ALA: Hot and Humid

Maybe it’s because I live in Nova Scotia, but it is hot and humid in Chicago.  I’m lovin’ it!

I just got back from the Satellite Registration at the Hyatt.  Unfortunately, they have already run out of bags and badge holders.  So, tomorrow I’ll have to pick those up at the convention centre.  Tonight, however, I’m looking forward to my dinner cruise with the NoveList crowd.  If the weather continues to stay warm and the rain holds off, it will be a beautiful evening out on the lake.

My first impression of this conference is extremely positive.  It doesn’t hurt that librarians are all so friendly that even when you’re in a crowd of strangers, you feel strangely at home.  I shared an airport shutte into downtown with a great batch of friendly and chatty librarians.  Looks like we’re all in for a good time!

ALA: Chicago 2009

While many of my colleagues are already arriving in Chicago, I’ll be arriving tomorrow afternoon.  It’s my first ALA conference and, I’m told, the Chicago ones are always exciting and enjoyed by all.

While I’m there, I will be blogging about my experience as well as the sessions I attend.  This is what my schedule looks like:

Saturday, July 11th
8:00 – 10:00
EP NoveList Focus Group
10:30 – 12:00
Continuing the Conversation: A Further Exploration of the Brave New World of Metadata
1:30 – 5:30
Look Before You Leap: Taking RDA for a Test Drive

Sunday, July 12th
1:30 – 3:00
Ex Libris Primo: Redifining what it means to be “at the library” (*however, there’s also an RA session of interest at this time too)

5:30 – 7:00
ALCTS Awards Ceremony (this is where I will receive the Esther J. Piercy award!). What an honour.

Monday, July 13th
8:00 – 10:00
Resuscitating the Catalog: Next-Generation Strategies for Keeping the Catalogue Relevant.

5:00 – 6:30
Cokie Roberts – speaker series (*tenative)

For the rest of the time, I’ll be wandering through the exhibits, meeting with friends and hopefully, touring around Chicago. I hope to see some of you there!

Library Catalogues are no longer an inventory but a place, and a community

We made history in the RA world at APLA this year. For the first time outside of Ontario, an RA in a Day pre-conference session was held in Canada. I was able to speak at this conference in a presentation called Social Catalogues: Enriching Content that Enhances RA Services.

Social catalogues will play a vital role in promoting RA services in the future. It’s already happening. I believe that the future of the library catalogues will rest on whether we can become a place, rather than an inventory.

When we talk about RA services, we emphasize that true RA work cannot be accomplished without the trust of our readers. What about our silent reader? Our remote readers? What about our avid readers who wish they were librarians and want to share their reading suggestions? You won’t find these readers in the library asking our RAs for help, but you will find them in the library catalogue – at least, that’s where they should be. Right now, they are using social cataloguing sites like LibraryThing. But, I believe they are just waiting for us to catch up and when we do, what’s coming will be amazing.

When I presented at the pre-conference, I emphasized the movement toward social features in our library catalogues and the new face of the library catalogue. Much of what I discussed already exists to some extent, but much of what I discussed is what’s coming, or should be coming soon. There are so many ways we can explore social technology to create a community of trust among our readers through the library catalogue. That trust will bring RA work into our readers’ homes.

From the expressions on some of the attendees’ faces, I can certainly say I was met with skepticism as well as doubt. Many “traditionalists” either don’t want to believe or have a hard time believing that the library catalogue will ever be more than a static inventory. That’s unfortunate. However, many more librarians were eager to hear my ideas and what can be accomplished in the future, should RAs and cataloguers begin working together. I am assuming this by the smiles, nods and discussions I had later that day and throughout the rest of the conference.

For so long there has been a divide (okay, a gigantic chasm) between technical services and frontline services. But, I view RA services as another “backroom” service. Like cataloguing, many people don’t understand readers’ advisory services and as a result, they believe it’s “easy”, unimportant or grounded in common sense. After all, how hard is it to suggest a book for someone to read? That’s the same attitude that many professionals have directed toward cataloguing for many years. However, both cataloguing and RA services are growing and gaining popularity. The RA work that is occurring is new and fresh, as are the changes being made to the library catalogue. This is an opportunity and a possible collaboration that cannot be ignored.

To quote Karen Calhoun, “the future is so bright, we’ll have to wear shades.”

RDA: Call for examples

The highlight at APLA (for me) was Barbara Tillett’s presentation on FRBR and RDA. Given the feedback that I received from others who attended this session, I can also say that it was a highlight for many of them as well.

Barbara’s presentation was on RDA, with a twist. Not only did she explain RDA and FRBR in a way that made complete sense (and I’ve been to other RDA sessions), but she also touched on how this is something the entire profession needs to be paying attention to, not just cataloguers. This is interesting because, up until now, many librarians have brushed it aside as a cataloguing issue. Not so! How information is retrieved, what it will retrieve and how it is presented will all change. The relationship gathering is what really excites me. And, it should excite all librarians in and out of the cataloguing department.

For those of you who aren’t aware of it, RDA registries already exist on the web. So, in theory, you can start implementing RDA today.

