Past e-Forums
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Banned Books, Intellectual Freedom, and the Library (September 30 - October 1, 2009)
With the annual “celebration”/observance of Banned Books Week, we have an opportunity to step back from daily routines and activities and reflect on the ever-present challenges to intellectual freedom, and the basic right to read that pervades the current national environment.
Join this timely e-forum and share your ideas and experiences. What have our libraries done to safeguard these freedoms? Do our current policies support handling challenges to books in the collection? Do the existing policies address privacy and security concerns -- protect First Amendment rights, address potential censorship? How have electronic publications changed the conversation -- relationship to author, publisher, vendor?
What have our libraries done to educate our communities, to expand awareness and understanding of the roles of the libraries in safeguarding intellectual property, while providing access to, and information on, a variety of issues and concerns that impact the community’s civil discourse? Are these educational ventures designed to inform, educate, provoke, entertain?
“Intellectual freedom can exist only where two essential conditions are met: first, that all individuals have the right to hold any belief on any subject and to convey their ideas in any form they deem appropriate; and second, that society makes an equal commitment to the right of unrestricted access to information and ideas regardless of the communication medium used, the content of the work, and the viewpoints of both the author and receiver of information. Freedom to express oneself through a chosen mode of communication, including the Internet, becomes virtually meaningless if access to that information is not protected. Intellectual freedom implies a circle, and that circle is broken if either freedom of expression or access to ideas is stifled.” (Intellectual Freedom Manual, American Library Association, 7th edition)
Moderated by: Marilyn Wilt, Rutgers University Libraries, and Roxanne Myers Spencer, Western Kentucky University Libraries.
Marilyn Wilt is the Training and Learning Coordinator for Rutgers University Libraries. She is responsible for the professional development of faculty librarians, professional/administrative staff, and support staff on the three Rutgers campuses -- New Brunswick/Piscataway, Newark, and Camden. Her programs, both formal and informal, are designed to create and maintain a dynamic, vibrant learning environment, supporting innovation and successfully achieving goals. Rutgers University Libraries’ celebration of 2009 Banned Books Week includes two faculty panel presentations: (1) “Academic and Intellectual Freedom Climate on Campus -- Are our Freedoms Secure in the Next Generation”, and (2) “I Know Why the Caged Book Sings: Reading and Identity”; and screening two challenged films: “Fahrenheit 451 “(Truffaut, 1966), “Salt of the Earth” (1954). In addition, we are gathering a series of video podcasts of volunteer readers from across the University reading from their “favorite” banned books. Access to the video podcasts will be available through the Libraries’ website during Banned Books Week.
Roxanne Myers Spencer is Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Educational Resources Center (ERC) for Western Kentucky University Libraries, in Bowling Green, Kentucky. She manages the campus branch library that primarily serves the College of Education and Behavioral Sciences, but is open to the entire WKU community. Roxanne supervises ERC staff and student workers and is responsible for selection of University Libraries’ education collection, consisting of some 85,000 titles, including a juvenile collection of 30,000 titles. She produces a newsletter, ERC Bookends, which is distributed to all WKU faculty and staff. As an adjunct faculty member in WKU’s Library Media Education program, Roxanne teaches a graduate course in collection management. WKU Libraries is celebrating Banned Books Week at the ERC with a selection of students’ comments about their favorite challenged children’s or young adult books, as well as the intellectual freedom exhibit “Posters for Peace: Images from the National Circulating Library of Students’ Peace Poster Stamps.” Exhibits for Banned Books Week at the Helm-Cravens Library include posters and book displays in the study lounge of the Helm Reference area.
Creating the Future of ALCTS (June 18-19, 2009)
ALCTS is the process of reviewing its organizational structure with the goal of creating a new structure that is more in tune with the needs of its members.
Moderated by M. Dina Giambi, ALCTS President and Mary Case, ALCTS President-Elect.
National Standards vs. Local Policies in Cataloging (June 3-4, 2009)
Although there are well-established and respected national guidelines in the field of cataloging, many decisions are still made on the local level. In some cases, the policies of individual institutions may conflict with national standards, including the rules set forth in the AACR2, DDC, LCSH, etc. As a result, certain questions arise among cataloging professionals:
- Which takes precedence in most libraries: national standards or local (institution-level, branch-level) decisions?
- Do these discrepancies exist because of "gray areas" in the rules, or are they due to the preferences of library staff/administration?
