ALA Annual Conference 2011

Interest Groups Report on Conference Activities in New Orleans

The reports below are summaries of the activities that took place during meetings of ALCTS interest groups held during the 2011 Annual Conference. Included are groups whose reports were received by the editor as of August 1, 2011. For information on interest groups not shown here, see the ALCTS Interest Groups page on the web site.

Division Groups

Electronic Resources Interest Group

Submitted by Christine Turner

Approximately forty-five people attended the Electronic Resources Interest Group meeting, held Saturday, June 25 at 10:30am.

Provided a forum for the exchange of ideas among those persons working with or interested in electronic resources; contributed to the improvement of education and training of electronic resource archivists and librarians. Program entitled “Implementing and Managing Webscale Discovery Services: Implications for E-resources Librarians” with four presentations.

Electronic Resources Management Interest Group (with LITA)

Submitted by Anjana Bhatt

The joint LITA/ALCTS Electronic Resources Management Interest Group hosted a panel of speakers from EDItEUR, NISO, and OCLC on Friday, June 24 from 1:30 to 3:30pm in Embassy Suites Jean Lafitte 4.

The session was attended by eighty librarians. The program included a guest speaker from Rice University who presented on “NISO’s IOTA Initiative; Measuring the Quality of OpenURL Links.”

Kathy Klemperer from EDItEUR discussed ONIX Standards and the Library Supply Chain in her presentation.

Tim Jewell, director, information resources, collections and scholarly communication, University of Washington, described the activities of the Electronic Resource Management (ERM) Data Standards and Best Practices Review Working Group, which has been charged to undertake a gap analysis regarding ERM related data, standards and best practices.

Senior Product Manager Bob McQuillan, Innovative Interfaces, Inc., shared the activities of the Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) Standing Committee, including the recent formation of the SUSHI Servers Working Group.

Associate Director for Programs at NISO Nettie Lagace reported on the latest activities of the KBART Working Group, now in its Phase II iteration, and described NISO’s upcoming initiatives related to e-books.

Andrew K. Pace from OCLC provided an update on the progress of their ERM system including work and results from efforts with pilot libraries and strategies that will unfold in coming months.

Electronic resources librarians must keep themselves updated about the current activities, developing standards and new products. This session accomplished this purpose.

FRBR Interest Group

Submitted by Judy Jeng

The FRBR Interest Group met on Friday, June 24 from 10:30am to 12pm. A total of 104 attendees came to the program. There were two presentations. Scotland native and library consultant Gordon Dunsire presented “Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Linked Data: the FR Family and the Semantic Web,” and OCLC representative Richard Greene presented “Global Library Manifestation Identifier.”

Karen Anderson of Backstage Library Works is the 2011–2012 chair of the FRBR Interest Group; Debra Shaprio, University of Wisconsin-Madison, is Vice-Chair.

Linked Library Data Interest Group (with LITA)

Submitted by Corey Harper

The co-chairs welcomed attendees to the interest group’s first official meeting, held Sunday, June 26 at 10:30am. The co-chairs announced that there are now LITA wiki pages (since moved to ALA Connect) and a mailing list. About seventy people attended the meeting, and seemed to self-identify as a split of about two-thirds cataloging and metadata, and approximately one-third systems and programming.

The beginning of the meeting then focused on reports from attendees on recent Library Linked Data IG meetings, events and publications, as well as announcements of upcoming events and brief project reports. First up was a report from the Linked Open Data: Libraries, Archives and Museums Summit held June 2–3, 2011 in San Francisco. This was an unconference sponsored by National Endowment for the Humanities and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and hosted by the Internet Archive. Much writing came out of the event and an official report will be forthcoming. This was followed by a discussion of the World Wide Web Consortium’s Library Linked Data Incubator Group, which is still collecting comments on the latest draft of their final report. Other conference reports and announcements included a brief discussion of SemTech 2011 and an announcement of the Dublin Core 2011 preliminary program, including a full-day workshop on Vocabulary Management. Hugh Taylor also gave a project report on COMET, the Cambridge Open Metadata Project.

The remainder of the meeting was given over to planning of IG activities, both for the coming year and in the longer term. Laura Akerman volunteered to be Secretary for 2011–2012, and to take notes. A call was put out for volunteers to chair or co-chair the group for 2012–13. The group reviewed the Linked Library Data (LLD) needs discussed at the midwinter in San Diego, and built upon that list. Among the needs that were identified during brainstorming were:

Bringing catalogers and developers together (two catalogers and a developer)
Elevator Speech on why LLD matters
Information dissemination and resource collection
Use case curation
A blog or other means of disseminating news and links (e.g., Reddit)
Demo applications
Information about tools
A standard slide deck or syllabus template for LIS Educators
Profiles of speakers/educators/writers in LLD
“Data Speed Dating”: forum to exchange LLD needs, use cases, data sets and ideas

The group then self-organized into subgroups around volunteers willing to take the lead on various issues and broke into small groups for further discussion. Those discussions produced the following action items:

Add template for small groups/prototyping to wiki page. This was the “2 catalogers and a coder” idea. WHO: Nancy Hunter
Add a page for LLD resources to the wiki. WHO: Laura Anderson
Create Reddit subset. WHO: Mike Taylor (http://www.reddit.com/r/librarylinkeddata/)
Create page for and solicit use cases. WHO: Amanda Xu
Code/Cat summit for ALA. WHO: Debora Shapiro
Code/Cat summit for Code4lib. WHO: Corey Harper

One of the major outcomes was the planning of a full-day preconference series to bring catalogers and developers together to discuss and collaborate on linked data developments. Currently, subgroups are finalizing submissions for Annual Conference 2012 and code4lib 2012 pre-conferences.

Report based on notes by Laura Akerman, Karen Coyle and Corey Harper.

MARC Formats Interest Group (with LITA)

Submitted by Steve Kelley

The meeting of the ALCTS/LITA MARC Formats Interest Group, held Saturday, June 25 at 4pm, drew a crowd of approximately 150 attendees to hear presentations on the group’s topic for the year, “Will RDA Mean the Death of MARC?” The topic was further described by a set of questions. The end of the MARC formats has been predicted for years, but no serious alternative format has risen up to challenge MARC. Will the introduction of the new RDA code precipitate the demise of MARC? Will Resource Description & Access (RDA) require the description of content and functionality that cannot be accommodated by the MARC formats, or that can be more easily accommodated by alternative content formats? If so, what format(s) will replace MARC? And if MARC does continue to thrive, how will it have to change to accommodate the new content descriptions in RDA?

Karen Coyle, Karen Coyle Consulting, spoke first, and elaborated a devastating critique of the MARC format. She argued that MARC is about to collapse due to its own strange construction, and that we cannot redeem MARC, but we can save its data. Coyle argued that MARC was great in its day; it was a very well developed code for books when it was designed. But as other materials formats were added such as serials and audio-visual materials, additions were piled on top of the initial structure. As MARC was required to capture more data, the structure of MARC became increasingly elaborate and illogical. Structural limitations to the MARC formats required strange work-arounds, and different aspects of MARC records are governed by different rules (AACR2, the technical requirements of the MARC format itself, the requirements of integrated library systems, etc.). The cobbled-together nature of MARC has led to oddities such as the publication dates and language information being recorded in both the machine readable fixed fields of the record and in the human readable textual fields of the record. Coyle further pointed out the oddity of the 245 title field in the MARC record, which can jumble together various types of data, including the title of a work, the language, the general material designation, and more. This data is difficult to parse for machine-processing.

Although RDA needs further work, it is inching toward addressing these sorts of problems by allowing for the granular recording of data. However, for RDA to fully capture this granular data, we will need a record format other than MARC. In order to help develop a new post-MARC format, Coyle has begun a research project to break down and analyze MARC fields into their granular components. She began by looking at the 007/008 fields, finding that they have 160 different data elements with a total of 1,530 different possible values. This data can be used to develop separate identifies for each value, which could be encoded in a MARC-replacement format. Coyle is still working on breaking down all of the MARC fields.

