions or more. At the 8 University of California government repositories, 93% of government content is redundant. This could represent huge savings in shelf space and money. Looking at the early JSTOR titles alone (23,000 copies), the UC libraries hold 5 copies of each between them. This small collection alone could represent 3.8 million dollars in savings.

Digitally reformatting collections means we can do less “care and feeding” of physical collections and realize substantial savings. The goal of keeping large physical collections on site has always been access, but with digital copies we can save huge amounts of money that we pour into the housing, climage control, etc, needed to provide physical access. We also get the opportunity to provide richer service environments to our users by taking content that OCA, Google, and others are putting out there and building a customized layer of services on top of it for our users.

Dan identified four major issues for libraries in approaching mass digitization: 1) Massively digitized collections need to exist at a third party repository in perpetuity. It’s not good enough for vendors or institutions to say, “we don’t preserve it, we just host it.” Individual libraries should not be in the business of massive data archiving; our expertise should be building services for delivering the data to users. 2) Collections need to be built in a way that supports repurposing the presentation and configuration for local communities. 3) The terms and conditions of access in formatting and developing collections needs to be transparent. As an institution building services on top of data, I need to know the underpinnings, the standards, etc. 4) Money. Do we really need new money? If we’re not pouring money into online rental, if we’re saving on collection management, if we don’t have to support the backend digital management process, we can make a fundamental change in how we allocate our resources.

The program closed with a round of Q&A, which, though stimulating, I will spare the blog since this post is growing long.

Plans for the 2006 Annual Conference program were reviewed. This program will be in debate format. Program title: “The Ultimate Debate: Who Controls the Future of Search?” The roster of panelists is complete: Roy Tennant, moderator, with Stephen Abrams and Joe Janes, debaters.

The IG has coordinated its plans with the LITA Program Planning Committee (PPC), which has been very helpful in shaping the program. Holly Yu, Vice-Chair, will attend the PPC meeting at this conference to give the committee an update on our plans.

The debate will be guided by a series of questions posted to the panelists by the moderator. The panel will prepare the questions beforehand. It was suggested that these questions be posted on the LITA blog in advance of the conference program.

Given the potential appeal of this program to people outside of LITA, it was suggested that we promote the program to such ALA groups as RUSA and the Instruction Section of ACRL. It was also suggested that we distribute flyers publicizing this interest group at the program.

The attendees discussed possible program topics for the 2007 ALA Annual Conference. A number of potential topics were proposed. Should the interest group decide to sponsor a program in 2007, a topic must be identified at the 2006 Annual Conference.

The Chair and Vice-Chair asked the attendees to consider a possible name change for this interest group. The phrase “Internet Resources” has positive and negative aspects. On the positive side, it can encompass a wide range of program topics and might ensure longevity for this group. On the negative side, its general nature does not attract people interested in specific topics such as blogs, electronic resources management, etc.

After some discussion, it was decided to change the name of this group to the Internet Resources and Services Interest Group. The term “Services” can encompass Web services as well as a range of library services delivered over the Web. Matt Calsada, Interest Group Coordinator, was in attendance and agreed to bring this proposal forward to the LITA office. The group agreed that it would be a good idea to post this meeting summary on the LITA blog as well as the IG’s page on the LITA site. The Chair agreed to follow up.

The floor was opened to volunteers for the next Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect of this interest group. Two individuals came forward. It was agreed that one individual will become chair if another LITA position for which he applied does not materialize. If the position does comes through, the other individual will step forward as chair.

Four committee members and Valerie Emonds-Merritt, ALA staff liaison, attended the meeting. Debra Kurtz, Committee Chair, explained the selection procedures, with the additional notes from the previous chair, Adriene Lim, and Valerie. Debra distributed selection criteria, which are grouped into four categories. She also passed a timetable for this year’s process. Deadline for the applications is March 1st. The Committee members will start receiving application materials in March and will conduct the selection via e-mail and conference calls. The winner will be announced prior to ALA Annual.

Margaret Kelly from Bylaws and Organization spoke briefly about IG renewals. IG’s now have a new renewal form. Any IG that is up for renewal should have already been contacted by Margaret. Matt Calsada, the IG Coordinator will be posting a list to the LITA website of IG’s and their respective renewal years after the midwinter meeting.

Gail Clement from the Program Planning Committee distributed a handy guide to LITA programming which will be posted to the IG’s web page under Resources for IG Chairs. Gail urged chairs to discuss their future plans for managed discussions with the PPC. The only way to have something tracked in the conference handbook is by going to the PPC to discuss your discussion. The PPC can also help with fine tuning a program or discussion and also aid in finding guest speakers.

Laura Cohen, IG Web Coordinator, passed around contact information for getting content posted to the LITA website. If IG’s want to post future agenda’s, program handouts or other items, they should contact Laura. Laura will be serving as IG Web Coordinator through Annual 2006.

Holley Long, liaison to ALCTS NRMIG (Networked Resources and Metadata Interest Group), discussed possible partnership opportunities. If any IG Chair thinks they would like to co-sponsor a program or discussion they should contact Holley. Holley will also help to promote IG’s in the NRMIG meetings.

Clara Ruttenberg, Vice-Chair of BIGWIG, announced that IG’s are welcome to use the LITA Blog and should contact Michelle Boule if they need an account.

There was a discussion about notification of a new IG approval. Kitty Canepi, Vice-Chair of Electronic Resource Management, said they were not officially notified that their IG was approved. They did not find out until they saw it on the LITA Website. Matt Calsada will follow up with LITA Board members to find out where that road block is occurring and see if we can get a more efficient way of notifying new IG Chairs that their petition for a new IG was approved by the LITA Board.

Some IG Chairs mentioned that they were not on the COMCHAIR list. Matt will follow up with LITA staff to see what can be done about this problem. In the mean time, agenda’s for the IG Chairs meeting will be disseminated to a wider audience to make sure chairs know about the meeting.

Antony Brewerton from Oxford Brookes University Library, UK
(not only does he have a delightful accent, but he has a great sense of humor and keeps the audience laughing)

We need to change the perspective of libraries and reach people from different backgrounds at a local level.

Antony spends a lot of time looking at particular comments in the OCLC study to highlight the fact that people think libraries are only about books and they may not use our other resources because of that belief.

Libraries are different things to different people and we should market to them all accordingly. He then says something that seems to be the advice of the day: We should be customer oriented not product oriented.

At Oxford Brookes, they have a team in the library whose primary function is marketing. Their marketing was informaed by their strategic documents and the four essentials of marketing by M.J.Baker: start with the customer, have a long run perspective, wield full use of resources, and be innovative.

Antony then went on to show the audience the most brilliant marketing run in a library that I have ever seen. All of their posters and ads are based on a plain white poster with a bright picture of an item in the middle, a short slogan underneath the picture, and a few smaller lines after that.

For example: Their signs to discourage cell phone use in the library had a picture of a vinyl record with the words “hanging on the telephone” (Blondie) beneath the record.

Get rid of jargon and bring them in with slogans that solve their problems – “come for an hour and improve your grades!”

One of their most popular campaigns involved posters with various pictures of mixed drinks.
A picture of a beer said “get ahead”
A shot said “fancy a swift one?”
They printed coasters (beer mats) that promote the URL – satisfy your thirst for knowledge with the library

Another campaign involved the slogan “finding information can be a piece of cake” with pictures of cakes, bars, and cookies.

With $650 to promote the library’s URL, they used the slogan “Be Inspired,” put it on posters with an apple, they gave away apples around campus, and handed out apple stickers with the library URL on them. Over the next few months, their website went from 65,192 hits a month to 228,201.

After you develop a campaign that works, promote your success to your local and library community. Write articles and give talks to get people thinking about libraries in different ways.

Behold the rise of the second renaissance generation – the RenGen. They live in a knowledge economy. There is a formal delivery system for the knowledge of culture and there is also an informal system that is growing faster than libraries. The RenGen ignore the formal system on a daily basis. They have created their own information system. They are generation that does not see libraries as essential.

The preference for learning is visual and narrative for the RenGen and they do not get these things from libraries. In 2003, 23% of all mall shoppers browsed compared to 37% in 2002 – PEOPLE DO NOT LIKE TO BROWSE. For some people being well informed is social currency and libraries can give this to them.

Do we have something special for them?
We are local, engaging, and have the right price. You cannot defend a brand by promoting your features. You have to get emotional. What is at the heart of why people use libraries?
Ex. FedEx they are in the “peace of mind” business – delivering clean service – clean is part of the brand.

Does the experience match the brand?

