ALA Annual 2009 Notes

ALA Annual 2009 Notes Friday, July 10, 2009 OCLC Enhance Cataloging Sharing Session 10:30a-12:00p Saturday July 11, 2009 Dewey Breakfast Automating Workflow for Metadata and Digital Objects  W181 Why Games in Libraries. Construction Ahead: Building the next-generation library services framework Worldcat Selection Users Group  (see handout of slides)  www.oclc.org/selection Sunday July 12, 2009 Active Shooter in the Library: Snapshots of Notre Dame's approach highlight some best programs and emerging best practices Catalog User & Usability Studies  Millennials Rising:  Programming and Collections for the Next Generations of library users

Katie Scullion's ALA Annual Conference Notes

Friday, July 10, 2009

OCLC Enhance Cataloging Sharing Session 10:30a-12:00p

News From OCLC:

• Draft on Record Use & Transfer of Records was withdrawn.  Will form a new group taking input from members.
• Regional Service Providers have a new name: Service Partners.  Will be calling OCLC directly for support, billed through Service Partner.

OCLC posted a new report online: What Users and Librarians Want.  There are programs at this conference based on the summaries of this report.

Q. What do you do about records for TV programs that have Series name (comprehensive title). 

A.  Hard to generalize about consistency.  Can follow or not follow the LCRI rules, esp. remakes of movies.  Season collections  shows not intened to ve viewed consecuitively, can be useful to follow LCRI rules.

Q.  When adding URLs to remotely accessed resources; so the title has specific links in catalog.  Is this ok, or should we use a less specific URL. 

A.  Most specific URL is preferred, can remove a more general URL.

Q.  Streaming video.  Is there an aggregator policy for adding bibs for streaming media?  Can we use an existing record (modified) or must create a new bib? 

A.  Either create new record based on a different provider.  Edit out 533 note or locally change it to local provider, etc.  OCLC will eventually merge duplicates into one aggregated record.

Expert Community Experiment: 

This project was scheduled to run for 6 months with potentially indefinite continuation.  It excludes the modification of CONSER and BibCo records.  LoC, blank, Level 1 eligible for edit and replace.  Send email to ASKqc@oclc.com for questions about the ECC.  Excludes some CIP encoding level field.  Must be level 8 in order to be upgradable with LoC full-record.  It was noted by Jay Weitz that there is not a lot of logic to encoding levels and hasn't been for a long, long time.  Completeness levels no longer really hold and are under review; especially in view of the upcoming RDA implementation.  Encoding levels are expected to be simplified.  Lots of libraries are participating in the Expert Community Experiment.  OCLC has offered 5 live webinars and had over 900 institutions participate.  The webinars can be accessed on OCLC's website.  In February 2009 over 5K replacements were made.  During the months of March-June, 17-18K replacements were made.  This program enables non-Enhanced institutions to upgrade and improve bib records.  Libraries not in Enhance Program will not get credits; though OCLC is reviewing the work and expects to give some form of credit to libraries for their work produced.  The Credit Program is also scheduled to be re-evaluated in the next year or so.  OCLC has come to realize that no one understands their parallel record policy.  For libraries participating as Enhanced Program may Possibly will enable merging of records, typeco, bib record maintence, change type code M to A (can do now) to expand capabilities of Enhanced Institutions.

MARC Update includes holdings format 8 & 9.  All MARC codeless changes since 7/2008 including repeatable fields are being implemented next month.  See TB 257 for details.  400 field is obsolete.  4xx/8xx combinations, 502 subfieds for dissertations, 542 copyright status.  Validating 047|2 music cataloging...

Duplicate Dectection & Resolution:  ran DDR from 1995- 16x (once per year).  Moving to the new software, the DDR program wouldn't work.  Has been recreated.  Is running (small batches) now.  Testing on records without holdings compared with similar records with holdings. Have been reviewing every single merge.  When they run on large batches they'll lose the ability to monitor individual changes.  Rate of duplication is 4-7% of records viewed are duplicates.

Saturday July 11, 2009

Dewey Breakfast

The panel discussed what it means to use Dewey (especially in light of libraries claiming DDC is too complicated for patron use).  OCLC defends Dewey is very useful for several reasons including that it is language independent; there's a large amount of already categorized content; there are interoperable translations, mappings, and strong organizational support; and there is a worldwide user community.

