“Shift Happens”
Preservation, entertainment in the library, and integrating Library 2.0 into a Web 2.0 world dominated the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) National Forum in Nashville, TN, October 26-29, 2006.
With 378 registered attendees from 43 states and several countries, including Sweden and Trinidad, attendance held steady with previous years, though the Internet Librarian conference, held in the same week, attracted over 1300 librarians.
Free wireless has still not made it into technology conferences, though laptops were clearly visible, and the LITA blog faithfully kept up with sessions for librarians who were not able to attend.
Keynotes
The forum opened with a fascinating talk from librarians at the Country Music Hall of Fame entitled “Saving America’s Treasures.” Using Bridge Media Solutions in Nashville as a technology partner, the museum has migrated unique content from the Grand Ole Opry, including the first known radio session from October 14, 1939, as well as uncovering demos on acetate and glass from Hank Williams. The migration project uses open source software and will generate MARC records that will be submitted to OCLC.
Thom Gillespie of Indiana University described his shift from being a professor in the Library and Information Science program to launching a new program from the Telecommunications department. The MIME program for art, music, and new media has propelled students into positions at Lucas Arts, Microsoft, and other gaming companies. Gillespie said the program has practical value, “Eye candy was good but it’s about usability.” Saying that peering in is the first step but authoring citizen media is the future, he posed a provocative question: “What would happen if your library had a discussion of the game of the month?”
Buzz
Integration into user environments was a big topic of discussion. Peter Webster of St. Mary’s University, Halifax, Canada, spoke about how embedded toolbars are enabling libraries to enter where users search.
Annette Bailey, digital services librarian at Virginia Tech, announced that the LibX project has received funding for two years from IMLS to expand their research toolbar into Internet Explorer as well as Firefox, and will let librarians build their own test editions of toolbars online.
Presenters from the Los Alamos National Laboratory described their work with MPEG-21, a new standard from the Motion Pictures Experts group. The standard reduces some of the ambiguities of METS, and allows for unique identifiers in locally-loaded content. Material from Biosis, Thomson’s Web of Science, APS, the Institute of Physics, Elsevier, and Wiley, is being integrated into cataloging operations and existing local Open Archives Initiative (OAI) repositories.
Tags and Maps
The University of Rochester has received funding for an open source catalog, which they are calling the eXtensible Catalog (xC). Using an export of 3 million records from their Voyager catalog, David Lindahl and Jeff Susczynski described how their team used User Centered Design to conduct field interviews with their users, sometimes in their dorm rooms. They have prototyped four different versions of the catalog, and CUPID 4 includes integration of several APIs, including Google, Amazon, Technorati, and OCLC’s xISBN. They are actively looking for partners for the next phase, and plan to work on issues with diacritics, incremental updates, and integrating holdings records, potentially using the NCIP protocol.
Challenge
Steven Abram, of Sirxi/Dynix and incoming SLA president, delivered the closing keynote, “Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 in our Future.” Abram and Sirsi/Dynix have conducted research on 15,000 users, which highlighted the need for community, learning, and interaction. He asked the audience, “Are you working in your comfort zone or my end user’s comfort zone?” In a somewhat controversial set of statements, Abram compared open source software to being “free like kittens” and challenged librarians about the “My OPAC sucks” meme that’s been popular this year. “Do your users want an OPAC, or do they want information?” Stating that libraries need to compete in an era when education is moving towards the distance learning model, Abram asked, “How much are we doing to serve the user when 60-80% of users are virtual?” Saying that librarians help people improve the quality of their questions, Abram said that major upcoming challenges include 50 million digitized books coming online in the next five years. “What is at risk is not the book. It’s us: librarians.”