Professional Development

Tom Conroy gave the first session of the second day on repairing tools. Tom is a book restorer and fine binder who spent 7 years in formal training under Anne and Theodore Kahle and also earned an MLIS from Berkeley. Tom currently teaches at the American Bookbinders Museum in San Francisco. Tom spent several hours talking about removing rust from clamps with citric acid (what you call Sprite), repairing wobbly brushes, and re-seating gouges. He explained how various files are made and how to use them. He led an engaging conversation about scissors (who would’ve thought?) and sharpening them using a file. He also repaired several finishing presses as we watched.
I think almost everyone at ZSR has seen my board shear-the large deadly looking cutter with a wooden table as you enter Preservation. Tom insisted the best way to sharpen that tool was to cut a piece of thin brass sheet with it. I looked at the conservator sitting next to me and we both sort of said…what? Not everything in bookbinding is intuitive I guess.

The afternoon session was led by Dominic Riley on Cloth Rebacking. Cloth rebacking is creating a new spine piece for a book using cloth (as the name implies). Dominic was a delightful speaker and in my case-the best was saved for last. Dominic is a bookbinder and film-maker who spent 10 years studying in San Francisco and then moved back to his native England. He has won several top prizes from the Guild of Bookworkers equivalent in the UK-the Designer Bookbinders. He taught a session on creating an invisible repair to a cloth binding which was practical and engaging to all present. He seemed to know everyone by their first name and carried on a light-hearted repartee as he worked.
He lifted the cloth and split the boards to attach color-matched cloth and end-sheets to create-as he described it, an invisible repair. We were also treated to film trailers of two films Dominic has made-one called “Seventy Years in Bookbinding:Portrait of Bernard Middleton” . This film may be on the Preservation “wish list” soon.

All in all, this gathering of the Guild was engaging and has made me want to get more involved in this organization. I was able to meet many nice folks in this gentile crowd who offered information, encouragement and opportunities for the future.

I woke at 4:30 am, arrived at Greensboro PTI in time to see WXII send off the Flight of Honor, checked my bags, went through security and boarded the plane for Philadelphia. The plane left the terminal and the pilot abruptly announced we would be sitting there on the runway in Greensboro for an hour because of delays in Philadelphia. Great luck! But in the end, by some miracle, when I arrived in Philadelphia, I had just enough time to hit the restroom and walk briskly to check-in. I made it just in time for my flight to San Francisco!

The Guild of Bookworkers is an old organization going back to 1906. Every bookbinding “rock star” is a Guild member. The group is made up of conservators, binders, printers and book artists. Each year, the Guild has a conference with demonstrations by its’ members entitled: Standards of Excellence Seminar. To begin the conference, all the conference attendees were bused to the San Francisco Public Library for a reception and showing of the Guild’s exhibit of books entitled: “Marking Time”.

The first demonstration was by Tatiana Ginsberg. She gave a presentation called “The Tradition of Traditionally Dyed Japanese Papers. Tatiana studied at the University of Iowa Center for the Book and received a Fulbright Research grant to study traditional dyeing in Japan. She demonstrated the steps of brush dyeing using natural dyes which she cooked right in front of us.

The next demonstration was Carolee Campbell, owner of Ninja Press. Carolee has designed, printed and bound all the work from Ninja Press since 1984. She primarily designs books featuring contemporary poetry featuring unique bindings that she prints on her Vandercook letterpress. Carolee discussed her process of designing each book using examples she brought with her.

Scott Adair, Ellen Daugman and I attended a webinar on Tuesday, Oct. 27th from Lyrasis. The title of the class was Planning for a Service Disruption and was taught by Dan Wilson, Associate Director of Access Services and Collection Development at UVA Medical Sciences Library. The key concept of this class was protecting core resources and continuity of core services. Dan likened our work in disaster preparedness to a lighthouse-and said we should think of ourselves as theoretical lighthouses who protect our resources just like a real lighthouse protects ships from running aground.
We completed three risk assessment exercises to try to determine what our key services were in varying emergencies, such as flooding, a power outage and a cyber-terrorism attack. We also spent some time discussing H1N1 and it’s affect on libraries. Few libraries in our group have been affected to any degree either in staffing or services by H1N1.
Dan had several ideas for operating remotely during an emergency including using Skype to deal with patrons. His library uses Skype for this purpose as a remote service desk. The other good idea he offered was establishing a partnership with a fellow library who would serve as your backup. UVA has this relationship with UNC-CH. The way it works is if UVA must shut down, they can use Illiad as a transparent interface for ILL services and UNC-CH can just pick up this service for UVA without patrons realizing it. I think this idea of a “Back up Library” is excellent and one ZSR might consider implementing. Locating a remote server is another idea Mr. Wilson discussed. With a remote server in place, web based services can be continued and this service is “always on”. UVA Medical Science Library has a pocket sized response plan for emergencies- whatever form they take. This plan can be carried easily by library staff and referred to during emergencies.
Our Disaster Committee is in the midst of developing such a plan for service continuity and this webinar was helpful in helping us to realize where we are and giving us ideas we can add to our existing strategy.

