Professional Development

My professional development experience at the NASIG Annual Conference in Asheville, North Carolina was a different one this year. I was involved in the operation of the conference as a member of the Conference Planning Committee (CPC), which was jointly chaired by Eleanor Cook of East Carolina University and ZSR’s own Steve Kelley. I served as the audio-visual coordinator for the conference, and while it was a rewarding experience, there was a lot of work involved.

Planning for the conference began over a year before anyone arrived in Asheville. The CPC met as a group for the first time during the 2008 conference in Phoenix, Arizona and assigned all of the tasks and responsibilities necessary to operate the conference: food, registration, transportation, and so forth. Meetings continued during the year with monthly conference calls to keep all areas on target as well as to resolve any issues that developed. Along the way, the Program Planning Committee (PPC) was meeting independently to line up all of the sessions and speakers who would appear.

My role began to take shape earlier this year, as the PPC started to send details about the schedule to the CPC. Steve forwarded them to me as soon as he had received them and included room assignments as they became known as well. Using that information, I created a series of spreadsheets that evolved over time. They broke down the details for each session in three different categories: by each day of the conference, a summary of equipment needs, and a list of needs for sessions happening concurrently. (Please let me know if you would like to see an example!) From there, I sent the various incarnations to the event technology manager for the conference hotel. We worked closely to lay out the needs for each presenter and the equipment required in each room. Steve, Eleanor, and I also traveled to Asheville for site visits at the conference hotel, familiarizing ourselves with the facility and getting acquainted with the staff who would be working with us.

When the conference began in June, I became the primary contact for all AV needs. As the event technology manager set up rooms, he would check with me to make certain that everything was in place. Conversely, I served as the point person for any last minute situations that developed during the conference itself. These included:

• A printer for the registration desk
• A lapel microphone and Mac connection cables for the last Vision Speaker
• Feedback from several microphones
• Recording the Vision Sessions on cassette for conference reporters
• Display stands for the poster sessions

As Steve indicated in his report, the conference was a success. For me, the conference was a chance to expand my professional growth by giving me experience in areas that were not part of my normal responsibilities. I have worked with conference preparation in the past, but the preparation and effort that was needed to put on this conference was truly astonishing. Effective leadership made a significant difference (thank you Steve), but I had to be on point with my own contributions to guarantee a smooth operation.

And there’s always the most valuable lesson: never underestimate the value of comfortable shoes.

OK, by now you’re probably getting tired or bored with NASIG, so for my last post I’ll try to give you the short version.

First, evidence that Chris and Steve really were there …

Saturday’s opening session was by Dr. Carol Tenopir of the Univ. of Tennessee School of Information Sciences, who discussed her research on calculating return on investment for library expenditures with respect to research/grant funding.Her research is based on surveys of university faculty, asking, for example, how important citations are to obtaining funding, and what percentage of their citations do they find via online library resources.It was an interesting methodology.

Next I went to a session where three librarians talked about their respective experiences with implementing various Pay-Per-View (PPV) products.This was a very interesting and helpful session.The only products that received favorable reviews from the panelists were Science Direct (at Trinity) and EBL (at U.Texas).Common problems with PPV products included the inability to block PPV access to content subscribed to elsewhere, cumbersome user registration, and a “shopping cart” interface that tended to scare away users.I was glad to hear the U.Texas librarian describe their EBL pilot launch as “extraordinarily successful.”

My final Saturday session was a panel discussion with 3 librarians and 2 publisher reps about the process of license negotiation-top concerns/risks, difficult points to negotiate, whether the licensing process is improving (all agreed it is not), and whether licenses are doing what they were intended to do.There was discussion about how to improve some of the inefficiencies in the process (including a new standard, ONIX-PL), and whether it might be feasible to abandon license agreements and rely instead on copyright law.Another very good discussion, and I’m glad I had the background of the preconference to give me some context.

The first two Sunday sessions were kind of disappointing; I won’t bore you with the details.The final plenary session was about identifying trustworthy content online.Geoffrey Bilder of CrossRef talked about how we judge credibility of print resources (title page, publisher blurb, cover art, trust of the library, etc.); think about how you can tell at a glance whether an article is from a popular magazine or a scholarly journal.He then pointed out that the relatively quick evaluation we can do with print resources doesn’t work well in the online world.He batted around some ideas for making it easier to judge the credibility of online resources, including CrossMark, which is being developed by CrossRef.Another one is Hon Code which, if I understood correctly, is a registry of websites, with a Firefox plugin that displays an icon when a user visits a registered site.