Diane Hillmann, Metadata Management Associates spoke about the developing RDA vocabularies, which define a set of metadata elements and value vocabularies that can be used by both humans and machines. They provide a link between the way humans think about and read cataloging data and the way computers process cataloging data. The RDA vocabularies can assist in mapping RDA to other vocabularies, including the data vocabularies of record schemas other than the MARC formats. Also, when RDA does not provide enough detailed entity relationships for particular specialized cataloging communities, the RDA vocabularies can be extended to detail more subproperties and relationships. The use of RDA vocabulary extensions means that RDA can grow, and not just from the top-down. The description of highly detailed relationships between bibliographic entities (such as making clear that a short story was adapted as a radio play script) will increase the power of our patrons, by allowing data to be linked across records. Hillmann argued that the record has created a tyranny of thinking in cataloging, and that our data should be thought of as statements, not records, which is an important conceptual shift. Near the end of her presentation, Hillmann essentially summed up the main theme of her talk, when she said that we need to expand our ideas of what machines can and should be doing for us in cataloging.

The panel presentations were followed by questions from the audience.

The MARC Formats Interest Group for 2010–11 was chaired by Steve Kelley of Wake Forest University and vice-chaired by Chew Chiat Naun of the University of Minnesota, who will serve as chair for 2011–12. Kelley assumed the chair in fall of 2010, because no successor chair had been identified, and the group was in danger of being disbanded. One of the goals for the interest group for the 2011–12 year is to establish continuity of the group’s leadership.

Metadata Interest Group

Submitted by Jennifer Roper

Approximately forty-five people attended the Metadata Interest Group meeting, held Sunday, June 26 at 8am.

The Metadata Interest Group held a round-table discussion forum on various topics related to metadata creation. The five topics that were discussed were: metadata migration, independent metadata creation/manipulation tools, metadata quality control, material formats and metadata schema selection.

Each discussion table reported out to the larger group, and some common threads were discovered. The most surprising commonality among the groups was electronic theses and dissertations. The new roundtable format was deemed successful, and will be considered as an option when the group is interested in a topic for which speakers cannot be found.

The business meeting included liaison updates from Music Library Association, the Committee on Cataloging: Description & Access (CC:DA) as well as LITA liaisons, the blog coordinator and programming and publication chairs. The Metadata Interest Group-sponsored program “Sound Bytes: Audio Metadata Standards” was well attended on Saturday morning. The group brainstormed ideas for 2012 programming, including possibilities of teaming with LITA and/or the Heads of Cataloging Interest Group. Elections were held for new officers, who are:

Chair - Michael Dulock, University of Colorado Boulder
Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect - Teressa Keenan, University of Montana
Co-Secretary- Suzanne Pilsk, Smithsonian
Co-Secretary - Jacqueline Blonigen, University of Missouri
Program Co-Chair - Amanda Harlan, Baylor University
Program Co-Chair - Meghan Finch, Wayne State University
Publication Chair - Valentine Muyumba, Indiana State University

New Members Interest Group

Submitted by Amy Jackson

Approximately seventy people attended the ALCTS New Members Interest Group (ANMIG) meeting, held Friday, June 24 at 7:45pm.

The ALCTS New Members Interest Group had a busy spring. In March, the group hosted an open chat for members on the topic “Cataloging Job Search,” and the topic of an April chat was “How to be a Leader in the Library.” Meebo Chat and CBox chat were both experimented with, but neither platform provided the full functionality of ALA Connect chat, which is currently disabled.

In addition to the chat sessions, ANMIG also co-organized ALCTS 101 at ALA Annual with the Membership Committee. The program included a “speed networking” component with a scavenger hunt bingo cards, drawings for free ALCTS webinars and membership renewals, and Starbucks gift cards to student members. A full report of ALCTS 101 is available in this issue of ANO.

A brief ANMIG business meeting was held at the end of ALCTS 101. Officers stepping down were thanked, and new officers were elected:

Amy Jackson, Chair
Elizabeth Siler, Chair-elect
Jessica Mlotkowski, Secretary
Erin Boyd, Web Coordinator
Yoko Kudo, Web Coordinator

Newspaper Interest Group

Submitted by Brian Geiger

Approximately thirty people attended the Newspaper Interest Group meeting, held Saturday, June 25 at 1:30pm.

The Newspaper Interest Group began with two engaging and illuminating talks on newspaper publishing past and present in Louisiana. Michael Taylor, Assistant Curator of Books, Special Collections, Louisiana State University, surveyed some of the major themes in Louisiana newspaper publishing before 1922 through the lens of several people associated with the papers. Judy Jumonville, Library Manager of “The Advocate” in Baton Rouge reflected on the history and current state of newspaper libraries and librarianship from her perspective of many years in the industry.

The last hour of the meeting was consumed by lively discussions about newspaper publishing and preservation, including talks about Google’s announcement to cease digitizing newspaper microfilm, recent research on newspaper archives, and user text correction of digitized newspapers.

Publisher-Vendor-Library Relations Interest Group

Submitted by Elizabeth Lorbeer and Kimberly Steinle

Approximately ninety people attended the Publisher/Vendor/Library Relations Interest Group meeting, held Monday, June 27 at 8am.

As monograph collections transition away from print holdings, “Managing Your Future E-Book Collection,” a panel sponsored by the Publisher-Vendor-Library Relations (PVLR) Interest Group, focused on new opportunities and challenges among librarians, vendors and publishers. Michael Zeoli, YBP Library Services, gave a historical review of book publishing from the Renaissance era. Both early and today’s modern book publishers share the same problems, including product costs, multiple versions and marketing their content. This introduction led Zeoli to discuss the steady growth of digital e-book content being offered for sale. Many books are still only available in print format and none of the e-book platforms offer comprehensive access to the publisher’s front list collection. Approximately 20 percent of new titles profiled by YBP are available online, but even less if the title is earmarked for demand driven access or short term loan.

Melanie Schaffner, Project MUSE, spoke about e-book challenges that include availability of content from publishers, lack of industry standards, and sales models. Further discussion focused on development of subject collections, determining prepublication pricing, and most importantly keeping the sales transaction simple. Schaffner touched upon complicated issues such as electronic interlibrary loan and demand-driven models which are still untested by many publishers.

The last speaker was Beth Fuseler Avery, University of North Texas, who created a punch list of twenty items that affect how libraries acquire e-books. Most notable is that most electronic titles are still not immediately available for sale at the same time as their print counterpart. This delay means the library will have to wait for the electronic version to be released, and if the title is urgently needed for the collection they may have to purchase the print format. Avery touched upon the differences in print vs. electronic acquisitions and discussed cataloging, access and archiving issues which are very different from traditional collection practices. She called for more platform options and the freedom to buy a chapter or title on demand to fit specific needs of the institution.

Role of the Professional Librarian in Technical Services Interest Group

Submitted by Wanda Jazayeri

Approximately twenty-eight people attended the Role of the Professional Librarian in Technical Services Interest Group (RLPTS IG) meeting, held Sunday, June 26 at 4pm.

As lead-off speaker for the group’s ALA Annual Conference, Keith Powell, Head of Acquisitions at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), described for RLPTS IG attendees their pilot Patron-Driven Acquisitions (PDA) project, initiated in 2010.

Powell began by clarifying that their PDA pilot is actually called PIA for Patron-Initiated Acquisitions because the PDA acronym was already in use for another program at UCI. However, it’s the same concept: library users see electronic records in the catalog, click to get more information or actually use the e-item, and if there are enough clicks on the title, the library automatically buys the e-title for the collection. The final process is mostly automated, with very little labor involved.