On Tuesday, October 20th, I sat in on an online chat from ACRL. The topic was H1N1 and how libraries are responding to this issue. The chat was led by Marcia Thomas, Director of Collections & Technical Services, Illinois Wesleyan University and Meg Miner, University Archivist & Special Collections Librarian, Illinois Wesleyan University. Lots of the attendees were from schools in Florida, but also Oberlin, SUNY-Albany, Univ. of N. Texas. This was an informal Q&A session-the leaders asked general questions a the 10 or so attendees answered in piecemeal fashion.

As to the issues we covered:

• They asked how many people had H1N1 in their workplace-I mentioned the occurrences here and our Continuity of Operations plan development.
• Lots of schools had issues- not enough vaccine at some. Many universities had H1N1 sites at their university. I mentioned Wake Forest’s site.
• Some universities had H1N1 plans-but one other university left their library out of the plan
• H1N1 Plans on the website?-most said yes
• Extra measures- hand sanitizer, cleaning, hand washing encouraged, signs, staff encouraged to stay home
• Reports of more hand washing, sanitizing, etc by students
• Some actually referred students to health services
• Most students seem to be aware of healthy practices
• The idea was put forward of the library as a refuge if everyone else went home
• Some thought that the library is one of the places on campus that people look to for help
• Most libraries are developing H1N1 plans

I got the distinct feeling the libraries on campuses across the country are often taking the lead on these health related issues. That said, I think ZSR is at the forefront of the current health crisis planing how to continue operations if we have a full or partial campus shut down.

First of all please allow me to say thanks to the ZSR Library’s leaders and in particular my supervisor Erik Mitchell, Susan Smith, Wanda Brown and Lynn Sutton for giving me the opportunity to attend such an informative and rewarding conference on Library Resource Management Systems, so beautifully organized by NISO.

NISO is the National Information Standards Organization that provides information professionals, publishers, and software developers with information industry standards that allows them to work together. Its goal is to eliminate barriers to discovery, retrieval, management and preservation of published content.

For clarity purpose, I have structured this report into two main parts: “Day One” as the first day of the forum and “Day Two” as the second.

Day One:

The first day started off with a continental breakfast that allowed conference attendees to get acquainted and get comfortable with one another. It was an occasion to start networking with some of the participants. That is how I got to meet Grace Liu, Systems Librarian from the University of Winsor who later gave a presentation on her institution’s experience with migrating from Voyager to Conifer.

From Grace’s presentation, I learned that her library, the Leddy Library, switched from Voyager to Conifer because of highly problematic upgrades of Voyager. The ILS industry has not been able to develop structures necessary to face the increasing expectation of libraries and users. In fact the needs and complexity of information management has grown beyond the ability of vendor’s integrated library systems to respond efficiently to users’ demands. In addition, it is now clear that vendors have not adequately invested in their ability to provide quick support to libraries faced with an overwhelming need for information process. Vendor ILSs’ back-end as they are currently and have always been could not sustain patrons current need for an inclusive ILS that will not only support processes like acquisitions, cataloging, ILL and circulations but also include friendly and social features similar to Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, and Amazon. The open source community has so far provided more improved features when it comes to integrated library systems and Evergreen is one of them.