How do we tell people about libraries?
Libraries are in the desire/fulfillment business. A brand is a relationship, the look and feel of things. The RenGen wants things labeled, not a closet of stuff. They are too busy to browse.

3 simple acts that can make a difference: a friendly frontline, work the floor (seek people out in the stacks), and improve physical space.

For more information and presentation notes, visit litlamp.com – click on the green room (left hand side)
username/password: library

What can you do that people desire that is deliverable and distinctive?

Convenience – too many choices and not enough time
brands include 7-11, Netflix, Goole, Amazon, Southwest Airlines
Libraries should be concerned about Netflix, because they are teaching people that they do not have to wait, they can keep things as long as they want, and they can get it delivered to their door. The expectation level is going up.

Community – grassroots economy
The most effective brands hit somewhere on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Libraries should view ourselves less as a provider and more as a host. You could offer comfortable seating, internet access, educational classes, beverages, and the idea of “stay awhile.”
community brands: wikipedia

Control – empowerment, people want to do it themselves
We do things online that we used to need a professional to do: travel reservations, home improvement, and stock trading. Our users want this professional joband they like it as long as they are having fun.
Brands: Home Depot (you can do it, we can help)

Choice – people want options
We love choices but they are overwhelming so we outsource to experts or get recommendations. People are willing to pay for convenience and choice. Free only matters if you can not afford it to pay for the service.
Brands: Google, eBay, Amazon, Netflix

Experience – people want to be wowed
WOM (word of mouth)– Being buzz worthy is often the most valuable tool. The internet can not commoditize experience because experience is sensory: sounds, smell, taste, sight, service
Brands: Starbucks, Dave and Busters, Borders (creates an experience around books), Niketown

Trendy – the greatest brands are trendy

The title implies that this session will be about libraries as industry, as business, and from the beginning, Cathy De Rosa makes it clear that this is the intent. I like that they do not shy away from discussing libraries as business.

Omar Wasow – Library 2.0?
“Libraries must both inform and transform.”

There is a break in perceptions from what librarians think and what our users think.
The brand “library” stands for books, but our facilities are high on the list of what users think about. They are unhappy with the surroundings of the library: parking, signage, building rude staff, etc. The library is not just about technology; it is about the experience of the library.

How do libraries go from service to transformation? The business of libraries is to change people. Libraries feel elevated. It is a place to think. Many libraries have stairs at the beginning, signifying that the user is about to enter into an elevating experience.

Libraries are challenged by the quality of experience in the industries around us. They are arranged to do material management and not as a reading experience or a place for elevating oneself. We have to get better at merchandising what we do. Libraries should offer tools to help people have transformative experiences

Mentioned Emory podcasting prof & Boilercast at Purdue.
FRBR-ized displays
Draw knowledge from external (non-library) vendors for easeof applications?

<5% library virtual users start at a library catalog – user defined pathways need to be explored, modeled, and incorporated into search structure

Changing focus from “search” to “find” Ambient Findability – book with which to follow up

PodCasting/VlogCasting

Switch from DVD/VHS to streaming & synchronous/asynchronous downloads – which can be placed in ot linked form online exhanced classes or placed in syllabi.

Search interfaces, NCSU, Grokker, 3D/spatial representation of search results

[Re-phrasing]ETIG/LITA is starting to be more aware of PLA technology discussions[/re-phrasing]
PLA is starting technology discussions – there is not much, if any, LITA involvement – we need to get into and help inform their discussions. Infiltrate all the ALA silos.

While we ate, we got to view a photo montage of past involved LITA members who hadn’t ponied up when the LITA Office offered to destroy all negatives.

Pat Mullin, LITA President, addressed a filled room (we know the value of free food) to note the launch of the LITA 40th Anniversary Celebration and to present a plaque to Pat Harris in recognition of her long stint of excellent service at NISO. She’s retiring after 20 years, and those of us who have worked with her can hardly imagine information standards work without her. I bet she has no trouble imagining it at all.

Bonnie Postlethwaite, President-Elect, took over to provide a brief history of LITA’s educational program, in preparation for a facilitated discussion of how LITA can better meet members’ educational needs in future. This is the part of the strategic plan the Board chose to focus on in the regular Midwinter Town Meeting.

Aaron Cohen and his son Alex Cohen of Aaron Cohen Associates facilitated the discussion. Each table formed a de facto small group for discussion — we were asked to discuss what the current situation is and what the opportunities are for LITA in the next few years as far as education is concerned.

Some of the ideas that came up:
A LITA Wiki — to share expertise, what people are working on, what they’re familiar with, share the knowledge of LITA members, what products they work with.
It was noted that attendance at regional institutes had dropped. One idea was to plan some around other organizations’ conferences.
Webcasting seems like a good way to go — the kind of thing where someone can pay to receive a feed and have other people view/listen to it. This would be especially good for hot topics where quickly-produced, timely coverage is needed.
Tap into the educational needs of public library people. If someone started a Public Library Technology IG, they could have a focus for programming, education, liaison, etc. As a follow-up note, Mary Anne Van Cura is now working on this; contact her if you’re interested.
Use the blog as a vehicle to make LITA-L conversations, announcements more permanent. (BIGWIG is already working on this.)
LITA programming at conferences should have clearer audience indicators — maybe distinctive logos.
LITA needs to identify programming gaps from the top down. Our programming comes from the grass roots, which is great, but it means some important topics don’t get covered.
LITA does well at serving the library tech world, but we need to become more nimble and effective at reaching out to the tech world — those working in library technology who are not librarians. It was noted that maybe LITA should be LEAD-A. (Get it? Get it? Aw, c’mon, it’s cute.)
LITA needs to use many forms of communication to find out what people need in the way of educational topics.
LITA needs to educate technology beginners as well as advanced people.
LITA should be providing feedback to library schools about what new librarians should know about technology.

More will appear on the blog and elsewhere about this, but if you want to add an idea, feel free to comment!

With a little bit of time left after the business meeting, the discussion moved to the juicer topic: Top Technology Trends. Here’s a quick overview of what was discussed:

1. It’s nice to experiment with high tech, but low tech can be good, too. Simple answers are good. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. (Okay, that really came from the discussion of the event, but it played into some of the TTT discussion as well.)

2. Is the promise of FRBR going to flesh out? Are we going to start seeing it for our libraries soon? The discussion pointed out that FRBR assumes that records have been prepared for FRBR. OCLC does have an algorithm that approximates that for the database, but cataloging would still need to be done differently to take advantage of FRBR. The Trendsters discussed how librarians often make things complex that are simple. For example, we were using expensive chat software when all we needed was IM.

Andrew Pace said that one of his maxims is, “never change data to fix what’s a display problem.” He suggested using an algorithm to fix the display problem; there’s no need to change the data. Tom Wilson said that his proverb is, “sometimes you don’t have the time to wait until there’s consensus for how to do things and a product comes along.” One of the problems is that we always assume that the library community needs to invent items for the library community. But really, there are other industries that create some things that do what we’re looking for in the library catalog. If we look into these other options we can save limited resources. He used Endeca as an example of that. It’s not a library technology; it’s technology that is being used for library purposes.

3. How can we make it easier to get materials to users? People are looking for simplest way to do things, why should we fight that reality? The discussion around this topic centered on InterLibrary Loan. Why not shorten the trajectory? Maybe we could set up ILL for users straight from WorldCat. ILL costs are going up right now, some express concern that this step would make it more expensive. The group discussed the trend to buy less and borrow more, but some asked why not have ILL act more like circulation? Collection management from different libraries could work together to develop collections across campuses or systems to facilitate ILL and save costs of cataloging, shelf space, etc. However, it was also pointed out that some studies have compared costs of ILL to running down the street to buy extra copies of the latest best seller and found that ILL might not always save money. A few libraries have started a direct to buy program. If someone wants something on ILL, and it meets a certain number of criteria, they just buy the book and lend it out.

4. It’s not a trend so much, but there was a discussion of taking the user’s cost into consideration as well. The user pays in time. We force them to wait for ILL or to learn library lingo. How come we don’t just ask them what they need and when and we figure out how to get it to them in the most cost-effective way? The user shouldn’t need to know there’s an ILL department, just that they can get books. They shouldn’t need to know the vendor of a database; they should just be able to get useful articles. People start with Google and find things that are already paid for by their library. How can we fit into how people work? Another strand of this is that we won’t get everyone into the library for library instruction when their cultural context tells them to go online; we need to make finding information online easier.