A task force was formed to look at a PIA model as a cost-saving measure. The task force outlined parameters for the pilot project, identified what they hoped to gain from a PIA model and identified how the pilot should be implemented. After receiving the task force’s recommendations, the library opted to scale back the project to a smaller, manageable size. They decided to work with YBP Library Services and the Cambridge, Oxford, and University of Chicago presses. The PIA model for e-content was launched in July 2010 with record loads starting in September.

The pilot project records were loaded into the local catalog, but not into the consortial catalog, Melvyl. Records in the public view were made to look as much as possible to the user the same as records for already purchased fully cataloged e-books. Of course this was not always possible because many of the vendor records are less than full-level records. Behind the scenes, two non-public display fields were added to the records to clearly identify them as PIA records to staff: the date and control number in a MARC 035 field, and a MARC 599 local note identifying a title as a PIA purchased e-book. Titles were cataloged upon receipt of a monthly invoice. UCI has not yet decided whether or not they will remove old records for unpurchased titles or leave them for the possibility of future purchase. However, the PIA information in the 035 field will permit staff to easily gather groups of records for deletion or editing in the future as needed.

From September 2010 to June 2011, the library loaded 878 e-content records, forty-four of which had been purchased by the time of the presentation. Powell stated that the number of purchases will probably go up due to the large number of titles in the system currently with two clicks which by the end of the pilot would have three clicks. (UCI used a three-click-to-purchase model.)

After his presentation, Powell opened the floor to questions. The audience asked about the transformation in professional responsibility when it comes to PIA/PDA and outsourcing, what to do when there are technical difficulties and purchasing problems, what staff does to the records if anything, how local notes work, dynamics of click-to-purchase models, how weeding works, problems with PromptCat and loading, the roles of bibliographers and selectors, and the role of interlibrary loan.

Powell suggested the following for libraries wishing to start their own PDA program: Ask your e-content rep:

What’s in each record; what do we get?
Investigate your options!
Always read the fine print
Don’t let the electronic resources librarian go on leave when the library starts embarking upon this adventure
ALWAYS remember to protect your URLs when you overlay your bibs!

In the post-discussion business meeting, Charles McElroy, Florida State University and Allison Yanos, Baylor University Libraries volunteered to be vice-co-chairs for 2011–12. The chairs and vice-chairs considered possible future topics and a possibility of co-hosting a meeting with Creative Ideas in Technical Services Interest Group in the coming year, so that we could co-locate and follow each other instead of meeting at the same time.

Scholarly Communications Interest Group

Submitted by Adrian Ho

Panel Discussion at ALA Annual Conference

In February 2011, SCIG started planning for a panel discussion at the Annual Conference by submitting a room request. Three possible topics were considered in March, and the group decided to organize a discussion about library-press collaboration. The reason was that more and more academic libraries had launched online publishing/hosting services in recent years and some of these initiatives involved collaboration between the library and a university press. It was believed that a panel discussion on this topic would be timely. Moreover, the Association of American University Presses released the report, Sustaining Scholarly Publishing: New Economic Models for University Presses, in March 2011. One of its recommendations was that “[e]xisting partnerships between presses, libraries, and other scholarly enterprises are vital models for collaboration to learn from and build upon.” Therefore, SCIG decided to organize a panel discussion to highlight successful examples and lessons learned about library-press collaboration. It was hoped that it would prompt colleagues to further discuss how these two parties can collaborate and advance scholarly communication on a sustainable and mutually beneficial basis.

The panel moderator, panelists, and presentation topics were finalized as follows by early May:

Moderator: Raym Crow, Senior Consultant, SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition)

Panelists and presentation topics:

James Mullins (Dean of Libraries, Purdue University): How does a research library integrate and manage a university press?
Kizer Walker (Director of Collection Development, Cornell University, and Managing Editor of Signale: Modern German Letters, Cultures, and Thought): What issues are there when a library seeks to build a working relationship with a university press?
John Wilkin (Associate University Librarian for Library Information Technology, University of Michigan, and Executive Director of HathiTrust): How does HathiTrust work with university presses to open up access to scholarly content?

The panel discussion took place at the Morial Convention Center in New Orleans from 10:30 am to 12pm on Saturday, June 25. Around fifty people (including the moderator and the panelists) were present. There was an open forum after the three presentations and all participants were welcome to pose questions and share thoughts about scholarly communication issues. Positive feedback was received after the discussion. The presentations and open forum were recorded. The panelists’ slides and the audio recordings are now publicly available on ALA Connect at https://connect.ala.org/viewthread?MessageKey=09DF4434-190F-477A-B2B2-CC2DADE206AB

Two suggestions for future events:

An initial announcement of the panel discussion ( http://connect.ala.org/node/138106 ) was created and posted under “Group Calendar” on the right sidebar on the ALA Connect SCIG page ( http://connect.ala.org/node/66015 ). It was visible until June 25. The event description therein was extracted from the room request form submitted in February 2011, which was very general and was not supposed to be used in a public announcement. While we were able to add tags to that announcement, we did not have the authority to update the description in it. It would be very helpful if initial announcements like that for future conference sessions could be modified by event organizers.
It would be helpful if ALCTS could provide assistance with recording future conference events (either in audio or video format).

Appointment of New Vice Chair (2011-2012)

The selection process of the new vice chair started in May. We decided to make an announcement on relevant mailing lists to encourage interested individuals to self-nominate for the position. A total of eleven self-nominations were received. These criteria were used to evaluate the suitability of the nominees:

Statement of interest
Current involvement in scholarly communication
Experience of serving on or chairing a committee or a working group
ALCTS membership
Ability to attend ALA conferences

After deliberation, we selected Melanie Feltner-Reichert from the University of Tennessee as the new vice chair.

Technical Services Directors of Large Research Libraries Interest Group (Big Heads)

Submitted by Scott Wicks

Approximately 230 people attended the Technical Services Directors of Large Research Libraries Interest Group (Big Heads) Interest Group meeting, held Friday, June 24 at 9:30am.

Approximately twenty-five “Big Heads” engaged in conversation around the topics:

Print repositories and collaborations: impact on local retention decisions and workflows
Reaching the point of least description: impact of full-text on the need for cataloging
RDA at the U.S. National Libraries: implications of their decision for RDA implementation
LC’s Transforming our Bibliographic Framework: the plan for replacing MARC
PCC and RDA: how the PCC will respond to RDA
RDA and Us: quick check-in around the table for our local responses to RDA
Round Robin ruminations: highlights from our Round Robin reports
The cataloging survey: What it tells us about existing services and service gaps

The majority of the discussion was led by the technical services directors, but a few opportunities opened up the discussion to include interested parties from the large audience.

Technical Services Managers in Academic Libraries Interest Group

Submitted by Linda Lomker

The theme of the meeting, “Navigating the Rapids: Leading in Fast-Moving Times” held on Saturday, June 25 at 8am, attracted around 30 people who divided themselves into 6 round-table discussion groups, each led by a member of the interest group’s steering committee. Each group formed around a discussion topic. The topics were: “Challenges of PDA (Patron Driven Acquisitions),” “Challenge the Process: New and Innovative Ways for Our Work,” “Technical Services (TS) Skills for the Future,” “New Library Goals and New Roles for TS,” “Status and Rank of Librarians in Academic Libraries, especially in TS,” and “Initiating and Implementing Change with Emotional Engagement.” The chair opened the meeting with a welcome and some announcements. Each group then proceeded to discuss their topic. The discussions were pretty lively and it wasn’t easy to pull the group back together. When the conversations stopped, one person from each table summarized that table’s discussion for everyone present.

Technical Services Workflow Efficiency Interest Group

Submitted by Megan Dazey

Approximately fifty people attended the Technical Services Workflow Efficiency Interest Group meeting, held Monday, June 27 at 1:30pm.

The session entitled “Sharing the Shelf: A Look at Print Retention and Shared Archive Initiatives” was presented as an informal Q&A session with Aisha Harvey, Head, Collection Development, Duke University (ASERL) and Karen Wilhoit, Associate University Librarian for Collections, Wright State University (OhioLINK).