The project conifer understands the power of collaboration and includes three other universities, all members of the Ontario Council of University Libraries. This group believes in the importance of in house support and that is why the Leddy Library has 2 systems librarians and 4 technicians who respond quickly to fix bugs and maintain conifer’s vital systems. They use:

Verde for ERM shared with other 6 institutions

SFX as context sensitive link resolver shared with other 19 academic organizations (some universities have more than one library)

Evergreen as ILS shared with 3 other institutions

The keynote presentation of day one was given on Toward Service-Oriented Librarianship by Oren Beit-Arie, Chief Strategy Officer, Ex Libris, Inc. He talked about more interdisciplinary activities and change in scholarly communication models. He mentioned that new models are taking advantage of networking technology and extending the traditional benefits of print journals while facilitating the exchange of findings and preservation of scholarly records. The technology models are, among other:

Computing as a service (cloud computing)

Open interface

Service oriented architecture

Mobile systems

Semantic web

He also said that Moore’s Law is still working and therefore technological limitation are now going away making what would not have been possible before, possible today. For him, new form of scholarship implies new form of librarianship and to get there, we need to focus on collaboration. Continuing he added that doing so could generate savings that libraries could use towards other means that have been neglected like teaching for example. In addition, he mentioned that from Ex Libris interviews, users have prescribed a to-do list. I talked about this in a previous post (NISO Forum Day One).

Oren emphasized that open (platform) is really important now as it gives the ability for users to build collaborations. In addition, he talked about Digital Library Federation (DLF), which is a consortium of libraries and related agencies that are pioneering the use of electronic-information technology to extend collections and services, with its ILS Discovery Interfaces (ILS DI). Continuing, Oren mentioned other initiatives like Open Publication Distribution System (openpub) and the need for new methods of interoperability and pointed out three areas of focus:

Traditional: doing same things differently utilizing the wisdom of the clouds: (network level, cloud computing). Here, Oren thinks that there are great opportunities in some traditional URMs through “rethinking” by streamlining production and supply chain of bibliographic metadata, lowering costs, increasing utility and productivity. However he noted the need to go beyond the traditional by including more “granular items”, new types like research data and data sets, complex distributed data and he recommended looking into OAI-ORE. Although Oren does not believe that there will be one single index that will do it all, he supports user side of aggregated indexes like new discovery tools which enable indexing of article data with availability and affordability.

Transitional: Oren is advocating for new support for library tasks and wants to leverage the capabilities of a network deployment to improve support for traditional activities. He gave examples like usage-driven collection development, content selection, integration with vendor systems and shared purchases. He also talked about Flickr Commons and appreciated the ability for users to share photographs. He even pointed out that the Library of Congress updated records based on information on Flicker. Oren added that we have to meet the users where they are and gave the example of the Ex Libris URM Dissemination Control. He concluded that we need to focus on the unique (the institution) and integrate the global.

Transformational: this involves scholarly communication, mining usage data to enhance library services and recommender services like BibTip, LibraryThing, and bX Service. Oren also talked about project MESUR looking for validation, and long term digital preservation through sustaining the digital. Finally, Oren emphasized on the library as middleware (between publisher and user).

Thomas Wall, University Librarian from the Boston College who was previously scheduled to present, received (as we were told) an invitation from his provost to attend a budget meeting and instead, Bob Gerritty, the Associate University Librarian, gave the speech on What Do Libraries Want to Achieve with Their Library Systems?

I learned from his presentation that their institution uses the Ex Libris Aleph ILS and MetaLib for federated search. They are doing all they can to accommodate users who are looking for a one stop shopping solution. They use overlay services, add-ons, and widgets to add value to current systems and local developments. In addition, their library has developed a feature to orient/guide new students to understand call numbers and find items on the shelves quickly.

Kevin Kidd, Library Application and Systems Manager at the Boston College presented on the Project Aerie which is a next generation of service oriented librarianship. According to Kevin, the purpose of this project was to create a framework or portal to deliver online library services that take into account the users (student, faculty, and staff) and to decouple these services from the Aerie framework and reuse them in other environments to meet the library’s overall service goals. For him, it is all about services and data and library resources in the network environment. Traditionally, we have been cataloging, collecting, providing access to information/knowledge. Now we have the internet and the primary problem to solve is no longer access. He believes libraries can now do the following:

• Filter information and help patron make information choices
• Provide resources where and when they are likely needed and he called this contextualization.

He concluded that to do this, libraries should:

• Organize online information to help our decision systems
• Provide resources utilizing web 2.0 applications
• Systematically acquire and prepare data to facilitate all of the above

After a quick break, Judi Briden, Digital Librarian for Public Services, University of Rochester, River Campus Libraries presented on User Perspectives: How our Patrons Interact with Our Services.