5. Other ideas were mentioned in brief:

• considering using web services for micropayments
• building more services on top of the existing digital collections
• xml web services
• mentioned in both halves of the meeting: the trend of users in the participatory web and how blogs, chat, etc. are good for that

The agenda for the Top Tech Trends meeting this midwinter was “more of a traditional business meeting than a discussion of trends.” The Top Tech Trends committee members and experts (or “Trendsters” as they came to be called) discussed the exciting increase in participation in the TTT events over the last few years, and evaluated how to make sure these events don’t lose due to their size.

Karen Schneider posted some of her take-away points from the meeting, and I’m doing the same here.

Top Technology Trends events (for those, like me, who haven’t been able to make them) have centered around experts who identify some trends to examine, discuss, and then they open the floor for audience questions. The audience has grown significantly over the last few years. This growth has led to a loss of “discussion” and now sometimes comes across with a talking-heads feel. The Trendsters talk more, the audience less. The group agreed that it would be better to have a more interactive environment and brainstormed how to work on this.

Everyone agreed that there is a need for a strong moderator who could enforce a time limit and synthesize discussion. This super-facilitator would be able to facilitate discussion with the panel as well as the audience.

Seating was also discussed. People really liked the idea of the panel sitting in either a circle with concentric circles for audience members or in a semi-circle to encourage more discussion. The hope is that this would allow for more discussion among members, but also bring back some of the participatory feel for the audience.

Everyone agreed that the audience questions are an important part of TTT, but that they take a lot of time. One proposal was for the audience members to write comments down on a provided card, give them to designated people, and the questions could be combined if similar and chosen to fit the flow of the program. The moderator could then read the questions to the panel.

Karen Schneider recommended another option: a backchannel method that she’s at other conferences. A projected screen could show chat that audience &/or panel members could participate in. This way people could ask questions as they’re most appropriate or add to the discussion of they want. Participation could even occur from people outside the room. Of course, if this method is used, the panel couldn’t be expected to watch it all the time, as they’ll be busy following their fellow Trendster discussion. Discussion of this method revolved around first trying it out at next midwinter to see if it would work for TTT purposes.

The blog was discussed as a way to continue the discussion. Trendsters could post to the blog ahead of time and that would give the moderator content from which to pull questions. If members were reading the blog, they would have context for the discussion ahead of time. The blog is also nice because people can post comments and become part of the conversation. It was recommended that there be an informal poll to see how many audience members are also members of LITA and who checks the blog. This would give the committeee more input for how to use the blog in future TTT discussions (and at the very least, raise awareness of it).

The last part of the TTT event that was discussed was the tenure for being an expert. Wouldn’t it be cool to see “guest” experts, or experts who cycle in once every few years? It’d be good for members to see that they, too, could be a Trendster. It’s also good for the expert/Trendster to know that there are people working on the issues, even when they’re not there. The guest Trendster might be someone outside the library community, too. Maybe even someone from the industry dealing with youth and mobile technology.

The meeting proceeded with brief introductions [Blogger comment – I may not have heard some of the names or institutions correctly – humblest apologies]. Sue Thompson – Chair, Carlos Rodriguez – Vice Chair, George (maybe Byron?) – Temple University, Frank – Northwestern, Allen – Purdue University, Scott – Eastern Michigan, Lynn – Appalachian State University, Richard – UT Southwestern (blogger), Scott -University of Colorado at Boulder, Mandi – University of Delaware, Sara – University of Oregon, Paul – University of Arizona Health Sciences Library, Phyllis – University of Michigan, Jim – a Library Technology Consultant, Mark – VP of Small Company, Alice – Cataloger @ NLM, Michelle – Anne Arundel CC, Patricia – Columbia, Howard – Brooklyn College, Bill – NYU, Mary Ann – ? public library, – John – Virginia Commonwealth Libraries.

The next section of our meeting was HoLTalk and the discussion question was “What technologies do library system departments typically support and how do we manage them?” The topic was introduced by Sue Thompson. Another attendee suggested that perhaps we can spend our HoLTalk discussion time by answering some of the questions that came up in the introductions. This was received well all around so we proceeded down that path.

We started with desktop management issues. A few libraries use Centurion Guard to protect their desktops. DeepFreeze is another option. You can also simply re-image a PC if it’s not easily fixed. Some of our libraries don’t lock staff PC’s down with security. Wyse or Citrix thin clients were suggested as security options.

One attendee mentioned that they track licensing using AuditWizard. Another asked “Why is there a licensing issue anyway? Usually you need a registration key or to pay for the software after 30 days.” Another attendee explained that it’s because people bring their home copies into work. Nobody has actually been audited by the software police [yet].

Every system department represented supports desktop software. A few only support library-centric desktop software. One library mentioned KeyServer for licensing. Staff are responsible for what’s on their PC’s. They and we and our institutions can be held legally liable for unlicensed software.

Brooklyn College has a faculty technology training area led by a non-student technical person. Some libraries use Para-technical professionals to assist with faculty training. There is also a faculty training area at NYU.

What about print charging? Is it really cost effective? One suggestion was to encourage patrons to use email. In one library, printing went down 60% after print charging was implemented. Duplex printing was used by several libraries. There were several comments about print charging dramatically cutting down on waste.

Anger and frustration has been growing with one attendee’s system department. Library staff ask “Can you do this project?” If it’s not a priority, it may never get done. They developed a project plan methodology. However, he doesn’t like the project police mentality. But he doesn’t like a free form system either. Michigan uses a collaborative system of project management. They publish their project list. The system is very open and projects are discussed quite a bit in committees. Another library does collaborative prioritizing for projects, bug fixes, etc. also.

What help desk packages are being used? FootPrints software is used at several libraries. Remedy and HelpStar were a couple of other help desk packages mentioned. They are quite high-end and can be hard to learn and use.

What are the specific projects that we are working on? How do they get prioritized? One library systems department tries to do projects and tasks with the greatest impact. Another attendee mentioned that projects get prioritized within the context of the strategic plan. One library usually tries to follow up on new, hot things no matter how busy they might be.

A LITA Business section of the meeting followed. LITA membership is down. Can we open this interest group up to non-LITA members? Can we open it to non-ALA members? In another (LITA, non-HoLT) meeting, one Co-Chair scared off a non-LITA member yesterday one attendee reported.

HoLT IG business was the final section of the meeting. Our Annual Program will be “Core Competencies in Library Technology: What IT is and Where IT’s going.” The program is currently listed at 8:00 AM to12:00 PM on Sunday. We agreed upon a 2 hour presentation followed by discussion and a business meeting. The target audience is library managers and also anybody interested in staff technical training issues. The size of the potential audience was estimated at 200. Finally, we discussed some potential publicity venues such as listservs, the LITA blog, and email announcements.

Carlos Rodriguez is the incoming Chair. We need candidates for Vice Chair for the next cycle. Michelle Robertson submitted her name for consideration. Please forward ideas for programs, publications, etc. for next year to Carlos.

Since we ran out of time, other items will be discussed on our listserv. Member names will be published on our HoLT IG website unless Sue is directed otherwise (by individual attendees). Some pictures from the meeting will follow.

A & A Cohen did a nice job facilitating our table discussions.

“My” table’s notes:
[edit - adding]Ranti Junus[/edit], Philip Sherman, Joe Ford, Michael Bolam, Maurice York, Susan Coleman, Aaron Dobbs (any errors or oversights are my own, my tablemates were excellent and prolific. These are my table speaker notes which do not reflect the details of our intra-table discussion.

Topics brainstormed: LITA Education mission

1. Given / Environmental scan
- There are 2 general audiences for LITA educational programs, which can be described as “techies/users” or tech-oriented implementers and end-result users
- We also identified an important group that doesn’t really fit in either (and generally do not participate/attend LITA programs on their own) group: the money holders or decision makers (sharp pencil people?)

2. Seeking
- Need to better address each audience with an eye toward not oversimplification for a tech-savvy attendee and not over-jargonizing for the new / novice / user experience focused rather than nuts and bolts focused attendee.

3. Define
- Specify target audiences in program description (LITA logo for the ‘advanced’ and ALA general logo for ‘regular’ level programs?)

