Professional Development

Hello everyone. Greetings from sunny and warm Philadelphia. Much of my conference time is/will be spent doing association business; that doesn’t make for interesting reading, so I’ll try to keep it brief.

Yesterday, I met with the GODORT Steering Committee. This meeting takes place at the start of the conference and the chairs of the various committees and task forces meet with the roundtable officers to share information about what they are planning to do at the upcoming conference. We also talk about some issues that are of interest to the organization as a whole, such as virtual membership and the new push to open ALA-run listservs to all ALA members, not just those members of individual organizations.

This morning I met with my other committee, the ACRL Bylaws Committee. We approved proposals from two sections who want to amend their bylaws and forwarded those proposals on to the ACRL Board.

This afternoon I spent some time in the Exhibit Hall and saw a friendly face, Bill Kane, at the Alibris booth.

I was able to go to part of the GODORT update and did hear two good presentations that might be of general interest. The first was by David Oldenkamp from Indiana University. He talked about a search engine he had created: Intergovernmental Organization Search Engine. Google now has a set of tools that allows one to create a customized search engine, called Google Co-op. Other sites that allow one to create customized search engines include Eurekster Swiki. Other search engines that folks might be interested in include one for ALA-RUSA Best Reference Websites and one David called the ’search engine for the library world’: LISZEN.

Marilyn Parr then provided an update on several projects at the Library of Congress. If you haven’t taken a look at LC’s American Memory Project, I highly recommend it. And, I wouldn’t be a good government information librarian if I didn’t point out A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation especially. Also take a look at this video, which gives a vision for the World Digital Library that is in 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!

Hi All,

As I’m posting when and where I can get free wifi, these posts might be a bit out of order. At the moment I am sitting in a hallway at the Washington Convention Center, next to an outlet, with a few minutes to blog.

Yesterday afternoon I attended the first of two Steering Committee meetings of GODORT. Traditionally, the first steering committee meeting is used by the GODORT officers, taskforce and committee chairs to make announcements and make sure everything is in order for the upcoming conference. While some of this did take place, the organization tried something new and allowed more time for discussion of various topics of interest to the membership. I won’t bore you with all the ins and outs of the organizational discussions, but one of the topics we talked about, and will continue to talk about throughout the conference, is the issue of virtual members. ALA is supporting the idea of virtual members in order to expand participation to those who can’t commit to attending one or more conferences in a year. Each division, roundtable, and subunit now has to determine if virtual members will work for them and, if so, how the logistics of virtual members will work.

After a long day, I met my cousin, Barbara, at her office on 18th street. We then enjoyed a fine meal of lamb biryani and butter chicken from one of our favorites: the Bombay Curry Company.

Yesterday was a busy day for me and I didn’t have time to blog. I started in the morning meeting with the Cataloging Committee of GODORT. There were several issues to discuss, including GPO’s new abridged record cataloging policy, changes to CONSER cataloging, and GPO’s imminent testing of Z39.50 with their ALEPH catalog, the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP). At lunch-time I took a quick tour through the exhibits, but didn’t see anything that really caught my eye. After lunch I sat in on the GITCO (Government Information Technology Committee) meeting. I have previously served on GITCO and like to keep up on the issues they are talking about. I was particularly interested in the GPO update on the implementation of the FDSys, or Future Digital System. This is the content management system that GPO is developing to ingest, catalog, store, archive and make accessible federal goverment e-publications. They are planning on release 1B going live in May. This release will test the fundamental intake process or, “ingest functionality.” After this, I typed up the minutes for the Cataloging Committee and sent them off to the Committee Chair and the GODORT Secretary so that they would be available for this morning’s GODORT Business Meeting. Then I read 115 proposals for roundtables at ACRL in Baltimore. After all this, it was time for a little relaxation. I took the monorail to the Seattle Center complex. This complex is home of the Space Needle and also the Pacific Science Museum, where the Ex Libris reception was held. Susan and I had planned to meet there and then go to dinner. As you read in Susan’s post, we had a great meal at the Pink Door.

This morning, I was up bright and early for my 8am meeting with the Roundtables Subcommittee for 13th Biennial ACRL Conference in Baltimore. We were able to go through the proposals, pick the 100 that we have space for, and sort them in to one of two roundtable session times in less than the four hours alotted. I was able to enjoy an nice lunch with a friend and former colleague at Mercer, Beth Hammond. I enjoyed catching up on the Mercer and Hammond family news. I came back to the hotel where I had planned to meet Debbie Nolan. We had a nice chat about what we had been doing since we’d last seen each other. Debbie is extremely busy but loves her new job. She says “hello” to everyone at ZSR.

I finally had some time this afternoon to explore a bit of Seattle. I walked down to the famous Pike Place Market and was pleasently surprised to learn that this several-blocks long market houses not only seafood stands, but also fresh fruit and vegetables, great flowers (tulips, tulips, tulips!), and arts and crafts stands. Who should I run in to while there but Sarah Jeong and Emily Stambaugh! There are other shops in the area so I was able to spend a little bit more money to help the Seattle economy.

I will have to turn my mind to getting some dinner and packing to go home tomorrow morning. My flight leaves SeaTac airport at 8am PST, so I will have to catch the shuttle tomorrow morning around 5:30. Yuck! But, I keep telling myself that’s really 8:30 EST, so it’s not all that bad. Mind over matter! See you all on Wednesday.

Hello All! This is my first time as a blogger, so bear with me!

Yesterday was a day of planes and airports for me. I left my house around 9am and arrived at my hotel in Seattle after midnight EST. I was able to watch The Queen on the flight from Atlanta to Seattle. I also had a nice chat with my seatmate who is an engineer with the U.S. Forest Service and a cattle rancher in Missouri. She also happens to be the Treasurer of her local public library board. She was eager to tell me all the improvements they have made in the last few years, including providing internet access to county residents. They have done a lot with grants, including building a combo library/tornado shelter with a grant from FEMA!

Unlike Susan, the west coast time suits me. It is nice to think that my 8am meetings will begin around 11 according to my body clock. My first meeting this morning (Saturday) is with the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Bylaws Committee. We will be considering a slight change to the Law and Political and Sciences Section’s (LPSS) bylaws and then begin a discussion of the need for section by-laws in general. This can be dry stuff, but by-laws do keep an organization as large as ALA, and its divisions, on the ’straight and narrow.’ After this I will be heading over to the Convention Center to pick up my packet and meet with the Government Documents Roundtable’s (GODORT) Federal Documents Task Force (FDTF). I’m serving as the GODORT Cataloging Committee’s liaison to FDTF. We will spend the first part of our meeting talking to representatives from the EPA about the EPA library closures. We hope to come up with some ideas on where the EPA material might be able to go to remain accessible. Then we’ll have a representative from the Government Printing Office (GPO) give us an update on the happenings in DC. Later on in the day I’ll be doing some reading for my Monday committee meeting that I couldn’t get to before I left W-S.