The World Digital Library was to have been shown, but the panel was unable to connect to the Internet from the Hilton.(www.wdl.org)  This is a great example of a digital archive with embedded bibliographic data that links to other relevant arcana.

Bib Record Changes

082 has two new related fields:  083 and 085

     085 is for synthesized classification numbers  (shows how the class numbers are derived)

     083 is for alternative Dewey class numbers.

            |m identifies whether the entry is standard or optional

            |a  standard

            |b  who assigned the call number

Use of 083

Use 083 for creation of Dewey Neighborhoods (Topeka, KS)  groups items together physically while retaining orginal call number for subject and classification analytical values

Use of 085 for training of how the numbers are derived.

Multilingual Linked Data  (check out Audio Scrobbler and Music Brainz)

http://dewey.info/class/641/

WebDewey 2.0  in the process of being rethought.  OCLC is looking to simplify the WebDewey display and to reflect changes to MARC 21.  User notes will carry forward.

Automating Workflow for Metadata and Digital Objects  W181

Presentation:  Herding Cats: Brown University Studio for Digital Objects

Digitizing stuff:  need to keep track of the stuff.  Create metadata, conduct quality control on the metadata.  Create records that identify state of processing in addition to the metadata itself.

Using Schematron for Analyzing Conformance to best practices for EAD, TEI, and MODS  by Jenn Riley Indiana University Digital Library Program.

Challenge:  consistent metadata difficult to create.  Common tools:  schema validation, tags, XML templates, example documents, keyboard macros, detailed encoding guidelines

Create machine readable validation of a file against local encoding guidelines.  Created too: Schematron (http://www.schematron.com) <oXygen/> plugin architecture.  Oxygen is an XML editor.

Based on RLG EAD report card.

Why Games in Libraries.

For Seniors

Put game time for seniors after computer classses for seniors

ALA Gaming Toolkit(Librarians Guide to Gaming: an online toolkit to building games at your library) contains over 40 game projects

Games lead to learning.  People state that games are violent, and yes, first person shooters games are violent.  But just like books and movies some of them are violent also and libraries collect them and make them available for personal use.  Respond to the concern of game violence with same policy as films you would show in the library (not necessarily for private/home use).

Games is not all about shooting. 

Licensing and copyright.  Especially PC games.  Statistics show patrons aren't using PC games.  Overdrive offers PC games.  Most users are interested in console games.

RPGmaker (free)  Scratch by MIT  Ben10 Little Big Plan (Playstation)  Junkyard Game (players make games out of stuff, then trade games between teams.  GameMaker. 

Construction Ahead: Building the next-generation library services framework

Ex Libris sponsored.

Re: Unified Resource Management

Libraries are at a Crossroad.  They're being impacted by Google, Web 2.0 services and mass digitization.  Local budgets are either static or are decreasing.   Thus forcing reduction in staff and collections.  Yet, users have higher expectations of the services libraries can provide!  Maintaining dual formats (print & electronics) is not managable in the long run.  It is recommended to reposition library and information tools and resources.

Think big, Think outside the box do things differently, stop doing this that don't make sense. Get rid of silos, eliminate redundancies, redesign library processes, reduce complexity, or if not, retain complexity where it's really ncecessary, reduce TCO of library system.

Economic downturn is forcing academic libraries to migrate to electronic & digital much more quickly.

Some suggestions include:  Improve accounts payable linkages.  Link ILS data for electronic resouces with ERM (electronic records management) data and link resolver data. Pull selection staff even tighter into these processes.  Establish collaborative and consortial selection, take advantage of FRBRization, globally edit bib records.  Link to reviews. 

Stop doing?  Stop collecting fines.  Overhead is too high. 

Nex generation library systems need to be more lighweight, less montlithing; expose special unique collections.

Challenge the myth of access versus ownership.

Use metadata created earlier in the supply chain (publishers, other catalogers)  and do less dinking around with metadata

Be open to and support user-contributed metadata in our descriptive record.  Users value evaluative and other information in Amazon, etc.

Streamline manual approval of firm orders.

Create linkages between payment systems

Current problems:  

ERMs don't integrate very well with current ILSes.