What I really want to post here, however, are Barbara’s slides and handouts from her presentation. One of her handouts includes examples on RDA. She is looking for more – so I am putting the call out as well. If you know Barbara, please email her and give her your examples. If you have examples you’d like to share, please post them on this blog or send them to me and I will make sure she receives them.

If you look at my previous post on APLA, you’ll notice Dr. Louise Spiteri of Dalhousie also provided her thoughts on the session. I have to second everything she has to say. And, I am very happy to see that my colleagues throughout the Maritimes are very keen on RDA. So many of our colleagues are unable to attend the larger conferences due to economic constraints, however, Barbara’s willingness to attend APLA has accomplished what I had hoped – RDA and FRBR have been brought to Atlantic Canada and cataloguers have a renewed excitement toward what they do and are taking a proactive approach to their profession as a result of her visit.

We all have our moments of doubt and concern over what the future of cataloguing is bringing, but it a well thought out future, and one we can be excited about.

The New Face of the Library Catalogue?

Casey Bisson, co-author of the blog MaisonBisson, posted a suggested design of what Amazon (and perhaps our own catalogues) should or could look like in his new post Book Search Results vs. Users.  The design concept has been around since 2006 – and it’s only coming to most of our attention now.  Interesting.  From a Readers’ Advisory perspective (collaborating with cataloguers) this looks like it has the potential to be an awesome tool for our library readers.

Isn’t the future of our catalogues and the unlimited possibilities exciting?

APLA 2009: Halifax, Nova Scotia

The Atlantic Provinces Library Association Conference is taking place in Halifax, Nova Scotia this year.  At the pre-conference tomorrow, I’m presenting at the RA in a Day session.  This is exciting and a great opportunity for cataloguers.  I’m speaking on social catalogues and what impact social software and social catalogues have and will continue to have on Readers’ Advisory services.

To my knowledge, this is the first time a cataloguing component has been incorporated into one of these RA in a Day sessions.  To be able to discuss why our library catalogues should play a role in Readers’ Services (as well as how) is a great opportunity.  It’s not often we get to “sell” ourselves to frontline staff in an attempt to bridge the gap between backroom library services and frontline staff. 

APLA Thursday, June 11th through Saturday, June 13th

I would like to promote one session in particular that will be taking place on Thursday, June 11th. Barbara Tillett has been kind enough to come up to Halifax to speak to Atlantic library professionals about FRBR.  However, it isn’t just a tech services and cataloguing session.  Barbara has opened up her presentation and is gearing it toward branch staff too.  Basically, what does FRBR mean for reference librarians?  What about staff on the reference desk or the children’s librarian?  And, of course, what does it mean for cataloguers?

I think this is a great opportunity for all librarians and library technicians to really understand that the changes that are occuring in traditional cataloguing will impact the entire profession, not just cataloguers.

We are very fortunate to have a professional from Library of Congress, especially one of Barbara Tillett’s experience and knowledge, attend APLA and share her knowledge and expertise with us.  So – I urge all of you to attend!

For those of you looking for me at APLA

In addition to presenting at the pre-conference, I am convening Barbara Tillett’s session, as well as giving another presentation on Thursday morning (a repeat of my CLA presentation).  The last session I will be convening is When Tuples Sparql: Weaving the Semantic Web, which also takes place on Thursday.

I will be at the conference all day on Friday too, as well as attending the Banquet Friday night and the brunch Saturday morning.  I look forward to seeing some of you there!

Social Catalogues – Slides in a more compatible format

In my last blog post, I uploaded the Powerpoint slides in the .pptx format, which opens easily only if you have the latest Office 2007 package.  So, I’m posting them here in the 1997-2003 format for all to access. 

Social Cataloguing Site: Features and Implications for Cataloguing Practice and the Public Library Catalogue

Social Catalogues: The New Face of the Public Library Catalogue

CLA: Slides to the Social Catalogue Session

For those of you who are interested, here are the slides from the Social Cataloguing presentation that Dr. Louise Spiteri and I gave at CLA. 

Social Cataloguing Sites: Features and Implications for Cataloguing Practice and the Public Library Catalogue, presented by Dr. Louise Spiteri

Social Catalogues: The New Face of the Public Library Catalogue, presented by Laurel Tarulli

We welcome questions, comments, feedback and ideas!

*If you have trouble opening or accessing these slides, please contact me.

CLA – Final Thoughts

A couple of days have now passed since I gave my presentation.  With over 100 attendees, resulting in a standing room only audience, I was very excited to see the interest among other professionals in social catalogues.  I think it went really well and I enjoyed myself immensely.  The audience was attentive, no one was looking at their program or dozing off, and lots of people were looking on with interest, smiles and nods (while writing notes too!)

The drawback for me and Dr. Louise Spiteri, my co-presenter, was that we only had 1 hour to present.  As a result, we ran out of time to finish the presentation – a lesson on our part and unfortunate for our attendees, because we weren’t able to share all of our ideas about how to choose a social catalogue for their library or provide them with tools and ideas on how to introduce social features (mainly free features) into library catalogues.