4. Construct
- Get out into the non-LITA communities (in ALA and in Real Life)
- Use existing institutional resources (academic libraries, Hies, etc.) plus grants perhaps (ALA-based resources are next to impossible at current funding levels – the dues increase is a separate issue, of course)
- Use more online delivery, continue Regionals, continue with ALA meeting & conference programs (podcast the audio and perhaps slides from the programs – ALA Conference Services no longer records programs at conferences & meetings.
- Infiltrate the other ALA Divisions to become better aware of technology mis-perceptions and clarifications needed.
- Limitations:
- - Money, organization/de-duplication of effort, awareness of external organization needs

The real question boils down to whether ALA members can give up three lattes next year to help ALA catch up after a decade of no dues increases. Many of us have informally voiced our concern that ALA needs to make a strong case for what we won’t be able to afford if the dues increase is defeated. ALA has trimmed and cut and scraped away at its structure to the point where there ain’t nowhere else to cut. Other revenue streams–primarily publications and conferences–have become increasingly slender as other costs rise, and as we know from Toronto (and New Orleans may remind us again) that some of the things that can compromise our revenue stream are unknown, unpredictable, and out of our control.

LITA Board has gone on record as stating that it the dues increase should happen at once, not be phased in, and I wish we had made that point much earlier, because phasing in the dues may not be good for divisions. But that’s not on the table (the official answer, when I asked why the dues increase was being phased in, was literally “That’s the way we did it last time”). What IS on the table is a too-small, phased-in increase that if it’s turned down will have bad repercussions for ALA.

I hope someone at 50 East Huron spells out just what will–or more accurately, won’t–happen if the members don’t support the dues increase. In the meantime, ask yourself where you’d be if your organization had been flat-funded for a decade.

Thanks for all the great ideas, and don’t let time pass before you blog your notes from varied venues. If you’re interested in presenting at the program, call one of us or comment on this post.

In the second Sunday session of MARBI, the agenda order of the discussion papers was reversed.

Discussion Paper No. 2006-DP03 (http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2006/2006-dp03.html): Incorporation of former headings into MARC 21 authority records. Sally McCallum introduced the paper and gave the background to it. She reported that historic practice was that former headings were given in a note, but many had felt that it should be in more parseable form (“Duh,” commented my neighbor, a sentiment I echo).

Several MARBIes contributed comments initially, endorsing the notion that it was important to include enough information to process on the heading, but pointing out additional problems with some of the proposed solutions. Sherman Clarke asked for a tighter definition of “former heading” since there were several examples that might qualify as such in some local situations and have deleterious effects on the shared body of authorities maintained for the use of all.

Bill Jones pointed out an unstated assumption in the report that a cancelled record or deleted heading is actually removed from the file, which is not necessarily true for the shared file, where such records can be retrieved. Adam Schiff wondered whether the proposal might include changed or deleted scope notes, though there were no reasons in those cases for use of 4XX.

Mary Ann O’Daniel from FCLA reported that they kept a file of deleted and obsolete headings for the use of catalogers, and she suggested that a reference to a deleted record be retained. Stephen Hearn pointed out that the recent changes to the Indian headings resulted in some application instructions on old headings being deleted and important information lost.

One of the members of the committee responsible for the report pointed out that in their discussions they identified situations when a 4XX solution might result in unintended results, such as when a conflict in names is resolved by adding information to one name and not another—in such cases a 4XX for the former heading would conflict with a still valid heading for the other name.

John Attig agreed that it was important to note whether processing is possible using a particular 4XX but the problem is not solved by using a 6XX, and additional instruction in a $w might be necessary to prevent bad outcomes.

There was general consensus that there should be another discussion paper looking at the 4XX possibilities explicitly, and suggest options for resolving the identified problems.

Discussion Paper No. 2006-DP01 (http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2006/2006-dp01.html): Recording geographic coordinates in the MARC 21 Authority Format.
As anyone who is still breathing can attest, geo-referenced information is the hot new thing. Google Maps has undoubtedly been responsible for some of the current buzz, but catalogs with functionality based on understanding of geographic information have been around for more than a decade. That said, anyone outside of the specialist map and geography community who looks at the implications of adding information like this can’t help but be a bit overwhelmed. I recall vividly the MARBI Meeting some years ago when many similar capabilities were added to MARC, and wondering at the time whether the efforts would pan out.

That said, there seemed to be general agreement that attempts to accomplish this should be undertaken—or, at least, those that felt differently remained silent. As in most things, the devil is in the details, and how to implement the recording of such data in MARC records seems fairly daunting. John Attig suggested plaintively that the experts just tell us what we should do (the alternative, one presumed, would be an endless late Sunday afternoon discussion on relentlessly technical matters in which only a few in the room would be conversant, much less awake) and that we would move ahead.

It all seemed to boil down to coordinates. Old desires to record scale were dismissed as useless, but clearly there was no feeling on the part of the experts present that coordinate systems were currently at rest (nor would they tend to follow the laws of inertia in future)—but this need not concern the MARBIes, apparently. “Give us a bucket, and let us put data there,” seemed to be the suggestion by the expert contingent.

Most of this data will reside, at least at first, in authority files, and there seemed to be some interest in applying as well notions of temporality, to support the delivery of historic data. Also, since data might be supplied in bulk in some instances, $2 for source was explicitly requested. Inevitably, given the hour, the question of defining what planet the coordinates might apply to was undertaken, and one wag (who shall remain nameless for his own safety) inquired what planet would be used for California?

The discussion will continue, no doubt, with the probability of an additional discussion paper on adding feature information to the records as well.

As a last item, Sally reported on 2006-04 (on FRBR authority models) that appeared and then disappeared from the agenda. The disappearance occurred because it was felt to be premature—suggested experimentation had not occurred or had not been reported.

Adjourned early again–Martha, you’re a marvel!

The meeting started out with an update on RDA by Jennifer Bowen and the beginning of a slightly scary discussion about how MARC might need to respond to the [r]evolution in content description and access. I won’t include much detail on the general points—they’re covered elsewhere and I’m saving my energy for issues later on today. She described the focus groups that had been held so far where cataloging educators and catalogers had an opportunity to look at what ALA Publications was thinking about web-based products for RDA.

A couple of hot-button issues came up in the report, among them ISBD punctuation and GMD (general material designations). Comments on part I are due by Feb. 7, and comment periods for the subsequent parts come along briskly. Jennifer brought up the possibility of a small group getting together to map RDA data elements to MARC. If a group could be brought together within the next couple of months, Jennifer could report that to the JSC for their next meeting in April. Also on the table are general possibilities for MARBI participating in implementation planning.

John Attig reacted to the report as a MARBI member who has been involved as well in the RDA development. He felt that the invitation to collaborate on the mapping would be very positive, if for no other reason than that examples could be coded properly in MARC (though Jennifer pointed out that there’s not been a decision yet on whether that is desirable). Rebecca Guenther asked how much change in MARC might be anticipated or accepted—Jennifer thought that wouldn’t really be known until after the JSC April meeting.

John A. opined that the separation from description and presentation made implementation decisions very important, and that the impact of these should be explored at the earliest opportunity—he mentioned ISBD punctuation as one example. Rich Greene pointed out that, based on the experience with the transition to AACR2, there might be quite a bit of lead time needed by utilities and others, which doesn’t seem to be reflected in the current timeline. Jennifer agreed that training and planning for transition was important, but that the planning for doing so had just begun.

Proposal No. 2006-05 (http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2006/2006-05.html): Changes to holdings data fields to accommodate ONIX for Serials in the MARC 21 Holdings Format. Linda Miller of LC introduced the proposal, describing the work of ONIX Joint Working Party (JWP) to create the Serials Release Notification (SRN), designed to allow information on serials releases to move from publishers to vendors of various kinds, and ultimately, to libraries.

The important parts of the proposal include the SRN notion of “named unit” which is not the same as the MARC 844, and the disconnect between what SRN and MARC holdings do with caption abbreviations. There had been discussions on the list about the ambiguity of the “named unit” designation, and Linda recounted the trouble the committee had in coming up with nomenclature, and agreed that there was something to be desired. There was some discussion about where communities of practice have done somewhat different things with named units in 844 and enumeration, but no one seemed particularly uncomfortable with that.

Another issue was the repeatability of $2, which was intended to be repeatable but was not so in the proposal (an oversight, apparently).

Rather than vote on this proposal, it was decided to go on to the discussion paper and see if it affected the perception of what should be done with the proposal.

Discussion Paper No. 2006-DP05 (http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2006/2006-dp05.html): Indicating coverage dates for indexes in the MARC 21 Holdings Format. Linda Miller again presented the issues, which revolve around the perennial problem of divergent coverage and publication dates particularly for things like indexes. MARC Holdings doesn’t handle the distinction between the two dates well, but it’s critical in determining how to process SRN data in the real world. Martha Yee commented that there was a lot of support on the list for making this distinction, but because there are so few unreserved alphabetic subfields left, there are real concerns about the best way forward.