Worldcat Selection Users Group  (see handout of slides)  www.oclc.org/selection

OCLC Update

Libraries across the country are dealing with lean budgets and staff shortages

Update 

Midwest Tapes is coming on as a vendor supplying MARC records

You can now order and bring in records via FTP.

You can now display holdings data for multiple institution symbols

Lean Budges & Staff Shortages (SUNY Binghamtom U, Caryl Ward, Head of Acq)

Take a look at “ITSO Cul”.  It's be basis of the new WorldCat Selection Tool for academic libraries.  Basically it allows a library to transition from paper slips to electronic notification and consolidates selection tools by using vendor review consolidation.  Vendors upload vendor-generated MARC records into WorldCat.  Library staff log into WorldCat Selection and a list of new bibs are presented based on the selector's account.  The selector can either approve, remove, or pass the bib record to another selector.  Selected items are then exported to the local ILS, and orders are uploaded to the purchasing agent.

Sunday July 12, 2009

Active Shooter in the Library: Snapshots of Notre Dame's approach highlight some best programs and emerging best practices

The film:  Shots Fired... When Lightning Strikes helps provide a survivors mindset.

Awareness, mindset, rehearsal 

Real gunshots sound artifical

Get out, hidout, take out.

Figure out what's happening, assume the worst, get out to a safer area fast!  Leave belongings behind, call authorities (everyone with a cell phone should be calling!  Don't assume someone else is making the call).  Hide if you can't get out.  Keep out of the way of the shooter.  Blockade the door, turn off lights.  Silence your cell phone if hiding.  Spread out in the room.  Help those hurt with basic first aid.  Assume the shooter's intention's are real. 

When officiers arrive, show your hands.  This tells them you're not an agressor.  tell the police the location of shooter(s), the number of shooters, the type of firearms involved.  Don't expect the police to help you.  Follow their instructions.

In a hostage situation, the agressor will want to take people into their control.  They will want to keep the hostages alive.  Maintain compuosure and be complient.

Get training!  A trained person will respond in a situation as rehearsed.  Untrained person will likely panic.

The active shooter mantra:  Get out... hide out... keep out... or take out

In a typical police response to an active shooter situation:  Police may take 5 minutes to arrive.  Shooter situation likely begins within 7 minutes of arrival within the building.  Police will actively enter the situation, and begin ordering folks around.  The policie will ask people to show our hands in order to find those hiding.  Listen and do what you're told.  Follow orders quickly, but slowly so as not to be suspicious.  The entire situation will be over very quickly.  Police will immediately attempt to attack the shooter.

Prevention:

Watch for indicators in co-workers.

Build a relationship with your local police.  Help them to understand what your jobs are.  Work with the police to develop a program to train staff on how to respond; have police participate in the development of the program.  You should be review your program annually with the police.  Try drills in several different situations or with the staff in areas not their usual work areas.  Consider unusual situations like what to do if there are deaf or blind staff or patrons around?

UW-Madison has a really good active shooter program. It's been developed for faculty and staff.

Work with HR & Police to develop a program on how to respond to an active shooter situation.

Build police and library partnerships through communication and interaction.

How to prevent situations?  Vigilant observation and appropriate reaction.  Human beings are experts in predicting violent behavior (gut feeling, 6^th sense, feminine intuition).  Never dismiss intuition.  Take action, don't change your mind.  Avoiding violent behavior.  Call the police.

Begin a dialog with community relations, crime prevention, deputy or chief of police.  Ask how you can make your environment safer for an active shooter situation.  You want to create partnerships to prevent situations from occuring.  The more you work and see the police officers, the higher the comfort level rises for both the police and the library staff.  The police need to know where the exits are and the floor plans.

Hold safety activities at the libraries like Bike Rodeos in the parking lot, etc.  Put local police officiers in the Read posters and place those posters on the walls of the library!  Invite the local Chief to hold programs and chats open to staff and public.  Offer opportunities for police to assist with programs for specific population groups, etc. like Internet safety, babysitting training, dealing with homeless, security staff training, child safety presentations., etc.

Prepare for an active shooter response plan.  Meeting with the police to discuss a plan and tour of facility.  Discuss a hard lockdown vs. a soft lockdown.  Security survey:  Where are you most vulnerable?  Office Space:  Where can staff and patrons go for safety from a threat?  Doors: which doors lock?

