Professional Development

After I finished my blog yesterday, I headed to Jaleo for a nice lunch with our LexisNexis sales representative. I was able to ask a few more questions about our new Hearings subscription and get some leads on having training done for both the Congressional database and the new interface for the Academic database.

On my way to my next meeting, I caught up with Debbie and we had a nice chat catching up on the news.

My last meeting of the day was of the GODORT’s Federal Documents Task Force, or FDTF. I am the Cataloging/FDTF liaison, so I attend both meetings as a committee/task force member and report to each group on the activities of the other. At FDTF we had the usual reports from various groups, including GPO. We talked about our upcoming preconference for ALA Annual in Anaheim focusing on elections, voting and political science resources. We also agreed to pilot a project for virtual members by reviving an agency liaison program that has floundered in recent years.

I caught the shuttle back to the convention center (as I now have blisters on blisters) and took the long Metro ride back to Alexandria, arriving at the Braddock Road station at 7:15.

I was back at the station this morning at 9:45 to make it in to my 10:30 GODORT Cataloging meeting. About half of the meeting was devoted to the ‘usual business,’ including an update from GPO on their cataloging practices and continued improvements in their ALEPH Catalog of Government Publications ILS. We talked about needed improvements to the UN classification system and endorsed a letter for the GODORT Chair to send to the UN requesting those changes. We also heard a report from the RDA (Resource and Descriptive Access) group, specifically about the current chapter they are working on (chapter 3) that has to do with the “carrier” of the information. For the non-catalogers of us in the group: RDA is the/will be the successor to AACR2.

This will probably be my last blog entry until I return to work on Wednesday. Alas, I turned my ThinkPad on in the Cataloging meeting this morning, expecting to take notes electronically, and received a “Fan Error” message and then a blank screen. I’ve tried several more times, but that is as far as my computer will boot. So, Tim, I’ll be seeing you on Wednesday morning :-). Because I had a relatively free afternoon, I stood in line and am now typing this entry in the Internet Cafe, but tomorrow I’m in meetings from 8am - 6pm and won’t have time to stop.

See everyone on Wednesday!