- Are libraries' cataloging policies clearly articulated, or is much left to the judgment of individual catalogers?
Moderated by Danielle Conklin and Lora Farrell, Cataloging Unit, Kansas City, Kansas Public Library.
Open Source ILS: High Risk or High Reward? (April 21-22, 2009)
Over the past few years, many librarians have expressed dissatisfaction with our current ILS, citing inflexible systems, high costs, and lackluster vendor service. Some libraries have consequently pursued Open Source ILS such as OLE, Koha, and Evergreen. Join this e-forum to share your experiences with and your questions about Open Source ILS and your thoughts on the future of the traditional, proprietary ILS. We are particularly interested in hearing about experiences with the technical services aspects of Open Source ILS: acquisitions, management of continuing resources, and cataloging.
Moderated by Rob Van Rennes, University of Iowa Libraries, and Clint Chamberlain, University of Texas Libraries.
Library Budgets and State of the Economy (April 6-7, 2009)
The current economic environment is none like we've seen in our lifetime. Our institution's endowments are falling and state budget support is being cut back. How are you coping with budget retrenchment in your library? Are you doing cost/benefit analyses on your service portfolio? Can you find opportunities in these difficult times? Come share your experiences and ideas with your colleagues. 620 people have already registered for the discussion forums. Perhaps we can help and learn from one another!
The two day forum will be moderated by: Lisa German, Assistant Dean for Technical and Collections Services, Penn State University Libraries and Ann Snowman, Head of Access Services, Penn State University Libraries.
Breaking Down the Silos: Planning for Discovery in Library 2.0 (March 9–10, 2009)
This e-Forum is a continuation of the discussion initiated at the ALCTS Symposium of the same name held at the 2009 ALA Midwinter Meeting in Denver. Several of the Symposium slide presentations are available online.
Libraries have collected a diverse set of resources which they have made available to their patrons. However, access to these resources have often been presented in separate silos without the capability of providing integrated access across them. A variety of discovery tool options are being implemented by libraries to deliver the information in a more focused and intuitive manner.
Share your own library’s success stories, experiences, and decisions. Ask questions of the 575 e-Forum subscribers!
The two day session will be moderated by: M. Dina Giambi, Assistant Director for Library Technical Services University of Delaware Library and ALCTS President and Kristin Antelman, Associate Director for the Digital Library North Carolina State University.
Copyright and Digital Collections (February 23–25, 2009)
Join a discussion on the virtual side, talking about about copyright issues associated with creating and curating digital collections. When your Library creates digital content, do you play it safe by sticking strictly to older works that clearly are in the public domain? Or have you ventured into murkier waters such as art slides, recorded interviews, materials with multiple layers of intellectual rights such as beat poetry (written by one person, illustrated by another), etc.? Tell us about your copyright adventures as they relate to digital collections. Be they successes or failures, they are all fodder for this forum.
Moderated by Cheryl D. Walters, Head, Digital Initiatives at Utah State University’s Merrill-Cazier Library.
Disaster Preparedness (February 10–12, 2009)
Largely due to the widespread impact of recent disasters, including Hurricane Katrina and the recent extensive flooding in Iowa, disaster preparedness has become a priority in many of the nation's libraries. No repository can afford to be without a well crafted plan that addresses response and recovery options in the event of a natural disaster. Of four major recommendations resulting from the 2005 Heritage Health Index Report on the State of America's Collections, one stated that “every collecting institution must develop an emergency plan to protect its collections and train staff to carry it out” (see: http://www.heritagepreservation.org/HHI/index.html).
Join this e-forum to share your disaster planning and response experiences and learn more about online resources that can help you get started if you haven't already. Feel free to discuss problems you met along the way and how having (or not having) a plan impacted your response to a disaster, whether you encountered a building roof or pipe leak or experienced the devastation of a regional disaster.
Moderators:
Walter Cybulski is a Preservation Librarian at the National Library of Medicine, where he has served as Disaster Response Chief for over a decade. Walter has coordinated a variety of response and recovery actions at NLM, ranging from mechanical room equipment leaks to major flooding in collection storage areas. He serves on the Library's Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP) planning team for Library Operations, and has provided collection response and salvage training for regional medical librarians in Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee.