John Attig pointed out that the specific information necessary only for indexes is coverage, while publication date is important for all kinds of other things. Because coverage is what is needed by the public, in contrast to publication dates, which are used primarily by acquisitions staff and their systems of prediction, its coverage that is generally used.

Much discussion of the few possibilities continued for some time. Sally McCallum, in a rare demonstration of clutching at straws, asked plaintively whether anyone was distributing SRNs yet and whether we really had any evidence that they would want to distribute both dates, but the group didn’t seem to want to join her in wishful thinking, so problem solving continued.

Ultimately, Martha intervened and suggested that instead of attempting to solve all SRN issues at once, that we take the low road and solve those we could and leave the others for another day. The proposal (2006-05) passed with relief.

Discussion Paper No. 2006-DP02 (http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2006/2006-dp02.html): Addition of coded value to 008 for content alerts in the MARC 21 Bibliographic format. Alan Danskin introduced the proposal, which arose out of some work in the UK on materials for users with disabilities. John Attig pointed out that the proposal was very narrowly scoped but addressed a general issue that the MARBIes needed to consider (though he hoped that some better handle than “content alert” could be used). Rich Greene from OCLC sent up a few red flags about the awful possibilities represented by this proposal, particularly as it used up valuable fixed field real estate (and, it should be noted, real estate that had been used for something else before, which is generally avoided for new MARBI development, sort of like brownfields)

Gary Smith from OCLC pointed out that though fixed fields are marginally better for processing they’re also harder to get right, and he advocated that we “stop using the technology of the sixties” to accomplish our aims (to which statement one of my Peanut Gallery companions said, “Amen, brother.”)

Business Meeting: the first item was a proposed program for 2007 (or a sneak program for MidWinter) based on the work of Bill Moen’s MARC Content Designation Utilization work reported on yesterday. The usual hot potato conversation ensued, with no one jumping up to volunteer to do program planning (a black hole for the time and patience-challenged). (MFIG Chair beware—the hot potato is headed your way!)

Sally McCallum reported on updates and changes to documentation, the most interesting piece is the move toward PDF versions of things (to replace paper documentation at some point in the future, most likely). History information might move online only, though firm decisions on how various products might change are not yet made. All hands agreed that it would be good to have PDF in advance of print availability, though MARC changes have long been keyed to the emergence of documentation.

Rebecca Guenther reported that there was a new code coming into the MARC language codes from ISO, to designate “no linguistic content” (zxx). Sally also reported that there would be a new MODS release, with documentation enhanced by the DLF Aquifer group working with MODS.

A representative of the Deutsche Bibliothek reported on the implementation of MARC 21 in Germany and Austria. A translation of MARC 21 into German is coming, also mapping of legacy instance data, which is scheduled for completion in 2007. As in the earlier harmonization efforts with CANMARC and UKMARC, some proposals for additions to MARC 21 might be anticipated at the end of the process. Apparently the dogged German practice of cataloging each volume of multivolume works will continue, and they intend not to use 505 tables of contents, which will, of course, make the integration they seem to desire a bit problematic in some cases.

[To be continued …]

See the end of the post for the attendees list — maybe you know someone on the committee you can give direct input to. Maybe you’ve got some ideas and you’d like to be on this committee — if so, contact me, Pat Ensor (ensorp@uhd.edu), or Bonnie Postlethwaite.

Meeting notes:
ALA Membership Committee did support a resolution in recognition of Gerald Hodges upon his death. It also voted in favor of the ALA dues raise.

From August 2005 to November 2005, LITA membership is down 1.55%. ALA overall is up, as are PLA and the child/youth-oriented divisions.

We don’t know the specifics of who dropped, who’s new, etc. within LITA, so we should find this out. Discussion focused on how we increase membership. If we want to attract a growing sector, people in library technology who are not librarians, we may need to go beyond the Forum and make the LITA part of ALA conferences much more technology-oriented. It was pointed out that people who go to the Forum used to automatically get LITA membership if they weren’t already members, but we stopped doing this. What is in LITA for them besides the Forum, if anything? Can we get people to join at the Forum? Most academic technology people go to EDUCAUSE, but public library tech people aren’t especially served by anything.

Incentives for joining — it’s hard to balance what’s open and what’s available only to members. We need to market more. What goes out to new members? Mary Taylor joined the meeting and said we do send mailings to new members, continuing members, dropping members, and reinstated members. The committee asked to see the specific reasons why people dropped. It was mentioned that we probably need to start pointing out the blog to new members, with the RSS feed.

Mary distributed a membership report — there has been a 7.21% decrease year over year. This was expected to some extent with the dues increase. The committee asked to get more of a breakdown of characteristics of personal members.

LITA needs to focus in more on who it is we’re trying to recruit. The trend in the last few years or so has been to position ourselves as serving the more advanced technology needs of people in libraries, and to also make it clear we’re interested in cutting edge technology and we provide a place for people to talk about that. Membership will be the topic of discussion at the Saturday Board meeting at Annual Conference.

NMRT — There is more we could do to connect more closely with them. pat will work more with this.
Forum membership focus — Christina agreed to coordinate an effort in this area — perhaps handouts, a “booth,” a meeting point.
EDUCAUSE — We have tried to market through this conference in the past, but this is still a possible interest since that’s where many of the people we’re looking for are concentrated. Maybe a social event would be a good venue. Susan Hollar will look into this. Bonnie is pursuing more formal education programs, etc.
LITA booth at Annual — This needs to be organized. Jennifer Weintraub agreed to do this.
Annual Conference — The committee agreed to make a block of events at Annual Conference. Saturday, we’ll have Open House 4 to 5:30, then Happy Hour 5:30 to 7:30. Navjit and pat will work on having a coordinated presence at the Open House where we distribute information and are available for questions about how to get the most out of your LITA membership, including information about what you can do if you can’t attend all conferences. This might grow into a Midwinter managed discussion. Navjit will work on a happy hour location when we know where the Open House will be.

Online community as a draw — this is now in place and it should gradually become of more interest. The current association discussion on education is vitally important to drawing and keeping new members.

We also want to have more drawing points for people in technology in public libraries. It was pointed out that one of the great strengths of LITA is that interest groups can be self-organizing. What if someone already in LITA who is interested in providing a meeting point for public library people just started an Interest Group on public library technology? This would give something sollid for people to do if they were interested in joining. Bonnie will look into public library members of LITA who might be interested in this.

Attendees:
Kari Swanson, Brad Eden, Howard Spivak, Christina Biles, Jane Kunstler, Peggy Steele, Navjit Brar, Pat Ensor, Bonnie Postlethwaite, Mary Taylor, Susan Hollar, Jennifer Weintraub

As a third-term Councilor, I’ve spent a lot of time observing ALA ED Keith Fiels interacting with people. I really admire his patience, his listening skills, and his sense of humor. He’s also helped push ALA–the Queen Mary of slow-moving barges–toward newer technologies.

Which brings me to a continuing trend: if you blog it, they will come. This is increasingly a L2, social-software, MySpace, put-our-lives-out-there-for-discussion world–particularly among younger people, as Pew recently emphasized–and I’m so comfortable with Trends as a kind of group project that it would now seem strange to me to not engage in a trends discussion with the wise voices of the biblioblogosphere and beyond.

If there is one meta-trend I am seeing right now, it is this: librarians are getting frisky. We’re talking back, questioning authority, and in some cases taking names and kicking booty, as Andrew Pace did recently with the NCSU catalog (Andrew, can we call your OPAC “Miss Piggy”?) and as the UC system did with its must-read, put-this-under-your-pillow, OMG-this-is-hot BSTF Report. It’s no longer enough to say “the ILS sucks.” It’s “The ILS sucks and this is what we’re doing about it.” It’s not just saying we need to do less cataloging and more tagging, but actually following through with the transformations. It’s saying we need to stop treating library services like a monopoly operation and act as if we have competitors–as indeed we do, as many funding battles in this country have demonstrated. It’s taking the issues to the road, as is happening with Library 2.0.

Regarding the L2 discussions, I heard a Trendster say “Don’t just talk, do something.” But for many librarians, talking–and talking convincingly–is essential, because most librarians who “get it” need to persuade stakeholders to direct precious resources (which for many LITA members means you, Gentle Reader) to implementing newer technologies. L2 is very convenient shorthand language that introduces old wine in new bottles. I remember the years of work many of us devoted to explaining to traditional librarians that the Internet was indeed important. (A low point in my personal efforts happened in the late 1990s, when a librarian told me he was waiting for that Internet thing to blow over.) I wish we had generated more language and more ideas far earlier in the game.