The session produced many questions from the audience and a lead to a great discussion between the panelists and the audience, as well as answers to the prepared questions from the co-chairs of the interest group.

Cataloging and Metadata Management Section Interest Groups

Authority Control Interest Group (with LITA)

Submitted by Lynnette Fields

Approximately 150 people attended the Authority Control Interest Group (ACIG) meeting, held Sunday, June 26 at 1:30pm. The ACIG program began with the Library of Congress report presented by Janis Young, Policy and Standards Division, Library of Congress.

Karen Coyle then presented “Authorities: The Things of Library Data.” She began by explaining that the information world is made up of Things that have relationships to other Things. Her talk focused on some of the differences between how the semantic web and libraries have managed their Things, and how those differences can be (and are being) overcome.

Gordon Dunsire then spoke on “Authority Control: New Standards and the Semantic Web.” He discussed the place of authority control in new bibliographic standards such as FRBR, FRAD, FRSAD, RDA, and ISBD. He also explained the concept of triples and linked data and discussed the importance of authority control concepts in the semantic web.

Robin Johnson, a senior standards editor in the Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute, concluded the program with the presentation, “The Getty Vocabularies: Issues in Authority Control for Art and Architecture.” She described the Getty vocabularies, the Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT), the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN), the Union List of Artist Names (ULAN), and the new vocabulary in development, the Cultural Objects Name Authority (CONA).

A business meeting followed the program. New officers were elected for 2011–12. We reviewed the program that just took place, and brainstormed ideas for 2012 programs.

Cartographic Resources Cataloging Interest Group (with MAGIRT)

Submitted by Louise Ratliff

Approximately twenty-three people attended the joint Map and Geospatial Information Round Table (MAGERT)/CMS Cataloging of Cartographic Resources Interest Group meeting, held Sunday, June 26 at 8am.

Discussion topics included: the provider-neutral record for cartographic resources on the web; the Library of Congress Genre-Form Terms for cartographic resources; and, RDA and cartographic resources.

To begin, an important announcement was made by Richard Huffine, director of the U.S. Geological Survey Library Program, who said that the USGS’s National Geospatial Program has almost completed their efforts to digitize and georeference all of the topographic maps the Bureau has produced since the beginning of their mapping program in 1885. The total number of maps is estimated at around 200,000 and it includes all scales, all editions of their topographic map series.

Susan Moore gave a brief explanation of “provider-neutral” bibliographic records for monographs, and reported that she has submitted a document about cartographic provider-neutral records with examples to Rebecca Culbertson, Chair of the PCC Standing Committee on Standards.

Jay Weitz of OCLC reported that Robert Bremer is developing a macro with which to convert old form subdivisions in LCSH to $v Maps where appropriate, and to construct a 655 genre-form term if it is not already present in the record. A brief discussion followed about the conversion process. It was advised to continue to follow the current policy until notified otherwise.

Tammy Wong from Library of Congress said she will start creating some RDA records for cartographic materials, but most LC catalogers will continue to follow AACR2.

Mary Laarsgard is authoring a book with Paige Andrew about RDA and cartographic resources. In it she has drafted a list of differences between AACR2 and RDA, based on Chris Oliver’s book. Any major differences that are not included on her list would be very welcome. Comments may be posted on the ALA Connect site at: MAGERT Cartographic Resources and RDA, available from http://connect.ala.org/node/111605

A complete report of this meeting is available on ALA Connect at: http://connect.ala.org/node/64377

Catalog Form & Function Interest Group

Submitted by Katherine Harvey

Approximately seventy-five people attended the Catalog Form & Function Interest Group meeting, held Saturday, June 25 at 10:30am. Chair Katherine Harvey made welcome remarks and introduced Cheryl Gowing, Vice-Chair/Chair Elect.

Four presenters addressed the question: “Is it already too late for the catalog?”

The Catalog is Dead, Long Live the Catalog. Matthew Beacom, Metadata Librarian at Yale University approached the question by illuminating how the new catalog differs from the old. It is too late for the catalog that is constrained as an online version of the card catalog. He described how the new catalog differs in purpose, granularity, scope, scale, heterogeneity, and source of metadata.

Too Late for the Library Catalog? Inconceivable! Courtney Greene, Head of the Digital User Experience Department at Indiana University Bloomington Library, described how they developed a rubric of core functionality for selecting and implementing a discovery layer/next-generation catalog interface.

Rosetta Through the Lens of Primo, Moving Metadata to the Fore. Rachel Jaffe, Metadata/Catalog Librarian at Binghamton University Libraries made a case for the relevancy of the catalog not only as a search tool and content holder, but as a generative and interactive platform. She described the implementation of a new discover layer that provides combined result sets from print and digital collections.

Search Limit Behaviors of Discovery Platform Users Compared to Classic Catalog Users. Terry Ballard, Assistant Director of Technical Services for Library Systems at New York Law School Mendik Library spoke about the difference in search limiting behaviors of users of traditional catalogs compared to discovery platform users, based on data from Innovative Interfaces’ Encore product and Google Analytics.

Cataloging & Classification Research Interest Group

Submitted by Susan Massey

Approximately thirty-one people attended the Cataloging and Classification Research Interest Group (CCRIG) meeting, held Sunday, June 26 at 10:30am.

The incoming CCRIG chair, Susan Massey of University of North Florida, gave a brief report on the March 2011 ALCTS e-forum “Beyond 2010 the Year of Cataloging Research.” The summary addressed changing venues catalogers are using to keep up with current research in the field and potential topics for future research. Xiaoli Li, Head of Cataloging and Metadata Services at University of California, Davis presented research on “Cataloging Electronic Theses and Dissertations: Is Author-contributed Metadata Useful?” She indicated that although author-supplied metadata for ETDs is useful in creating catalog records, several MARC fields required cataloger edits. Jane Greenberg, professor and director of the Metadata Research Center, School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina (UNC)-Chapel Hill, led a research blitz.

She gave a brief presentation about how to disseminate research using the blitz method, followed by six speakers:

Shay Beezley, SILS master’s student, “Evaluating BISAC-based Headings: What do Users and Librarians Think?”
Renee McBride, Head, Special Formats and Metadata Section Resource Description and Management Department., UNC-Chapel Hill, “CONTENTdm Authority Control Project: UNC-Chapel Hill University Libraries”
Lauren Kage, SILS master’s student, “Faceted Application of Subject Terminology: An Evaluation of Innovation by Aspiring Library Professionals”
Jessica Mlotkowski, SILS master’s student, “Race as Access: Designation of Race through User-Assigned Tags for Digitized Archival Images”
Lee Richardson, Cataloging and Metadata Coordinator, Health Sciences Libraries, UNC-Chapel Hill, “N.C. Health Info Cataloging”
Joyce Chapman, Libraries Fellow, North Carolina State University, “Evaluating the Effectiveness of Manual Metadata Enhancements with A/B Testing and Google Analytics”

Catalog Management Interest Group

Submitted by Annie Wu

There are four presentations for the Catalog Management Interest Group Program, held Saturday, June 25 at 1:30pm. Approximately sixty-three people attended. The group heard four presentations.

Creating a Gem: Preparing Metadata for a Faceted Catalog
Presented by Beth Picknally Camden and Katia Strieck from University of Pennsylvania Libraries. The University of Pennsylvania Libraries has recently released a beta version of their “next-generation” Franklin catalog based on open-source software. In preparation for this implementation, they completed an environmental scan to determine the most popular facets and how they were defined in other catalogs. After selecting their main facets (Access, Format, Subject, Language, Library, Publication date, Classification, Author/Creator, Specific location), they embarked on several months of metadata clean-up. The presentation covered the range of techniques used for metadata clean-up and how this will help in their future implementation of Kuali Open Library Environment (OLE).