Overall an excellent conference.I’m afraid I’ve come away with more ideas than I know what to do with at this point.But that’s good, right?

It is now Saturday evening, the NASIG conference has finished its second full day, I have taken 12 full pages of handwritten notes, and I write small.I am struggling with how to condense all that into a blog post or two.I could just transcribe my notes straight across, but I doubt many of you would be that interested.If you are, we can talk next week.Anyway, here’s Friday … the short version.

Friday started with a “Vision” (=plenary) session, with speaker Peter Morville, author of the book Ambient Findability.His presentation dealt largely with website design and designingbetter search interfaces.It was a good presentation, and there are now a few books I want to look up (including Ambient Findability).In a world where the haystacks are becoming bigger and more numerous, he addressed some ways to create bigger needles.We need to figure out how to capture our “about-ness” and our uniqueness.He spoke some about faceted navigation as a promising trend, as well as the requisite sample websites doing cool things (e.g. Songza and Everyzing).

I attended a session where people from two different universities discussed their implementation of the CUFTS open-source electronic resource management system (ERMS).I was hoping to be impressed, but came away instead with the impression that this product isn’t quite ready for prime time.What the session did do was give me some food for thought about ERMS functionality.

Friday afternoon I went to a session about cost data for electronic resources.The presenter first spoke about a new NISO standard (currently in draft form) called CORE (= Cost of Resource Exchange), which seeks to standardize the elements and format of cost data in ILS and ERM systems and facilitate their communication between automation systems.She then explained the method she has used at her own library to extract cost data from their ILS and move it into their ERMS.

My final session Friday was presented by a librarian from U.Tennessee-Chattanooga and a representative of the non-profit organization that makes the Gold Rush suite of e-resource management tools (link resolver, A-Z list, etc.).They talked about the U.Tenn.-Chattanooga library’s recent migration from their previous vendor to Gold Rush.I took two pages of notes on this one.They talked about the selection and implementation process, and discussed lessons learned, like the importance of live product trials (not just demos), and making the vendor work for the sale.

Whew! Six pages down!In the evening was an optional event at the nearby Biltmore House.We were bussed over, had a nice dinner on site, then went on a tour of the house.Then to bed to rest up for another day of conferencing (stay tuned).

This post comes to you from Asheville, NC, where I am attending the 24th annual conference of the North American Serials Interest Group (NASIG).Steve and Chris are on the conference planning committee, but I came on the scene late enough that I get to attend the conference as a participant.The conference begins in earnest on Friday, but I attended two pre-conference workshops yesterday and today.

Wednesday’s pre-conference was called “Navigating your way through the E-journal rapids.”It was a workshop taught by a “panel of experts”:2 librarians, and representatives from a subscription agent, a university press, an e-journal platform provider, and SerialsSolutions.For those unfamiliar with NASIG, one of the organization’s hallmarks is that although the majority of members are librarians, representatives from other parts of the serials supply chain also participate as members on an equal footing.NASIG also has a non-commercial stance, so the presenters from commercial companies give their perspective without trying to sell their product.

I thought the presenters did a good job of talking about the aspects of journal management that are unique to the online environment.An initial overview talked about the new complexity-more players, more pricing models, new workflows.Also covered were the many different types of publishers and the new roles of subscription agents, platform hosting companies, etc.A couple of gems:I learned the phrase “There is no ‘one’ anything,” and the subscription agent pointed out that with all the new workflows and entities involved, it still often takes as long to start up an e-journal subscription as a print subscription.

Today’s preconference was a half-day workshop on licensing.The primary focus was on understanding license language, learning key terminology, and recognizing and mitigating potential problem elements.Again, the publisher perspective was valuable.For example, one publisher employee in the class pointed out that if they monitor excessive downloading from a specific IP address, they need to be able to shut it down immediately.I also learned that some publishers may want to prohibit electronic course packs, not because they want to limit access to their materials, but because they want users to link into the publisher’s web site; usage stats can be a major selling point for a publisher.

We were given a copy of an actual license agreement and asked to identify 16 key elements (site definition, perpetual access, indemnification clause, etc.).Later, we evaluated the license and identified some problem areas.Then we worked in groups to come up with alternate language to mitigate the problems.Participants also received a flash drive with some sample licenses, boilerplate language, and other resources.The plan is to create a wiki so that we can continue to share model license language.I was impressed with the practicality of this workshop, and am looking forward to the rest of the conference.