Judi talked about a usability test for the OPAC and from that experience, users are not sure what the OPAC is because results are not obvious, unclear where items are, and assume libraries just don’t have anything on their topics. I believe the result of this usability test is pretty much what motivated us at the ZSR Library to seek a more user-oriented front-end to our catalog. After studying students, they realized that students would rather use a system that they are already familiar with. I believe our choice of VuFind was cleaver as the use of VuFind will not be a much difficult task for a student who is already familiar with Google and Amazon. Judi also talked about XC (eXtensible Catalog) User Research and referenced the project’s preliminary report and pointed out that the focus of XC is interest in user research by focusing on the OPAC and solving known problems for casual, and non-expert users.

John Culshaw, Professor and Associate Director for Administrative Services, University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries presented on Build it or Buy it.

John talked about ILS platforms. He mentioned CARL’s public access catalog and said that their library implemented PAC in 1984 and migrated to INNOPAC (an Innovative Interfaces integrated library tool) in 1994. Other critical services that they use are the digital library LUNA’s INSIGHT that allows users to build, manage, and share digital collections no matter how big they might be. John noted that the reason why they buy is functionality: need for stable, consistent systems, and Millennium continues to meet needs and also because open source ILS platforms cannot fully support their needs at this time. He also expressed their positive experience with partnerships. He thinks they work well and they have a strong user community. He gave the example of ENCORE that their library (with other partner libraries) is using to connect users to trusted resources that the library collects. He pointed out that the encore selection was due to the following reasons:

• Seamless integration with Millennium platform
• Real time circulation information:
  • No need to unload and reload
  • Implementation was straight forward
  • Invested in LDAP solution
  • Based on evaluation, ENCORE was found to be the suite for their need
• Single sign-on electronic resource data

John also commented on their campus environment and said that his campus also advocates the “buy it” approach. The campus is using SIS PeopleSoft, tested Sakai but went for WebCT (or Blackboard Learning System). John brushed finances and staffing and noted that his institution lacks the people to be able to give back to their community and therefore they experience challenges acquiring the human resources to manage their rich materials. Their university belongs to the Association of American University (AAU) and he couldn’t help saying that, compared to other peers in this association, they are really behind in staffing. He concluded his presentation by saying that their strategy is to continue to buy and maintain strong partnership with vendors.

A panel discussion was held on Open Source Systems: What is Working? What is Progressing? by Tim McGeary, Team Leader, Library Technology, Lehigh University and Andrew Nagy, Senior Discovery Services Engineer, Serials Solutions.

Tim talked about the OLE project and noted that they have finished publishing their project this summer and the project will start in February next year. They are looking to form the FLUID Project in a partnership. He referred to other projects but held back on disclosing them at this time. He concluded by saying that the OLE project will support ILS discovery API and other discovery interfaces but will not be developing a discovery interface.

Andrew gave a history on VuFind. The idea behind the interface was to integrate with Integrated Library Systems, authenticate via SIP2, and interoperate with major ILS platforms. VuFind uses the MARC Import Tool, SolrMARC that indexes a large marc collection of data. He noted that the project is a done project but the VuFind community is growing and that the leadership needs to grow as well. In September 2009, there were seven team members and about ten volunteers that narrowed down to seven. Members are voted by the community and renewed each year. Andrew also mentioned that many institutions have tweaked and modified VuFind and there is a work being done to regroup and merge to “trunk”. He also signaled that they began to gather statistics from VuFind sites and compile stats to evaluate VuFind performance. He said that according to Amazon, only 2% of users use facets for browsing.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I asked some questions based on our experience with VuFind and his answer was that server configuration causes indexing to take too long. However, he has seen institutions where indexes of millions of records would index in a very short time. He is pretty certain that our VuFind troubles are server configuration related and not programming.

Annette Bailey, Digital Assets Librarian at Virginia Tech presented on Bringing Open Source to the Library: Lessons Learned.

She talked about her institution’s experience with open source and in particular with LibX browser plug-in and edition builder for libraries. They are using web services and widgets like MAJAX and MAJAX2 and Google book resources like TICTOCLOOKUP. She stated that open source software can work with vendor systems to enhance existing OPAC and link users to vendor systems. Then she pointed out some of the challenges setting up OPACs in LibX. They have difficulties with how to ask a system for information (request syntax issues). They believe that the following must be documented by the vendor or reverse engineered:

• Document Type Definition for III Millennium needs to be configured
• Figuring out settings for catalogs takes time ( time that could be used for developing new features)
• Requires auto-detection and fingerprinting
• More JavaScript code from the ILS makes things more difficult
• Non-disclosure agreements have a chilling effect on development
• Standards can be better like OpenURL syntax, NISO Z39.88, and emerging services like Widgets (MAJAX2) and Mash-Ups used to combine information from various online sources into new or existing web environments.

