Professional Development

I’m live blogging this event, and jotting down the interesting notes (from my perspective) here:

• Cal Shepard gave a SOLINET update.
• She talked about the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, probably my all-time favorite reference source. (I say that not just because of topic, but also authority and guiding principles.) SOLINET had matching grants for libraries supporting the open access mission of this resource.
• She mentioned Aluka, a site of scholarly material on Africa. It incorporates social technology to connect scholars from around the world.
• Open WorldCat is an effort to incorporate social networking technology to better integrate libraries into the workflow of web researchers.
• Worldcat local allows people to find resources physically near them based on IP address.
• Discussed customized profiles in Open WorldCat, general social networking activities within Worldcat.
• This reminded me of Washington’s library catalog run with Open WorldCat. You can play with it on their homepage.
• Open WorldCat has a tool to generate citations by format (ALA, MLA, etc).
• SOLINET just came out of a strategic planning process (they do theirs every three years). They’re working on collections & access, library workforce, alliances & partnerships, and organizational stewardship issues.
• For the next year: hiring a consultant in assessment, offerings in digital services and new technologies, hurricane prep and recovery, and streamlining.
• She also discussed SOLINET classes, services, and preservation efforts. I just tried to hit some highlights here.