Catalog User & Usability Studies 

(a report based OCLC's report: Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want.)

Delivery is more important than discovery!!

Our patrons are shoppers, they have a shopper mentality,   Undergrads like lists and graphics

Top 5 endusers' enhancements:  more links to online content/full text; more subject information than provided by subject headings, added summaries, added tables of content, more information in the details “tab”; faceted search to more quickly find relevant materials; availibility.

enduser recommendations regarding online catalogs:  improve search relevance, add more links to online full text, add more summaries, and add cover art

Librarian responses:  Merge duplicate records, add table of contents, add summaries to records, fix typos, upgrade brief records, add cover art,...

In a lot of ways, librarians and endusers want similar things from the online catalog

Regarding what Catalogers feel is important:  full complete records, almost no one else cares.

Recommendations:

Align TS with what end users want:

Pay attention to what's important about records

align technical services priorities with end user priorities.

Redesign workflows of TS with end-users priorities

Evidence based cataloging...

Buying what users want based on Bowker Statistics 2004-2007

Digital collections are important to users.  70-% of hits on loc.gov are to the American History webiste.

Pictures are huge!!

Millennials Rising:  Programming and Collections for the Next Generations of library users

Hold programs where millennials already congregate.

Bring in authors based on vetted books (vetted by librarians and YAs)

Public transportation is always an issue

Try to extend efforts beyond the local community.  The group extends and their chatting can generate interest to this group. 

Oak Park PL, Oak Park, Il loads video content of book discussions onto their blog.

Take a look at GoodReads.com.  Has an RSVP system that can be set up for your book discussion meetings.

make use of budding artists to create ads.

Play games, WII and set up tournaments, etc.

social networking is very important to this group.

Solicit old trophies to reuse at prizes.

Themes and gimmicks to book discussions are not popular.

Lots of program ideas:

Resume help and entry-level job fairs

mock interview workshops

financial literacy workshop

investiment 101

health care support & information

intro to wedding planning

buying your first home workshop  how to obtain mortgage, etc.

Photoshop/podcasting/e-business classes

building a blog

be your own boss/DIY business

interior design for snall spaces

sisteinability & organic gardening

exploring ink: history of tattooing

getting to know graffiti

cooking classes

nutrition/menu planning/ smart shopping

get crafty (crafts of all types – meet up group)

book swap

NaNoWritMo MeetUp (November)

Real Life/Second Life MeetUp

Gamers MeetUp

Greaphic design show n'tell

Home cure / conquer clutter MeetUp

Bring in an author they LOVE

Movie and TV screenings

Spoken Word  poetry read alouds, etc

Diary Reading  Grownups reading notes they wrote as kids

Speed Dating in the Stacks

Board game nights

Prom or Dance Party in the Stacks

Live band Karaoke

Sponsor a scavenger hunt

host a walking tour of your community

Rock band / guitar hero tounamentw

wimbledon

poker / texa hold 'em

Bingo  Bad movie bingo

Spelling Bee  speed spelling bee  team spelling bee

Project Runway steyle sewing competition

top chef competition

poster design contest

Bibliographies / playlists contests

Recommended media

• Purchased Camtasia software instead of Captivate for Information literacy tutorial process
• Now uses open source: Jing because this is hosted off site, no server space needed
• Ants & Primo: sharing sites for tutorials

• Overview of librarians' guide to gaming: an online toolkit (http://librarygamingtoolkit.org/)

• Mobile checkout of items using iphone/scannign barcodes
• iPhone skin of library services
• Paging list app on iPod touch
• Barcode explaining library exhibits with corresponding weblinks
• iPhone as clickers for class polls
• At Abilene Univ. all students have a choice of iPod touch or iPhone free of cost with apps already installed (free of cost due to participation with Apple)
• iPhone as textbook reader
• iTunes U-library videos
• iPhone plays part in enrollment process for classes

• Infoquest: collaborative SMS service
• Shout bomb program for III ILS-SMS of holds to patrons
• Challenge: cross-platform apps are necessary
• Library as a platform for providing services

Other discussions: 

Government Info. & Libraries:

http://www.slideshare.net/reblakeley/unconference-discussion-on-gov-info-libraries