So while I admit that the first time I heard Library 2.0 I had almost the same reaction as I did to Web 2.0–Oh oh! Does this mean I need to install a new TCP-IP stack?–once I clued in that L2 was about wrenching the library out of its self-absorbed, ILS-centric model and toward modernized services, I came to enjoy the focus, and the sheer friskiness, of the many great discussions we’re having about improving the user’s library experience. It’s fun to poke humorously at the ubiquity of the phrase (rivalling “truthiness” in its airplay in library circles), but it doesn’t make the thinking behind L2 less valid or the need less urgent.

On the political fronts, NSA letters for search logs seem to be de rigeur these days. But we’re frisky there, as well. ALA showed unusually good humor in responding to the snarling criticisms of our opposition to the Patriot Act, and somewhere, librarian John Doe is going to bat for our freedom in the digital world.

My only negative trend (if you ignore the sad disrepair of the OpenURL movement, which will need repackaging if it’s going to catch on) is that libraries continue to be glacially slow in adopting new technologies. We know it’s not just money; attitude and openness (as well as sheer knowledge) play roles as well. Let’s hope that some of the friskiness of the techno-vanguard sifts into libraries at large.

A blog person bracelet, courtesy of OCLC.

The MFIG meeting, as is its custom, was focused on a particular issue for its meeting: “Authorities: What’s the Future?” The speaker, Mary Mastraccio, Cataloging and Authorities Manager, MARCIVE, Inc., approached her topic with the assumption that her audience was varied, and aimed at the middle of the range. Sadly, the first thing I noticed about her presentation was the use of an odd Powerpoint template with a moving object in the background—the epitome of useless animation. She used various other PowerPoint animation techniques further on, none of which enhanced her presentation.

I was initially confused by her use of the term “database design” which seemed to be used in a very idiosyncratic way—maybe “data design” would have been a better term.
I was disappointed some other ways: she spent too much time ‘resolving’ a vaguely defined, and, in my opinion, a false conflict between “natural” and “structured” approaches—really, is there any argument anymore about this? I surely hope not! Haven’t we been using structured data for decades? Maybe she meant something I didn’t understand by this (always a possibility).

She managed to include some good points about the emerging ‘tagging’ community (a.k.a. folksonomies) but inexplicably ignored totally all the work being done in the space between MARC and tagging—the incredibly important knowledge organization work being done outside of libraries. Many of her comments suggested that she was unaware of this work, and how it should affect the planning going on in library authorities for the future. In quoting some of the ‘social taggers’ who have recently been discovering the utility of agreement on common terms, she suggested that they should learn from us the best way to do this. Maybe it wasn’t just me that thought this was more than a bit condescending?

The speaker presented a fairly extensive demonstration of issues around publisher names, which focused almost entirely on problems of variant transcription, but suggested some very MARC-centric approaches to ‘fixing’ the problem. I wondered why the approach used by archivists—who are perhaps the experts on the management of organizational entity names and have a very different approach—was not mentioned?

The discussion was interesting, however, and ranged from traditional-type cataloger questions to some definitely more informed and interesting comments (am I biased? Yep). I made one comment on the discussion going on in digital library circles about the impossibility of linking resources to creators via authority records, given that the authority record is not the person. One audience member made an intriguing leap, suggesting that the relationship between the person and the authority record was somewhat analogous to that between a work and manifestation.

I think I’d be panicking if I thought that the level of understanding and analysis evidenced by this well-intentioned speaker was truly driving the discussion at the planning level for the use of authority data in the future, but I’m an optimist at heart. Perhaps not enough of one to continue to pay minimal attention to what’s going on in this area, but that’s a thought for another day.

Here we all sit, the MARBIes at the big horseshoe table arrangement, the Peanut Gallery ranged along each long side, preparing for yet another round of stimulating conversation about MARC. Martha Yee is doing her maiden voyage as MARBI Chair—as an old hand, she’s well aware of the prickly personalities she’ll need to herd and the likely byways to steer them away from.

The usual business stuff lead off, introductions, minutes approval, etc. Bill Moen of the University of North Texas was first on the agenda, reporting on the MARC Content Designation Utilization Project (IMLS funded). The project grew out of a previous project on Z39.50 interoperability, which looked primarily at indexing, but questions arose about what was actually used in the records, versus what might be ideal from an indexing point of view. The new project is now analyzing 56 million records from WorldCat, looking at the MARC record as an artifact of the whole cataloging enterprise. One goal is to provide an empirical base for discussion about what actually occurs in catalog records, and what catalogers do about access issues in the real world. Is there a core set of elements that seem to be most used in records, and has the use of MARC changed over time? They are also developing a methodological approach to get at the decision making process that catalogers use.

They’ve just released a statistical analysis in Dec. (8 million from LC; 48 million from other contributors), available from the Project website at: http://www.mcdu.unt.edu. The project is also looking at FRBR user tasks, and what data in the records support those activities, as well as what is missing that should support those activities. They plan to use Delsey’s mapping of elements to evaluate user tasks.

Proposal 2006-01 (http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2006/2006-01.html): Changes to accommodate IAML form/genre codes in field 047 in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format. This proposal was a follow up on a discussion held last June, for which the music cataloging community has made some choices of options and further recommendations. From the point of view of anyone who isn’t a music cataloger, this proposal is only of interest insofar as it highlights the issues of expansion of code use in MARC beyond those MARC-centric codes previously preferred. This is no small thing, since machine parsing of both legacy and prospective data requires that backwards compatibility of former strategies for fixed fields and variable fields be maintained—this sometimes requires the use of various “tricks” to tell parsers not to look ‘here’ but ‘there’ instead. The bibliographic utility representatives and various others who worry about how machines look at data (as distinguished from the cataloging types who care more about how catalogers will create the data) understandably would prefer that there be a minimum number of techniques for this, and that the choices follow some principle other than “don’t trust the data” (thanks to Gary Smith for that one!) The proposal passed with some small-ish revisions (see the official notes—whenever they’re distributed–for details) but a mind-numbing discussion of coding implications followed for several minutes more.

Proposal 2006-03 (http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2006/2006-03.html): Standardized terminology for access restrictions in field 506 of the MARC21 Bibliographic Format. Robin Wendler introduced this proposal, representing the proposers, the DLF/OCLC Digital Registry Working Group. They would like to change the 506 from an exclusively free text field to one that supports controlled vocabulary or free text. Additional additions include a subfield code to indicate whether restrictions are being expressed or no restrictions as well as adding 506 to the Holdings Format as well as the bib format (Robin pointed out, rightly, that this is where it really belongs anyway).

A question was raised by Sherman Clarke, who wanted to know why codes weren’t used instead of text. Robin answered that ease of use was the primary reason behind the decision for text over codes. The proposal was passed handily.

Proposal 2006-02 (http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2006/2006-02.html) Adding subfields for relator terms to X11 fields in the Bibliographic and Authority formats. The essential problem here is to accommodate Relator terms without making a mess by reusing an obsolete code (long a MARBI no-no). Sally McCallum mentioned that there was a suggestion that RDA might change the environment sufficiently that the proposal should not move forward at this point, though this comforting thought was later disputed. Sherman Clarke described the necessity as “a Rosemary Woods situation” where you kind of have to twist yourself around to make the case for it.

Joe Altimus of RLG spoke up against the re-use (the second option), even though all agree that there will be a relatively small number of records affected. He pointed out that one would never know when all old data was effectively “cleansed” and re-use would not be ambiguous. Gary Smith supported that point of view strongly. Marc Truitt proposed that Option 2 be taken off the table, and the committee supported that, effectively passing the proposal with Option 1, creation of a new subfield.

Proposal 2006-04 (http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2006/2006-04.html): Technique for conversion of Unicode to MARC-8. Unicode issues are the ultimate geek issue for MARBI—one that silences the catalogers pretty thoroughly as a rule. There had been considerable discussion on the list of the proposal, with some rough consensus on the best possibilities. Given my rather rudimentary understanding of Unicode translation issues, I refer interested parties to the official notes for the real story (or ask Gary Smith, who’s the real expert on MARBI for these issues). At the end of the discussion, Gary opined that we would know a great deal more about these issues by the Summer meetings, as the utilities are just now getting data with UTF-8, and learning much about the nitty-gritty of translation.

The meeting was adjourned early—thank you Martha! [Time for lunch, which we figured wasn’t possible under the new, diet-friendly schedule.]