Merging SIRSIDynix Item Types at Troy University
Presented by Ruth Elder, Cataloging Librarian, Troy University Library; Erin E. Boyd, Cataloging/Reference Librarian, Troy University-Montgomery; and Olga Knyaz, Technical Services Librarian, Troy University-Dothan. In 2005, the three Alabama campuses of Troy University became one unified university with a shared library catalog. As separate institutions, each campus library had established item types and home locations in SIRSIDynix that defined their own collections. When the campuses merged, nothing was done to ensure these item types and home locations were consistent, thus making uniform statistical reports for the university library difficult. In 2009, new catalogers were hired on each campus. They worked diligently to make the cataloging and cataloging workflow as uniform as possible. This year the library dean asked that the item type and home location discrepancies be resolved to create a more uniform system. This presentation discussed the steps being taken to streamline the catalog, particularly the item types and home locations that best describe all campus library collections.

Does Catalog Management belong in Circulation?
P resented by Helen Goldman and Anthony “J.P.” Pendleton from Auburn University Libraries. When the Auburn University Libraries’ Technical Services Units of Cataloging and Acquisitions decided to combine in 2010, there was an office space issue that would be a deal-breaker. Catalog management staff required more workflow staging space than could be accommodated in the projected room designs. Taking inspiration from a trip to Duke University, the Monographic Services Coordinator suggested transferring the catalog management staff and their administrative reporting lines to circulation. The head of circulation and the library administration agreed to try this arrangement. In the several months that followed the decision, there have been what one librarian referred to as “unexpected consequences.” Catalog management belongs in circulation in Auburn University.

Procuring the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) and Thesaurus for Graphic Materials (TGM) Databases
Presented by Nate Cothran, Product Manager, Automation, Backstage Library Works; Jim Kuhn, Head of Collection Information Services, Folger Shakespeare Library; and Deborah J Leslie, Head of Cataloging, Folger Shakespeare Library. This presentation focused on the background behind procuring the RBMS and TGM databases with the help of librarians from different libraries and institutions such as Folger, University of Texas at Austin, University of Mississippi, MIT and UCLA. The presentation explained the conversion of the data into a useable and searchable MARC format and how Backstage Library Works worked closely with Folger to iron out issues such as listing matching criteria (such as 655 _7 $2 rbgenr), statistics of the data as well as its usage. The presentation also showed how these two databases are freely available to all existing authority control clients.

Cataloging Norms Interest Group

Submitted by Michele Seikel

For the 2011 Annual Conference, the Cataloging Norms Interest Group (CNIG) offered a program with four speakers. The CNIG meets on Saturday afternoons during both Midwinter Meeting and Annual Conference, from 1:30–3:30pm.

The interest in the Cataloging Norms programs has been building for a couple of years, and 2011 was no exception. Organized by 2010–11 co-chairs Melanie McGurr and Michele Seikel, our program on June 25 had a number of interesting topics, attracting a crowd of 115.

Our first speaker was Randal Baier, Eastern Michigan University (EMU), who described how EMU is archiving, digitizing, and providing metadata for the Gordy-Motown Collection of LPs, singles, and various materials associated with the music. His team is using EAD to write the finding aid, with MARC as the metadata format, because matrix numbers for the discs are particularly important for discovery. DSpace, which uses Dublin Core, is the software they are using for their institutional repository, so they wrote a crosswalk from MARC to Dublin Core. However, they are moving the collection to LUNA, and are now writing a new crosswalk from MARC to LUNA, which uses XML. DSpace is more programmable, but really needs a programmer. They are using MARC as the metadata format because it has the most granular music cataloging standard, but it has to be translated for display on the Web.

Kelley McGrath, University of Oregon, gave a presentation entitled “FRBR & Facets Go to the Movies: Improving Access to Moving Image Materials in Libraries.” Kelley described how a new faceted prototype discovery interface from Online Audiovisual Catalogers (OLAC), based on Blacklight, makes finding multi-language, multi-ethnic DVDs and other moving image objects easier using the FRBR principles. MARC, unfortunately, doesn’t provide enough browsability by release date or language. So, they planned facets to answer such questions as “What kind of movie do you want to watch?” “What kind of format do you want it in?” and “What is your choice of language?” They adapted the FRBR Group 1 entities specifically for this project. OLAC provided a practical compromise, with Work = primary expression. FRBR allows the search results to focus on the original work, rather than the expression. All the expressions can be collocated and the key attributes brought out, so that the user can decide which version is wanted. Facets limit the results sets, so users can do more complex searches than they would bother to do with advanced search.

Kevin Clair, Pennsylvania State University, presented “Data Management and You,” explaining how large data sets are being stored and shared. In the past, research faculty didn’t have to worry about preserving their data. Now, both the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities require data management plans with their grant applications. Also, institutional repositories are becoming more common in the campus library or other campus entity. Faculty plans are often skeletal, though, and there may be no more than a sentence about metadata. The role of the metadata librarian should be to work with faculty, finding out their needs for depositing the data, giving advice on standards and delivery mechanisms, and the role that metadata plays in making the data more accessible.

And finally, Karen Miller, University of Chicago, reported on a fascinating study which showed that title records enhanced with the table of contents, which are keyword-searchable, have 25 percent greater circulation. Northwestern’s Voyager catalog allows for keyword, phrase keyword, and keyword anywhere. She searched OPAC search logs from 2007 to 2011, and learned that 41 percent of all search queries produced no results!?! In a random sample of 3000 queries/keyword searches, 27 percent were keywords only, and 86 percent of those used only one word or phrase. Voyager searches keywords in every MARC field, so some searches produced very odd matches, including with the 040 or 041 fields. But 28 percent matched on the table of contents or 520 summary field, and 45 percent on such transcribed fields as the 245 and 260. Another 43 percent matched only with a subject heading. Karen concluded that tables of contents and summary fields are well worth the added effort to provide enhanced access.

Competencies & Education for a Career in Cataloging Interest Group

Submitted by Sylvia Hall-Ellis

Approximately sixteen people attended the Competencies & Education for a Career in Cataloging Interest Group meeting, held Friday, June 24 at 3pm. The group is charged with discussing the current state of education and employment in cataloging and exploring the relationship of cataloging practitioners and employers with library educators.

I. Managed discussion of Annual Conference 2012 proposed topics

Competencies needed for a hybrid cataloging environment
Changes in cataloging and succession planning
Cataloging competencies that practitioners want educators to teach
Attracting a new generation to cataloging through elimination of stereotypes

II. Proposed speakers

Library of Congress: Barbara Tillett, Judy Kuhagen
NAL: Chris Cole
Ex Libris: propose name
OCLC: Glenn Patton
Southwest Texas State University: Elaine Sanchez
University of North Texas: Shawne D. Miksa

Angela Kinney began the meeting by reminding those in attendance that ALCTS CCS Interest Groups are required at Annual Conference to conduct the business of selecting officers. The group decided unanimously that Sylvia Hall-Ellis would continue into her second and final year as chair, with Angela Kinney as vice-chair, coming in as chair following Annual Conference 2012.

A dialogue ensued about managed discussions versus formal programs and what would be the best approach for the first formal presentation of this interest group. Because a formal program requires much more preparation and various levels of ALCTS and Cataloging and Metadata Management Section (formerly Cataloging and Classification Section) permission, a managed discussion was felt to be less work, while at the same time providing the visibility the interest group needs to get on the Annual Conference schedule. Everyone agreed that having meetings on Friday afternoon at 3pm was excellent, as it presented no conflict with other ALCTS meetings, and thereby leaves time for librarians to attend any future programs the interest group may schedule. There was a question about whether the time period could be expanded from 2:30 to 4pm, but Sylvia informed the group that the time is set within the structure and guidelines of the formal ALCTS conference schedule.

