Recently in events Category

The first ever CONTENTdm Western Users Group Meeting is scheduled for July 23-24 at Reed College in Portland, OR. Although users of the software meet annually at ALA conferences, this two-day meeting was arranged in response to the overwhelming desire of CONTENTdm users to have more time to get together and talk about their experiences, challenges, and successes building CONTENTdm digital collections.

The agenda for the meeting includes topics such as: All Things Metadata, Customizations, Multi-state/Partner Collaborations, and Publicizing Collections. I will be participating in a panel discussion on Workflow Models with Eric Luhrs of Lafayette College and Joanna Burgess of Reed College.

The event is sponsored by OCLC Western and the organizers have set up a Western Users Group Wiki with the agenda, speaker information, and logistics for attendees.

On Friday, March 23 I will be participating in a panel discussion at the OASIS 2007 Conference at the Siena Hotel in Reno, NV. The title of the panel is: Museums, Libraries, and Archives in a Digital World. From the program:

What digital projects exist in Nevada and can we transform our ‘silos’ of information into an accessible Nevada Digital Library and Archives? Join Jeff Kintop, Glee Willis, Cory Lampert and Peter Michel to discuss these topics as well as standards for imaging, metadata, cataloging and indexing, and copyright issues of images, photographs, documents, newspapers and other publications.

This will be a nice opportunity to "take the pulse" on what is occuring state-wide in relation to digitization intiatives and future collaborations. I will be travelling with UNLV'S Director of Special Collections, Peter Michel and I am looking forward to seeing my counterpart; the wonderful Glee Willis, Digital Projects Librarian at the University of Nevada Reno. Jeff Kintop is the State Archive Manager at the Nevada State Library and Archives and I look forward to meeting him as well.

Unfortunately, my usual fear of flying is just about kicking in...so my excitement will be tempered with a nice dose of dread until we are back on terra firma in Las Vegas.

5 Weeks to a Social Library is an online course that seeks to explain and demystify social networking software and highlight the practical applications of these new technologies in libraries.

While I am not enrolled in the course, I have been watching to see how others are able to effectively incorporate blogs, wikis, Flickr, etc into a variety of useful library services. I have also joined the Social Library Lurkers wiki and will report on any interesting developments there.

One question I am considering is at what point a social networking site is appropriate and when a digital library is necessary. The two have different characteristics and functions, but both require planning and organization to be useful. This also raises the issue of defining the different strengths of each medium and distingushing between a formal curated digital collection, an institutional repository (where items may be uploaded, reused, and/or stored), and a spontaneous collaborative online project via a wiki? (And distinguishing where a librarian's skills might best be used.)

I have recently had conversations with faculty who are using social networking software to develop their own "archives" for collaborative work. These quick and dirty archives lack librarian-type organization and may not be built with standards in mind--but should we care? As users become more and more self-sufficient and networked, do libraries lose their voice in the conversation? If innovative models of scholarship using these tools take off, how can libraries adapt their role in the research process?

Five weeks may be long enough to become a social library, but much more time is needed to fully explore all the interesting issues that arise along with the trends.

We have just received the DVD copy of the November Digitization Workshop. If you were unable to attend the presentations by Roy Tennant and Ann Lally, they are now available (with Powerpoint slides) on DVD. We are currently looking into the best options for making the video available, in the meantime please contact Cory Lampert for more information. Thanks!

In the first months on the job this summer, Dean Patty Iannuzzi asked me to write a white paper compiling important questions that need to be addressed to help direct the future of digitization projects at the Libraries. Library staff can access the paper on the Libraries staff website. As a result of the paper, the Libraries hosted an all-staff professional development event last week.

On Friday, November 17 UNLV Libraries welcomed Roy Tennant from the California Digital Library and Ann Lally from the University of Washington to speak at a day-long workshop for library staff, campus collaborators (History department, Fine Arts department, Office of Information Technology), and regional libraries (University of Nevada Reno, Nevada State College).The presenters shared their expertise growing and building successful digital library programs and addressed issues relating to digitization projects in academic libraries. Turnout was high for both the morning session and the afternoon panel discussions, where library staff participated by asking questions and discussing a variety of topics.

Audience questions included:
How do you select and prioritize projects?
How do we set the stage for the creation of sharable metadata?
How can we market digital collections and how can digital collections market the Libraries?

Quotes summing up the themes of the day:
"Only librarians like to search, users like to find!" (Roy Tennant)
"CONTENTdm's greatest strength is its ability to support collaboration." (Ann Lally)
"Digital collections often result in higher physical use of the originals." (Ann Lally)
"Break down information silos and aggregate materials." (Roy Tennant)

The workshop proved to be a great success and the whole library seemed abuzz with renewed enthusiasm. Many library staff expressed enthusiastic comments and shared their personal interest in digitization and WDS hopes to channel this energy into a continuing dialogue and committment to future digital projects.