Anybody can come to these, you know. And they put the agenda up in advance. To some extent, I would have just come out of habit — walk without thinking on the Saturday morning of an ALA conference, and here I am — six years’ habit dies hard. But I also knew they would be having a Board discussion, this time on LITA’s education function. And I knew they would have refreshments. What’s not to like?

By the way, the topic for discussion at Annual Conference Board I (June 24) will be membership. So you can’t complain now that you didn’t have enough advance notice.

One of the items on the agenda was LITA’s views on the proposed RFID Guidelines. The Executive Committee are concerned about the tone of the current proposal — that it goes so far in privacy protection that it may not be very realistic. The chair of Technology and Access is going to attend the session seeking feedback on the guidelines and convey LITA concerns if it seems appropriate in the context of the session.

Pat Mullin began the education discussion by noting that the involvement of LITA members who don’t attend ALA conferences is a big concern of the association, and education is a major function in that regard.

Tara Dirst, Education Committee Chair; Susan Logue, Regional Institutes Committee Chair; and Dave Bretthauer, Program Planning Committee Chair were all asked to attend the Board meeting education discussion, and they began by reporting on their committee’s current activities.

Tara noted that a major project of the Education Committee is the Clearinghouse for Professional Development. They’ve begun to include helpful Web sites on current topics, as well as available courses, etc.

Susan reported that RIC has been discussing the fact that attendance at regional institutes has seen a downturn; some institutes have had to be cancelled. Identifying new topics is a big issue. Even apparent hot-topic institutes that were planned for New York didn’t “make.” The new Web usability institute that was done as a Midwinter function was well-attended, and the feedback from attendees has been good so far. There is perhaps more need for the various program planning committees to exchange information on an ongoing basis.

The topic of online learning arose during this report. Several divisions have begun to mount online courses. The larger divisions with more resources are going outside ALA to mount these. However, ALA does have WebCT that can be used to mount courses. This may be what RUSA is using — they’re a division comparable to ours, and they’ve started to advertise courses. The learning curve for designing a course and mounting it is not inconsequential, but this is an area we need to explore further.

Back to F2F regional institutes: we license and cosponsor many institutes; that often determines where they’re held. Licensed institutes are great because an organization can pay a flat rate ($5500 currently) and have whoever they want attend. This is the least work for LITA, and many organizations have found this a good way to go. It was also noted that marketing for regional institutes could probably be improved.

Dave noted that the Program Planning Committee looks at Annual (which is its programming bailiwick) as a way to reach all members of ALA, as opposed to just LITA members. He has encouraged more interest groups to mount formal programs, because they attract more people to LITA. He noted that one interesting idea that has come up is podcasting.

This led to a discussion of the taping of Top Tech Trends that took place at Annual last year. This was a learning experience where some issues arose — it’s a panel program, but there was only one camera. Also, not all participants realized that their mikes were on and being recorded — I found this being mentioned as an issue very intriguing. You’re going to go listen to it now, aren’t you? People noted that audio was actually sufficient for this particular program.

On the other hand, the speaker at the President’s Program used lots of visuals, and they wouldn’t have come across very well. There are solutions to this, though. There was some discussion of the question of whether putting up more stuff from the conferences might affect attendance at them, but the consensus was that people don’t decide to attend or not attend based on the availability of presentation material online.

Another question asked: does anyone in LITA think first of the topics of interest, then consider what the best form is to convey it in? That is, should it be a program, a preconference, a publication, some combination of the above? Is there anyone who identifies what’s missing?

What is that LITA can do uniquely in the education area? It can’t do everything well, so what does it have to offer that can’t be found elsewhere? Two good trends that came up — offering advanced programming in technology (which is already the focus of the Forum) and being agile enough to program quickly about hot technology topics. There are some things that perhaps belong in other divisions, and maybe we should let those go.

It was noted that one increasingly successful education channel seems to be free, short Webcasts, and longer paid ones that are priced per reception point, where you can invite as many people to view it as you want in one room (or whatever). These are usually archived for later viewing, too. Lots of enthusiasm for this as a concept — but it was time for discussion to end. This just whets our appetites for the LITA Town Meeting, right?

The afternoon was divided into three sessions, each with its own presenter and panel of reactors. Audience comments were heard after each session. Questions addressed were:
1st session: What is librarianship and what does a librarian need to know?
2nd session: How do we translate the field of librarianship into curricular terms?
3rd session: What is ALA’s role in library education?

Gorman began by voicing his concern that faculty are not adhering to ALA accreditation standards, which has resulted in a diminution of library education and research. He believes that librarians should be educating librarians and that LIS curriculums that do have that orientation are a disservice to the profession. Later, a number of prominent librarians and library school faculty countered that the universe of information professionals has broadened, and that non-library employers offer interesting and lucrative job opportunities.

Common themes were repeated throughout the afternoon: the idea that students should be required to take a core curriculum that reflects library practice in a changing world; the importance for instilling in students a commitment to and passion for the profession and its values; the criticality of students, faculty and library practitioners appreciating that they serve their communities and a broader society. Carol Brey-Casiano, spoke of the connection between literacy and economic and workforce development and the role that libraries can play in increasing literacy in a multilingual, multicultural country. Note: in spite of the presence of many Canadians on the podium there was a definite focus on the United States.

Madeleine Lefebvre and others talked about the need for educating students with basic management skills (e.g. research and data analysis, advocacy, fundraising, community-building) as well as skills and qualities such as creativity, collaboration, communication, responsiveness, decision-making, problem-solving, leadership, and risk-taking. Richard AmRhein called for a better understanding of intellectual property issues because they confront all librarians in all types of libraries today

Recruitment into library schools and the profession was highlighted by reactor Karen Adams and affirmed by many in the audience who spoke of the need for diversity on many levels, including librarians of color and those with disabilities.

This forum is just the beginning of an important discussion for our profession. Already there is an announcement of another Library Education Forum (http://libraryeducationforum.info/) to be held in New York City on Saturday, March 11. Let the forums begin.

Yes, face-to-face is invaluable (it’s no fun drinking alone), but face-to-face is also much more pleasant when you’re ready to do the kind of discussion that needs to take place among wetware in a conference room. Among other questions I have about divisions that function the Olde Waye is why they would inflict this on themselves? Is pain really better than change?

Incidentally, two units that do well in this respect are PLA and YALSA. I was approached last night by a YALSA politico who asked me for a demo of how we do our blog. Neat idea, she commented. Sure thing, I said!

So back to the meeting, during which I’ll try to choke down a mystifyingly abstract resolution on broadband services that showed up on our doorstep last night so I can ‘splain it to everyone and get some feedback before it gets voted on. Come, other ALA units: learn from the masters!

This meeting is, obviously, aimed at committee/interest group chairs, but anybody can come really — anybody who can make it to an 8am meeting, anyway — and it’s a good way to get updated on LITA news at the beginning of the conference. Various tidbits:

Someone asked about the online communities pilot that ALA did about 6 months ago — what was the upshot of that? The online community option is available now; just contact Mary Taylor about getting one set up for your group. Some people who have already used it commented that it’s very useful for document sharing.

The deadline to request A/V equipment for Annual conference is now March 1. It would be very helpful if program planners could actually get these requests in to Valerie in the LITA Office by February 15.

This led to the (quite reasonable, I think) request that a current version of the program planning calendar be put up on the Web site.

Rob Carlson is moving to the position of Manager of Web Development in ALA IT as of January 30. I’m disappointed that Rob will no longer be our own personal possession, but glad that we’ll still benefit through his presence in ALA dealing with the Web site. Thanks, Rob, for doing such a fantastic job for LITA and for your unflappability.

We will be hearing soon about the process to change to the new Content Management System, Serena Collage. Among its very nice features are automatic link updating, the availability of statistics reporting, and an edit button right on the each page for people who are authorized to make changes.

I’m in withdrawal from playing World of Warcraft, folks (I got my new Tauren Druid character up to level 27 at 11:30pm the night before I left home), so I’ve got to occupy myself with something. And so far the Convention Center $25-for-the-conference wireless deal is working well for me. So you’ll be hearing more from me whether you like it or not. Don’t mess with me — I can change into a bear and a lion.

The best kept secret about LITA is the people. We come back year after year to this organization because the people are so nice, wonderful, and supportive.

As a new librarian, this was the first group that welcomed me with open arms so I have stayed and made them my home in ALA.

It was great to see everyone last night.

–MBoule

LITAers gathered at On A Half Shell Oyster Bar last night to meet, mingle, and take over the world.