There was a question about whether the topics for the managed discussion could be broken up into groups for Midwinter Meeting and Annual Conference, and all agreed. Once topics are identified, a moderator should also be selected. There will need to be advertisements about the managed discussions posted via ALA Connect, AUTOCAT and other electronic discussion lists, and to the ALCTS leadership. All speakers should be given sufficient time to speak with time for questions at the end. There was discussion about the fact that although RDA is a hot topic at present, but the timeframe of implementation no earlier than January 2013 (two years into the future) when the national libraries (Library of Congress, National Agricultural Library, and National Library of Medicine) begin to implement the new cataloging code. Decisions at other libraries are likely to happen in this timeframe as well. The managed discussions should focus on competencies needed for hybrid catalogers, the deliberate move away from the MARC format, and the management of several schemas in libraries. Faculty at library schools are meeting to determine what they are going to teach, whether it be RDA and/or AACR2, how to make the transition to RDA, and what can be taught at larger schools so that smaller schools can follow the same format.

Members in attendance decided to invite two speakers per managed discussion and have a presentation on cataloging in RDA with a non-MARC framework for the first managed discussion. RDA testers could be tapped to do a presentation if they are able to travel. Suggestions were to tap testers from Ohio State, the Crown Law Library at Stanford University, the University of Chicago, Library of Congress, North Carolina State University, and California State University. Suggested speakers included Chris Crosson, Charlie Pennell, Joyce Chapman, Erin Stalberg, Ric Hasenyager, and Alston Gentry. There was a suggestion to put a call out to find testers to do a presentation and to place the call well before the midwinter meeting. The audience will want to hear about the practical aspects of how to apply RDA as opposed to just the theory.

It was settled that the following title would be used for a managed discussion at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in January 2012: “RDA From the Trenches: Testers Speak about RDA Testing.”

For Annual Conference 2012, the group settled on inviting practitioners, LIS educators, and employers from academic and public institutions to speak about competencies needed in cataloging. This could spark a lively discussion or debate among employers, practitioners, and educators as to whether employers are willing to take in new employees with little or no education or practical experience in cataloging. It will also provide an opportunity to hear suggestions on what is needed to get potential employees those skills needed to go right to work.

Sylvia will host Adobe Connect meetings with the interest group members to get the planning for the first managed discussion underway. A suggested speaker for the annual conference was Dawn Loomis at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida. Other speakers may be identified during the virtual meetings.

Copy Cataloging Interest Group

Submitted by Margaret Mering

Approximately seventy-seven people attended the Copy Cataloging Interest Group meeting, held Saturday, June 25 at 10:30am.

Angela Kinney, Chief, African, Latin American and Western European Division, presented the Library of Congress report.

Erin Stalberg, Head, Metadata and Cataloging, North Carolina State University; Amy Weiss, Associate Dean, Technical Services Division, Florida State University, and Annie Glerum, Head of Complex Cataloging Department, Florida State University gave presentations on preparing copy catalogers for RDA.

Elaine A. Franco, Principal Cataloger, University of California, Davis, gave a presentation on developing “copy cataloger’s judgment” for complex and original cataloging.

Heads of Cataloging Departments Interest Group

Submitted by Linda Griffin

Approximately seventy-five people attended the Heads of Cataloging Departments Interest Group meeting, held Monday, June 27 at 8am. The majority of attendees were from academic institutions.

Program: “Preparing Copy Catalogers for RDA”

Topic overview: During this session, presenters discussed the RDA Toolkit, preparation of staff for non-book formats using RDA, and other formal and informal training used to ready catalogers for RDA.

Moderator: Linda Smith Griffin (Chair), Louisiana State University
Presenters: Troy Linker, Publisher, ALA Digital Reference, American Library Association
Jeannette Ho, Coordinator of Cataloging, Texas A&M University Libraries
Nancy Kall, Catalog Librarian, Douglas County Libraries, Colorado
Robert Rendall, Principal Serials Cataloger, Columbia University Libraries
Recorder: Christopher Cronin (Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect), University of Chicago

Presentation Slides: The presenters have kindly made their slides available on the Heads of Cataloging IG’s ALA Connect page at: http://connect.ala.org/node/66155.

Troy Linker, Publisher, ALA Digital Reference, American Library Association

Double-use offer for the RDA Toolkit has been extended for an extra year to August 31, 2012, which could prove especially useful for copy cataloging because an institution can double the amount of subscriptions at no extra cost. Details at http://www.rdatoolkit.org/blog/189.
ALA is planning on having three “virtual user group” meetings per year, which will work like webinars and allow users to exchange ideas on how to improve the Toolkit.
First one will be July 12, 2011. Someone from the Test Coordinating Committee will be there. ALA will demo the new ToC design, the ability to re-order results by rule number, relevancy ranking, and also the speed issue related to loading the entire chapter will be fixed soon. Rather than load the whole chapter for context, it will load according to logical page breaks.
Troy clarified that rather than use the word “rewrite,” the Coordinating Committee should more appropriately have used the word “reword” in its RDA recommendations, as the content of the instructions will not change, just the language. ALA will approach the editorial process in much the same way it does for translations, where they update wording/language.

An audience member asked, “Is it better to go to the Toolkit through Cataloger’s Desktop, rather that the Toolkit directly?” Linker answered that, “This is really user preference. When you open the Toolkit from Desktop, you are going directly into the Toolkit itself, not a different Desktop version. All changes to the Toolkit will apply, no matter how you get into it. Whenever you see the full text of RDA, you are in the Toolkit. Same with OCLC Connexion.”

Jeannette Ho, Coordinator of Cataloging, Texas A&M University Libraries

One of the essential aspects of training is the core elements, and developing an understanding that the core is a floor, not a ceiling.
Jeannette outlined a number of the major changes between AACR2 and RDA, including chief sources of information, preferred titles, statements of responsibility, the differences in moving from GMDs into 33Xs, and the multiple options for recording types of media and discs in the 300 field.
The 538 field can be used in some circumstances to record mode of access or media required, but usually do not show up in brief record displays.
Jeannette provided an overview of challenges related to publication/distribution/manufacture, etc., especially for moving images (i.e., videos), where publication information may not be present on the resource.
Jeannette recommended that copy catalogers be encouraged to go beyond the core when including access points, and to continue to justify them in records. Be generous.
Relationship designators: will you accept as-is in copy? Are some so obvious, like “author,” that they need not be applied?

Replying to a question from the audience, Ho said that it's possible that large umbrella groups like OLAC will create vocabularies for relationship designators.

Nancy Kall, Catalog Librarian, Douglas County Libraries, Colorado

Douglas County has not yet trained its copy catalogers in RDA, so she will share considerations based on experience as a formal RDA tester. One of their original catalogers has continued cataloging with RDA after the test (for books and special collections).
Institutions will need to consider: what are the training goals; what should be covered; what existing training can be used? Trainees will need exercises and lots of examples.
Douglas County asked its systems administrator to identify all RDA records coming in as copy. Approximately 150 records were added between Jan-May 2011.Seventy-five per cent were their own records, with the remainder mostly from LC, so the timing was likely not right for them to start training copy catalogers.
Catalogers at Douglas County believe that RDA really does have the ability to take us beyond the walls and silos of libraries, but it will also require copy catalogers to have at least some understanding of linked data, FRBR models, and the Semantic Web generally. They will need to know and have more than “cheat sheets” – they will need to understand FRBR concepts.

Robert Rendall, Principal Serials Cataloger, Columbia University Libraries

Columbia also has not yet done much training with copy cataloging staff, who are largely decentralized organizationally.
Columbia resumed AACR2 cataloging after the test, and will be discussing how and when to start RDA again in light of the final test report.
Robert provided an overview of main questions managers have received from catalogers over the past few months:
- Capitalization conventions
- Abbreviations
- Presence of 33X fields
- CIP completion (300 fields; entering publication and copyright dates)
Managers are now going through Columbia’s local cataloging manuals and documentation to see what would need to be revised for copy catalogers specifically. These include instructions on basic copy cataloging, CIP completion, and cataloging of variant editions.