Technology sandbox for web staff skill development

http://matthewdhamilton.com/wp/library-sandboxes/

What librarians can learn from e-learning professionals:

http://steadfastlibrarian.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/what-librarians-can-learn-from-e-learning-professionals/

Advice for designing online instruction:

http://www.loexconference.org/2009/presentations/HANDOUT_Mery_Blakiston_Sult.pdf

Evaluation of evidence-based practices in online learning:

http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf

Nonfiction readers' advisory in the online world:

http://ricklibrarian.blogspot.com/2009/07/nonfiction-readers-advisory-in-online.html

• Problem: keeping track of "stuff"
• Developed tracking system; scanning & quality control; item tasks vs. administration tasks
• 2nd problem: creating metadata uses Oxygen software, MARC records converted to MODS
• Metadata editor template: date, title, & genre; can also use XML view
• Created an easy method for people to upload their file
• Upload editor moves to metadata editor
• Behind the scenes: authentication, validation & technical metadata creates XML file
• In front of the scene: metadata creation, recently updated files
• More behind the scenes: "bundling", XML file created, MODS file created, Bundle moved to digital repository, "alien programmers"
• In development: formal record created for Fodora, SOLR indexing

• System design: end user delivery system
• Using schematron for analyzing conformance to best practices for EAD, TEI, and MODS
• Consistency: document-centric XML (TEI,EAD) is difficult to create consistency
• Tools to help: schema/DTD validation, tag libraries (more explanations of tags), XML templates, example documents, keyboard macros, detailed encoding guidelines
• All finding aids begin from XML templates
• Another possible tool: machine validation of a file against local encoding guidelines
• Schematron checks: oxygen plugin architecture to validate XML editor used
• EAD report card as inspiration; checks coding against local guidelines
• XTF validator feature goes to HTML page with report of EAD & gives suggestions for fixing errors; also validates TEI & gives warnings for possible errors
• Schematron: XML assertion language (http://www.schematron.com)
• Allows for interoperability across systems & consistency
• We must: make better use of available technologies, automating/streamlining/validating; provide comparable services for less; bad tools foces us to de-professionalize our work; we need user analysis of our catalog tools & interfaces

• RDA is similar to an ILS that imports/exports data in MARC21
• Content forms: still image, text, 3D, media type, carrier type
• Content type: MARC leader/006 must be used
• New field 336: use if you want to record exact RDA terms
• 007 field remains in use
• New field 338: atrributes of names & resources
• Overview can be found online: http://www.loc.gov/marc/formatchanges-RDA.html
• RDA & ILS presentation: John Espley, Director of Design at VTLS Inc. gave presentation on RDA implementation scenarios, theory, practice, and the possible future of the ILS

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Presentation#3: With Respect & Dignity: serving homeless people in library communities 

Hyatt Regency McCormick, Room Conf. Ctr. 20b 

10:30am-12:00pm

• Presentation by Brooklyn Public Library's Michael Santangelo
• Reference is a form of preventative librarianship
• Highlight local social services, community awareness of poverty, timely programming, anticipate information needs
• Created "Access NYC"- one application form for multiple social services
• Staff awareness training is critical, as is local awareness & inclusiveness, knowledge of local library policies, ALA policies, State library association policies
• Present best practices to staff and supervisors, bring local statistics & relate to your library & bridging the information gap
• Tie service to the homeless into your mission statement
• Service to the homeless is not charity; it is serving the informational needs of the community
• Possible links to community: library participation in Housing & Urban Development program of counting homeless people in your area for their census
• Possible links to community: libraries as silent partners for street newspapers & blogs
• Seek input: needs assessment from the impacted community
• ALA is developing best practices toolkit for serving homeless community
• ALA Policy 61: Library services for the poor (http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/governance/policymanual/servicespoor.cfm)
• Presentation by Lexington Public Library's Ruthie Maslin, Outreach Services manager
• Library as place rather than space
• Helping customers connect with library services and programs
• Lexington has a population of 280,000 (5 branches, 1 central library, 1 branch is completely Spanish-English bilingual)
• Hunger Action Month events in September were staged
• Research national situation with respect to libraries
• Created library policy for homeless initiative (http://lpl-homeless-initiative.wikispaces.com/)