It was a good showing of people, of which this is only a few. Everyone seemed happy to be in San Antonio, which greeted us with cloudy skies, but welcomed us all the same.

IM reference goes mainstream
After reading the existing studies showing that co-browsing is of limited value in many chat reference situations and thinking about how much money they’re spending on their web-based chat products, libraries will begin to re-think how they offer live online reference to their users. More and more libraries (as has been the trend for the last year) will adopt instant messaging for online reference, either in addition to or as a replacement for their existing expensive and bloated web-based chat products. A year ago I and a few others were called shortsighted and sometimes even “stupid” for pointing out the negatives of web-based chat. We were also called “extremist” and “too youth-oriented” for promoting instant messaging. Today, over a hundred libraries offer reference services via instant messaging, and I know of at least a dozen libraries who have dropped their web-based chat systems for IM. IM is going to continue to get bigger. It’s not going away.

Increasing technology staff
Libraries need to invest money in technology staff. New positions need to be created to keep up with the ever-growing demands on our technology staff: electronic resources managers, virtual reference coordinators, technology support, webmasters, systems analysts, etc. What may have been one full time position’s worth of work five years ago has now ballooned into two or three positions’ worth of work. Staffing will change to accommodate this…slowly, but it will change. I don’t think that positions will be moved around to accommodate this need for new staff—I think whole new positions will be created.

Take what we can from 2.0 and run
Library 2.0, Web 2.0, Librarian 2.0…what does it all mean? I agree with Thomas that over the next year we’ll be sorting through what these terms actually mean for our libraries, and picking and choosing from the concepts and ideas to implement the best of the best in our libraries. There are many concepts included in Library 2.0 (interactivity of information, taking the resources and services to the user—not the other way around, collaboration between the public and the library) that can be interpreted in many ways. It’s not just about technology. It’s about making ourselves relevant and desirable to a public who all too often don’t know the services they’re paying for and therefore don’t vote for our bond acts. We’ll come up with a short list of actions (I predict that that list will appear on Michael Stephens’s blog, Tame the Web—the guy’s known for his useful top ten lists).

Automated tagging
Tagging is useful. Its usefulness has been proven on sites like Flickr and Technorati. But tagging manually is a pain in the rear. Somewhere some great big awesome code monkey (probably someone with library or at least metadata training somewhere in his or her background) is going to figure out how to automatically tag things. Lots of things: blocks of text, links, *gasp* maybe even bibliographic records. The tagging won’t be perfect, but will it be good enough to serve our users’ needs? Then what? What happens to cataloging? Do we MARC and tag? I say yes. MARC, expensive and decrepit dinosaur that it is, isn’t going away. We still need controlled vocabulary…at least for a little while longer.

Opening up Library Computers
Okay. This is an exact duplicate from last year. But I don’t care. It’s important, and it’s happening (very) slowly. But it’s picking up speed. Most public and school libraries have the public use computers locked down for security reasons. This could mean having certain drives locked, disabling downloading and installations, having very limited software, disabling ports, and having few if any peripherals (scanners, speakers). While we claim that our public use computers help to bridge the digital divide (which they do by providing internet access & perhaps word processing), we need to do more. I predict that change in this area will pick up speed in the next year as libraries hear more complaints from users, talk to their schools about what tools students need, and do some serious self-analysis about how we’re absolutely not bridging that digital divide we’re pretending we’ve bridged. It’s more like we’ve thrown one solitary rope across a ravine and are asking folks to traverse hand-over-hand to the other side until they’re blistered and sore. Let’s build a real bridge—preferably of stone or metal construction, eh?

This is a shot of Ray at Happy Hour. I uploaded this from my Treo, which has horrible resolution. You know how you sometimes miss a feature of an older technology? I just upgraded laptops, and tonight dearly missed the SD slot on my older Dell. Dang, that was a nice feature. Maybe I can find a PC card that does that, but on my older laptop it was built in, so I could tuck in the SD card from my camera and bada-bing, bada-boom, upload and away I go. Oh, for the good old days…

Several of us attended at least part of the OCLC Symposium. This blurry picture from Karen’s Treo is of a large screen that said “Library 2.0.” Perhaps we’ll get a LITA write-up, but Shifted Librarian already has a really good discussion of this symposium.

The Radical Reference group has set up an informational wiki on San Antonio for Midwinter. It contains many good suggestions on getting around, eating, and leisure time.

The Convention and Visitor’s Bureau of San Antonio also has a nice site with a variety of suggestions for out-of-towners.

If you have time, I suggest taking the trolley to El Mercado, where you can shop and eat in a Mexican style market square.

We now have a Flickr Account tied in with this blog; if you would like to post pictures to Flickr and to the LITA Blog, contact one of the LITA Blog People and we’ll show you the super-secret handshake. Karen ( IM: liichief … cell: 510-932-5565 )

Please note that the meeting will be in a small room and will be blogged for those who can’t make it.

For those who need a trend fix now, some experts have posted to the LITA TTT blog: http://litablog.org/?cat=6

Agenda for Meeting with Experts + Committee

1. Introductions
2. Format of annual and midwinter meetings with the experts:what works, what doesn’t, what can be improved.

• Background/Some issues:
  • Midwinter:
    • We are not allowed to have programs or closed meetings. With the
      current format/size, it has essentially become a program.
    • Traditional “discussion” aspect of MW is missing. Historically,
      midwinter was for the experts to flesh out what they see as
      trends amongst each other in preparation for annual. Now,
      MW is a smaller version of annual with the same format, etc.
  • Annual:
    • With current format, little time left for interaction among
      the experts or with the audience
  • How do collaborative technologies such as the LITA TTT blog and
    IM fit into all of this
• Some possible solutions:
  • Midwinter:
    • Return to the small room discussion format where experts can
      discuss. The meeting would be blogged so everything presented
      could be shared more broadly.
  • Annual:
    • Keep the current format where experts speak for a limited time,
      leaving plenty of time for discussion/questions for the audience.
    • Have participants (members, experts) submit questions before the
      meeting; experts react/discuss based on those questions.

3. Other Business?

• Should the committee change the way it responds to the experts’
  trends?

4. (as time permits; very informal)
   Are there any trends which the committee can/should be looking at
   before annual? This will help the committee respond more quickly after annual to
   get information online in a more timely fashion.

One perennial favorite, btw, is “why don’t we post between conferences?” I have my own 2 cents on that but I feel committed to placing the item on the agenda since it does come up a lot.

Karen G. Schneider
BIGWIG co-chair

Previous years’ Town Meeetings have focused on gathering input for the LITA Strategic Plan, which was approved by the LITA Board at Annual Conference 2005 in Chicago ( http://www.ala.org/ala/lita/aboutlita/org/plan.htm ).

This year’s Town Meeting will be a facilitated discussion of the first of the Strategic Plan’s objectives, “to educate.” Aaron Cohen Associates have graciously offered their services to LITA to facilitate the Town meeting. Aaron and Alex Cohen will gather input from LITA members about their visions for putting the objective’s strategies into action.

For those unable to attend the Midwinter conference or the Town Meeting, your voice is still very important. The perspective of members unable to attend conferences is critical to the success of this key strategic initiative. Using this blog-thread, we will do some advance input gathering. We will also use the blog to summarize the discussion after the conference and synthesize the feedback into an action plan.

The Strategic Plan’s first objective, to educate, reads as follows:

Objective 1: To educate
Strategies:

Encourage networking and opportunities for information sharing

Promote shared understanding of technologies as they relate to libraries

Develop and offer programming through opportunities such as the ALA Annual Conference, preconferences and the LITA National Forum

Develop and offer LITA Regional Institutes

Make programming content available through LITA online tools

Identify topics and authors for LITA publications

Explore innovative approaches to LITA publications

Facilitate virtual education opportunities using LITA online tools and other new technologies

Develop and publicize best practice guidelines

The first step of the facilitated discussion will be to understand the current set of services and big picture in which we operate. As such, I have summarized as a starting point, the major initiatives LITA currently supports:

· Develops and offers programming through opportunities such as the ALA Annual Conference, pre-conferences and the LITA National Forum
· Develop and offer LITA Regional Institutes
· Make programming content available through LITA online tools: IG Web pages, LITA Blog
· LITA publications: ITAL, TER, LITA Guides & Monographs
· Networking opportunities: conferences, LITA-L

Please submit your thoughts on

· What LITA should continue to do and what additional educational initiatives it should consider
· How educational programs should be delivered
· How these programs should be funded
· When and where they should be held

I look forward to hearing from all of you.

Bonnie Postlethwaite
LITA President-Elect