When asked how RDA changes are being communicated to public services staff, Rendall replied that Columbia catalogers presented on RDA to the OPAC committee and reference librarians. They are working with ways to get icons to make both AACR2 and RDA work well together. Kall added that someone from Douglas County public services was on the RDA test team.

Rendall said that Columbia probably won’t use Toolkit workflows for copy catalogers initially, though Library of Congress has some that are available in the Toolkit that may be useful.

Collection Management Interest Groups

Collection Development Issues for the Practitioner Interest Group

Submitted by Shin Freedman

Collection Development Issues for the Practitioner Interest Group met Sunday, June 26 at 1:30pm.

The group had a full two hours of engaging conversations on various topics including Patron-Driven Acquisitions (PDA) practice, outreach, policy and workflow change and e-reader use, strategies and solutions for PDA implementation from the practitioners' perspective. Although most participants were from academic libraries, we also had practitioners from public libraries and the discussion threads were found to be common to all of us.

Harriet Lightman, incoming chair for the Collection Management Section in 2011-2012, was present at our meeting. Other issues identified were the role of the liaison, subject specialist and the selector in the patron initiated acquisition model.

The details on the profile setting, the selection type of e-books, upper limits of the e-book pricing setup, e-reader options and usage were shared amongst the participants who just started out with the PDA as well as librarians whose libraries have adopted PDA for over a year.

Collection Management and Development in Public Libraries Interest Group

Submitted by Bleue Benton

Approximately forty-five people attended the Collection Management and Development in Public Libraries Interest Group meeting, held Monday, June 27, at 1:30pm.

This group, jointly sponsored by ALCTS Collection Management Section (CMS) and RUSA Collection Development and Evaluation Section (CODES) continued its tradition of lively and engaged discussion. Attention was focused on e-books and other e-content.

Collection Development Librarians of Academic Libraries Interest Group

Submitted by Jared Ingersoll

Approximately fifty people attended the Collection Development Librarians of Academic Libraries Interest Group meeting, held Saturday, June 25 at 4pm.

The group held a panel discussion titled “Out of Sight and On Our Minds: New Developments in Shared Storage.” University of Florida Libraries Dean Judy Russell discussed new cooperative shared storage programs in the State of Florida and by the Association of Southeast Research Libraries (ASERL).

Princeton Associate University Librarian for Collection Development David Magier discussed changes envisioned and proposed for the ReCAP facility shared by Princeton, Columbia and the New York Public Library.

Continuing Resources Section Interest Groups

Access to Continuing Resources Interest Group

Submitted by Heather Staines

Approximately eighty-five people attended the Access to Continuing Resources Interest Group meeting, held Sunday, June 26 at 4pm.

The panel, “The Age of Discovery: Understanding Discovery Services, Federated Search, and Web Scale” was presented, featuring speakers Abe Lederman, Founder and CTO, Deep Web Technologies; Chip Nilges, Vice President of Business Development, OCLC; Donald Gilstrap, Dean of University Libraries, Wichita State University; Rachel Vacek, Head of Web Services, University of Houston Libraries.

There was a healthy discussion of the pros and cons of different discovery options, including an overview by Chip Nilges, and a deeper look at federated search by Abe Lederman. Key to the discussion were the experiences of two librarians, Rachel Vacek and Don Gilstrap, in evaluating and implementing discovery and search tools. Key issues raised by the audience included how well (or how poorly) multimedia content is found in these various discovery services and the role that faculty liaisons play in the process.

Incoming Chair Anneliese Taylor and Incoming Vice-Chair Kristi Ward were in attendance. No panel topic has yet been chosen for Midwinter Meeting, but Heather briefed Anneliese about the coming changes to the conference scheduler.

College & Research Libraries Interest Group

Submitted by Beth Bernhardt

The College & Research Libraries Interest Group meet on Sunday, June 26 at 10:30am. Approximately twenty attendees enjoyed three presentations on several different subjects.

“Creating a Virtuous Circle of Access: Integrating Local Web-Scale Discovery Services in JSTOR” was presented by Bruce Heterick, Vice President of Outreach and Participation Services for Portico. Heterick discussed how discovery has exploded as a theme for libraries in the past several years, as the online catalog and other traditional library-provided discovery points have faced stiff competition from consumer web search engines and their academic offerings. Recently, “web-scale discovery services” have gained increasing prominence as a possible solution for libraries in their efforts to remain relevant as a starting point for research. There is broad consensus, however, that only a small percentage of users are initiating their research at library-designated starting places, and that the library needs to pursue a more comprehensive set of solutions, which includes integrating local discovery implementations with other important research gateways. At JSTOR, a pilot program has recently been initiated in an effort to help libraries leverage the not-insignificant investments they are making in discovery services by exposing these local web-scale discovery systems to their end-users from within the JSTOR interface. Heterick discussed the data that led JSTOR to initiate the project, how the pilot program works, and the initial results of the pilot.

“How to Do SERU” was presented by Selden Durgom Lamoureux, Electronic Resources Librarian, North Carolina State University Libraries. Shared E-Resource Understanding (SERU) has been an alternative to licensing since it became a NISO Best Practice in 2008. This was a quick and informative how-to for those who would like to use SERU.

“Waking up from the Dream: Can Resource in Common Work” was presented by Wyoma van Duinkerken, Coordinator of Cataloging Record Support and Crystal Vinal, Administrative Coordinator, Texas A&M University Libraries. Texas A&M University Libraries-College Station (TAMU) and the University of Texas-Austin Libraries (UT) decided to build a joint print collaborative storage facility which would operate as a jointly owned collection. This storage unit would be different than a repository storage unit since ownership would rest with both institutions instead of having the ownership of the item transfer to a repository storage unit.

Driven by the current economic condition, the rationale for this joint project rested on the foundation that both universities needed a long term cost effective solution to their space constraints rather than a short term quick fix that would address the current higher education budget reductions but still have these two institutions facing the same problem a few years down the road. Both institutions wanted to save money by avoiding future campus construction costs, and knew if they took the cooperative storage collection one step further and adopted the concept of Resources in Common (RIC), they would be able to achieve their goal. Unlike most other cooperative storage units, TAMU and UT decided they would de-duplicate their print collections and achieve this cost saving goal by housing only one print copy owned and shared by the two institutions. Despite extensive planning efforts, a number of problems were encountered during the actual implementation. This presentation discusses these unexpected challenges that can undermine a RIC model so that other institutions can anticipate and address them earlier in the process.

The new chair-elect, Melissa Behney was introduced.

Preservation and Reformatting Section Interest Groups

Book & Paper Interest Group

Submitted by Laura Bedford

Approximately forty-one people attended the Book & Paper Interest Group (BPIG) meeting, held Saturday, June 25 at 10:30am.

The session was split into two presentation sections. Whitney Baker and Liz Dube presented “How Consistent are Book Conservation Treatment Practices in Research Libraries?” based upon their 2010 LRTS article “Identifying Standard Practices in Research Library Book Conservation.”

Their research confirmed that hybrid conservators and hybrid conservation facilities do indeed represent the middle ground based upon their survey’s respondents; that special collection conservators tended to use more complex treatments than hybrid or general collections conservators; and that conservator training was a strong indicator of frequency of complex treatments considered as standard practice. As this survey was initially conducted in 2007, it was suggested from the floor that it might be time to revisit it again (five years being seen as an acceptable amount of time for significant change to have occurred within the field), but that funding might been needed to support the amount of time away from work that both conducting the survey and analyzing/writing up the results would take. There was also discussion about linking these results to some of the preliminary results Jennifer Hain Teper reported in the earlier Preservation Administrators Interest Group session, regarding her survey on Library and Archives Conservation Education Needs.