Nancy E. Kraft is the University of Iowa Libraries Preservation Librarian. Kraft has first-hand experience in disaster response and recovery. She toured Iowa after the 1993 floods as a post flood recovery assessment team member, co-directed disaster response and recovery of the State Historical Society of Iowa building flooded by water from a broken pipe on the top floor, assisted with recovery from the University of Iowa Old Capitol fire, directed several mold remediations, and is assisting with the Iowa 2008 flood response and recovery.
Providing Professional Development Opportunities for Staff while Coping with Shrinking Resources (January 14–16, 2009)
When library budgets shrink, often one of the first areas to be cut is the fund that supports travel and professional development for library staff. What can you do to continue to support your staff in times of budget cuts? How do you keep up morale when furloughs or layoffs are on the horizon? Share your ideas and thoughts on how to help staff get the professional development they desire? Find out how others are coping.
Moderated by Pamela Bluh, Associate Director of Technical Services and Administration, University of Maryland, and ALCTS Past President.
Institutional Repositories (December 3–5, 2008)
“Institutional repositories”, a pre-Midwinter Symposium discussion moderated by Pamela Bluh, University of Maryland.
Many libraries have joined the movement to create an institutional repository, providing a mechanism to acquire, maintain and preserve scholarly and other material of lasting value to the institution. The discussion will focus on the challenges, pitfalls and promises of establishing and supporting institutional repositories, as well as the legal and access issues.
Collecting Free Web Resources: Selection, Archiving, Metadata, Access (November 18–20, 2008)
Many libraries are beginning to go from including records for selected free web resources in their catalogs to more literally 'collecting' these resources through Web archiving. We hope this forum will provide comments on how libraries are selecting Web resources for archiving, what harvesting tools they are using and particularly how they are achieving bibliographic control of their archived Web content. Specifically, how are libraries developing procedures for the
generation, enrichment and expression of metadata for description, access, preservation and management of this type of collection.
Moderators for the discussion are Kate Harcourt, Melanie Wacker and Alex Thurman, from Columbia University.
Collection Development Policies for Pornography and Erotic Materials (October 8–10, 2008)
Summary
I've received two email responses regarding collection development policies for pornography and erotic materials in a library. One librarian just sent me a link to the general policies while the other librarian from Sonoma State University saying they had no specific policy regarding sensitive materials though his library did have them because of human sexuality courses or the occasional graphic novel that turned out to be more graphic than expected, but this would be separated from the YA collection and be put into the main one.
Connie Foster, who responded directly to the forum, believes libraries should have policies regarding explicit materials "because sooner or later collections will be scrutinized."
I think having a policy on hand cares for everyone's best interests: the patrons will have a better understanding of why an item is in the collection and be able to view the policy, it (ideally) spares the librarian from having to repeatedly explain the unspoken/unwritten policy of collection development for the sensitive areas, and it also allows the collection development librarians a better structure for ordering materials.
Publisher/Vendor Supplied Cataloging Records (June 10–12, 2008)
Summary
The list now has 195 subscribers. There were 25 posts on the discussion topic.
Many posts dealt with comments and suggestions related to loading of vendor supplied records and several dealt with vendor supplied records for e-content.
There seemed to be general agreement that acquiring these records was beneficial both in terms of access and discovery as well as for streamlining workflows and freeing staff to deal with a variety of other tasks. However, the feeling that accuracy is being sacrificed for access still exists and reconciling that tension is a significant problem. The following post sums up the situation:
It would be wonderful if we could find some general agreement about the level of description and access that is adequate for the mainstream of the material we all acquire. Think what this reduction in redundant effort would mean for each of our institutions. The question that haunts me, is how do we get there?
Communication & ALCTS (May 14–16, 2008)
Summary
After a slow start, the electronic discussion on communication featured a number of interesting themes.
Statistics:
- 112 subscribers to the forum
- 41 messages were posted (including the introductory message)s) and the concluding message
- 19 individuals posted comments (including the hosts)
- 9 threads were developed
A detailed discussion about RSS feeds—how to use them and how they might be used in ALCTS evolved into a discussion on blogs. Suggestions were made on how various ALCTS groups might use blogs to disseminate information. Concerns about lack of communication might be a matter of perception rather than reality. Different forms of communication are desirable depending on the audience to whom the information is directed and the type of information being communicated. Training on Web 2.0 technologies to help members choose the communication tools that work best for them would be worthwhile.
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