The feedback and interest was overwhelmingly positive, so I will be posting my presentation as well as Dr. Spiteri’s on this blog shortly (I didn’t get home until 1:00 am this morning, but the slides are coming).  This will allow all of you, as well as those who attended, to view our slides and contact me and Louise with questions, ideas, or to share what you are doing in your library.

I have the opportunity to present this session again next Thursday, June 11^th, at the APLA conference in Halifax.  Prior to giving this presentation, there are a few changes I will be making.

First, I think that I need to emphasize what we are doing right and what we excel at.  Talking with Louise, she stressed the importance of emphasizing what we do well while offering suggestions on improvements to our catalogue.  As always, we want to support these suggestions with evidence as to why we should even be considering putting the effort into these enhancements.  Louise’s research assists in this regard, as does OCLC’s new report: Online Catalogues: What Users and Librarians Want. Also, I will be trimming down my slides and presentation, focussing on ideas and examples so that I can finish in the scheduled time.

Overall, I enjoyed my experience at CLA this year.  It was great to meet other professionals across Canada and listen to what is happening in libraries throughout the country.  I feel re-charged, full of energy and excitement to jump back into work and focus on projects in my library. 

Now that I have one major presentation under my belt, I hope to do more!

CLA 2009 – Highlights

The conference is going well and I have some tidbits to add while I have the chance:

Open Source Software for Libraries: Free Your Mind and Your Data Will Follow

Nicole Engard’s presentation, Open Source Software for Libraries: Free Your Mind and Your Data Will Follow is now available on her blog, What I Learned Today.

Webfeat and Search 360 to become one

While speaking with the Serials Solutions vendors, they indicated that WebFeat and 360 Search will be integrated in about 6 months.  So, for all of you looking at federated search tools, stay tuned.  Rumour has it that they are taking the best of both products and merging them into one.

More…

I’ve added some links to my post from yesterday, including a link to OCLC’s summary of their presentation, the New World of Metadata.  All slides from the presentations at CLA will be made available after the conference on the website.  I’ll try to provide a link when the presentations are up.

CLA – The Second Day

Today was a busy day at CLA.  My first session began at 8:30.  Karen Jensen, the Science Cataloguing Librarian at McGill University presented on SACO (the subject authority component of the Program for Cooperative Cataloguing).  She took us through McGill’s experiences proposing new LC subject headings and classification numbers. 

After that session I decided to drive myself a little bit crazy, so I attended a session called C3: Replacing Dewey for Better Customer Service. That was an exercise in frustration.  While I applaud Markham Public Library for the effort and energies they have applied toward creating a new classification system, I am still confused as to why they did it.  They provided no solid evidence that Dewey wasn’t working in their libraries.  In fact, from their own “survey” they indicated that the success rate among users finding items by Dewey was 87%.  87%???  I think that, given that only 13% were finding Dewey difficult to use, an education campaign should have been attempted first, rather than the amount of resources that have gone into re-creating the wheel, or what they call creating “merchandizing” categories. 

So, they decided to ditch Dewey in an effort to create a new classification system that is more customer-centred for the remaining 13% of their users.  They did this without conducting research or basing this decision on any in-depth studies.  The introduction of this new classification system went hand-in-hand with the opening of a new branch.  Feedback from users in the new branch commenting on the new classification system indicated that the books were easier to find because the library was “more spacious” “new” and “clean”.  I also noticed the increased use in signage when implementing the new classification system.

So, is the new classification system working, or is it the product of a new library and better signage?  I don’t know, they haven’t conducted any research into this.  They also did not provide statistics as to whether circulation has increased by using this system.

If that isn’t enough to give you pause, while creating the merchandizing categories for children’s materials, they asked the children.  Not only did they seek the children’s input on what the names of the categories should be, when they adopted them, those categories that carry over into the adult collection actually are called something else.  For instance, the “health and wellness” category for adults is called “mind and body” for children.  I believe they also created a category for children along the lines of “things that go” representing anything that has to do with transportation (trains, cars, etc).  There is a different heading for adults.

While I am not opposed to change, I like my changes (especially when it’s significant and costs a lot of time and money) to be grounded in solid research and study.  It has yet to be proven that, with increased signage and an overhall of the layout of the library, the same results could have been achieved without the need for a new classification system.  Of great concern was that concrete evidence was not presented at any point in the presentation, nor was an example of a classification table for their new categories.  However, even without this evidence, the front-line librarians attending this session looked absolutely thrilled by this idea of ditching Dewey. 

I ended the day on a light-hearted note by attended The Great Debate.  This year, the topic was Be it resolved that collaboration between academic and public libraries is a waste of resources.  It was fun and a great way to relax and have a good laugh with colleagues and friends.

Tonight, I’m  just relaxing and spending the rest of my night reviewing my presentation for tomorrow.  I’m getting excited, which is far better than nervous.  Thank you to all who have sent me well-wishes.  If all goes well, I hope you’ll be hearing a lot more about future presentations on social catalogues and the potential benefits these catalogues hold for all library services.