The second portion of the program was a “Conservation on the Move” panel discussing the ongoing trend of preservation units separated from main library buildings or completely off-campus. The short- and long-term effects of such a move were discussed. Cathy Martyniak, Head, Preservation Department, University of Florida spoke about her survey of those ARL libraries who had already moved off-site and the pluses and minuses of such a move (ability to offer comparable levels of service, but had to pay student workers a bit more to work longer, and more back and forth traffic to campus to attend meetings). Kara McClurken, Head, Preservation Services, University of Virginia, shared her challenges with being given a space half the size of what was agreed upon and within a temporary structure. It forced her to rework some previously undesirable space within the main library into a preservation space and focus all special collections treatment into the new lab space. She came up with a great marketing poster campaign to help staff learn who worked where, under the moniker “Faces and Places.” Evelyn Frangakis, Chief, Preservation Division, New York Public Library, was the final speaker. She shared mouth-watering images of her newly built out lab, three times the size of the old one with custom, adjustable workspace layouts; a specific disaster recovery room with separate HVAC and collection storage space with separate HVAC; a light table over six feet long with adjustable height; and space for up to thirty conservators, although she only has roughly twelve currently on staff. It is a dream space that deserves its own ticketed tour for interested parties.

With so many terrific presentations, there was no opportunity for more announcements from the floor. Laura Bedford will be the continuing co-chair, with Katie Risseeuw, Preservation Librarian, Northwestern University, as an incoming co-chair. Given the hard economic times and restricted or non-existent travel budgets, BPIG is exploring sharing the co-chair duties amongst three people instead of two. With approval from Preservation and Reformatting Section (PARS) Executive Committee, BPIG will explore using Skype to virtually bring in those co-chairs who can’t physically attend the Midwinter Meeting session, and will report back on the success of that experiment. A potential session topic for Midwinter 2012 in Dallas might be advocacy for exhibits—are institutions being pressured to increase exhibit space or rotations, or actually creating them at all? Any exhibit horror stories or retrofits to share? Any challenges getting resources allocated to exhibits, or materials you don’t want put on exhibit?

Digital Preservation Interest Group

Submitted by Sue Kellerman

“It’s all Geek to Me: Demystifying Digital Preservation Systems” was the program topic for the Sunday, June 26 interest group meeting. Approximately forty-three people attended the 8am meeting. Representatives from Archivematica, OCLC, DuraSpace, Chronopolis, and Amazon provided information on each of their respective digital preservation management systems. Peter Van Garderen kicked off the session with the latest news on Archivematica as an open source microservices digital preservation system. While still in beta development, they currently have five active clients using the system and twenty to thirty pilot testers. For more information on Archivematica see http://archivematica.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page.

Taylor Surface, OCLC’s Senior Product Manager, provided an overview of their Digital Archive Service, a dark archive system. The Digital Archive system offers a secure manageable service/storage system, physical security, data security, data backups, disaster recovery, and has ISO 9001 certification for its management system. See www.oclc.org/digitalarchive/default.htm for more information on this OCLC product. DuraSpace Partner Specialist Carissa Smith shared information on their soon-to-be-released (by fall 2011) DuraCloud open source platform and managed services for on-demand storage of digital content. Benefits of this system include a web interface to content, image transformation, and media streaming. See www.duracloud.org for more information. David Minor gave an update on the fee-based Chronopolis Digital Preservation Program. This program was created by the San Diego Supercomputer Center, University of California-San Diego Libraries, the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies. As a dark archive and iRODS-based system solution, Chronopolis serves as a long-term preservation solution for digital content through mass-scale storage. System features include geographically distributed copies of data, audit reporting, and development of best practices for data packaging and sharing. They have completed a year-long TRAC audit and are waiting for the findings of the audit to be released. For more information on Chronopolis see https://chronopolis.sdsc.edu/.

The final presentation was a WebEx session from Sri Vasireddy from Amazon Web Services. Sri shared an overview on their cloud computing platform and their pay-as-you-go services. For more information on their suite of products and services see http://aws.amazon.com/products/.

A period of questions and answers followed the presentations along with a call for a volunteer to serve as the next co-chair of the group. No names were offered from the audience but all were encouraged to contact the current co-chairs for more information on serving the IG in this leadership position.

Presentation materials are available in ALA Connect.

Intellectual Access to Preservation Metadata Interest Group

Submitted by Nicole Saylor

The PARS Intellectual Access to Preservation Metadata Interest Group hosted a panel titled, “Real-life Tales of Using PREMIS,” on Saturday, June 25, 2011 in Morial Convention Center, room 284. Forty people were in attendance.

Rebecca Guenther, Senior Networking and Standards Specialist at the Library of Congress, provided an overview of PREMIS and discussed current directions.

Peter Van Garderen, President/Systems Archivist at Artefactual Systems Inc. offered a first-hand account of PREMIS implementation in Archivematica. Archivematica is a comprehensive open source digital preservation system in compliance with the OAIS functional model. The system uses METS, PREMIS, Dublin Core and other best practice metadata standards. It is being developed in partnership with City of Vancouver Archives, UNESCO Memory of the World, and the University of British Columbia Library.

Andrew Hart, Head of the Preservation Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, then shared an example of implementing PREMIS for the Carolina Digital Repository, UNC-Chapel Hill’s institutional repository using Fedora and iRODS.

All presentations are included in ALA Connect.

During the IAPM business meeting that followed the panel, Janet Gertz, chair of the PARS Audio Preservation Metadata Task Force, announced that the task force had completed its work and the group was officially dissolved. Interest group members called for a similar task force to develop preservation metadata standards for video. There was a question of whether that group should convene at the PARS or ALCTS level. The interest group is looking for an enthusiastic and qualified volunteer to lead this charge.

In other business, Shawn Averkamp, Metadata Librarian at the University of Alabama Libraries, was named vice chair of the interest group. Meghan Banach, Coordinator of the Bibliographic Access and Metadata Unit at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, now assumes the chair role, which was vacated by outgoing chair Nicole Saylor, head of Digital Library Services at the University of Iowa Libraries.

Preservation Administrators Interest Group

Submitted by George Blood

Approximately sixty-three people attended the Preservation Administrators Interest Group meeting, held Friday, June 24 at 12pm.

12–12:15pm. Welcome, Tara Kennedy, Chair of PARS

12:15–12:35pm. “From Baby Steps to Full Strides: Preservation Week Update,” Jeanne Drewes, Chief Binding and Collections Care Division, Program Manager, Mass Deacidification, Preservation Directorate, Library of Congress

Preservation week 2012 will be April 22–29, 2012
The Library of Congress Preservation Department has a new web site. Offers language for disaster recovery.

12:35–1pm. “A New Tool for Prioritizing Collections for Emergency Plans,” Tara Kennedy, Preservation Field Services Librarian, Yale University Library

www.library.yale.edu/about/departments/preservation/
Pictures are up of Yale preservation week activities

1:00–1:30pm. “Validating Quality in Large-Scale Digitization,” Jackie Bronicki, Associate Librarian-IMLS Project Coordinator, University of Michigan

1:30–2pm. “Investigating Library and Archives Conservation Education Needs: a Preliminary Study,” Jennifer Hain Teper, Head, Preservation and Conservation Units, University of Illinois Libraries

2:30–3:30pm. “Library Collections: Results from the Ithaka S+R Faculty Survey 2010,” Matthew Long, Analyst, and Ross Housewright, Senior Analyst, Ithaka S+R

3:30–3:45pm. Roger Smith from UCSD is the new PAIG co-chair

Posters

Saving Our Scholarship: Retrospective Dissertation Scanning Project at George A. Smathers Library
Christine Shorey, Reformatting Technician, and Robert Parker, Binding Unit Head, University of Florida Preservation Department
Book Preservation
Gary Frost, Conservator, University of Iowa Libraries
Environmental Monitoring at the Library of Congress
Benjamin Bahlmann, Preservation Specialist, Conservation Division, Library of Congress
Where Steampunk Meets Cyberpunk: Surveying Victorian Publisher Bindings for Large Scale Digitization
Emily Shaw, Preservation and Conservation Coordinator for Large Scale Digitization, University of Illinois Libraries