Continuing, Annette found that getting information from the ILS needs some work. She condemned the fact that most vendors provide no API or service at all and some that do provide services don’t provide enough and libraries are dying for standards on a functionality that a vendor can offer. She expressed disappointment in some existing standards that do not define holdings. She also thought standards must define not just functionality but also syntax.

Annette’s presentation led to the Library Management Systems Business Model Roundtable facilitated by Marshall Breeding, Director for Innovative Technologies and Research, Jean and Alexander Heard Library, Vanderbilt University. The panelists were Talin Bingham, Chief Technology Officer, SirsiDynix; Neil Block, Vice President, Worldwide Sales, Innovative Interfaces, Inc; Galen Charlton, Vice President of Data Services, Equinox Software, Inc; Paul R. Cope, President, Auto-Graphics, Inc; Carl Grant, President, Ex Libris North America; Andrew K. Pace, Executive Director, Networked Library Services, OCLC.

The discussion was pretty interesting and they all recognized the importance of open source software and their ability to address certain features that vendors do not provide. According to Tolin, SirsiDynix is investing in virtualization to better satisfy users because there are servers out there that are underused and it is a waist for the owning institution. He said that they are in the process of moving most of their products to a virtual server in order to apportion server use and therefore save money for the customer. The panelists added that they leverage open source in their productions and they embed open source software in their technologies and this is proof that they support open source very much. However, they pointed out that if a system does not integrate Acquisition, Cataloging, and Circulations, that system is of course going to be less expensive but at the end of the day it is not going to meet libraries’ needs. They noted that libraries have to make the decision based on whether or not open source is meeting their business needs. According to Galen, big open source applications have a good community of support that reacts quickly to solve technical problems. For Carl, Ex Libris opened their API to offer flexibility to the user and has commitment to support open source. Overall, the group thought vendor and open source have to work together and libraries owe it to themselves to exercise due diligence with their vendors.

Day Two:

The keynote presentation of day two was given by Rachel Bruce, Program Director, Information Environment, JISC.

She talked about Investing in a time of disruptive change. They think about content as a utility and the web is their mode of distribution. At the UK they start actively collaborating with other institutions and share resources. They have started bringing in new processes to improve services within their libraries by including more electronics. According to her, the problem in relation to managing and sharing research data is that some people think that this is something for scientists. She found that it is important for us to learn about what type of resources we need. She also talked about Open Source and Open Education Resources: OpenWetWare, OpenSpires, myexperiment are entities involved. It is all about sharing these resources on the open web and they now anticipate web 3.0. She said that they need to keep in mind that the speed of young people’s web searching means that little time is spent in evaluating information either for relevance accuracy or authority. They want it quickly and they want it now. She referred to young people as “Generation Y” and found that they are thinking and processing information fundamentally differently from their predecessors. For her, the future of libraries is that for scientific research, the library is probably becoming obsolete. There is a need for purchasing which should be done nationally by specialists but most of the rest will be web based. She also talked about digital divide and thought that needs to be address efficiently. She signaled that we are in a perfect storm with our technological changes and we don’t really know which side to turn as there are a lot of directions that we haven’t even explored yet. Then she summarized that this is the UK situation and they don’t really know where to turn. Continuing, she said that this radical change is a total chaos for everyone and the current system is so brittle, and the alternatives are so speculative, that there’s no hope for a simple and orderly transition from state A to state B. Chaos is the UK lot; the best that can be done is identify the various forces at work shaping various possible futures. She added that they have noticed that the use of LibraryThing has not exceeded the use of WorldCat. They believe libraries can do much more to open up their metadata for reuse. OCLC and TALIS already offer platforms that enable library data to be reused. She talked about connectedness, platform, and network effect and pointed out that we need to work at the network level. She mentioned that further insights are gained by analyzing borrowing histories, facilitated by the use of library cards. She mentioned 4 library vendors holding 80% of the market. She thinks we should make our assets available to the world through linked data and be resource oriented. In the UK, they are even supporting making government data part of the linked data for the whole world to see! When I asked about how they are doing their filtering so it is not disclose sensitive data to the general public, she said that they have people who do that filtering. She mentioned sustainable scholarship. She said that TALIS is very present in the UK.

Ivy Anderson, Director of Collection Development and Management Program, California Digital Library, presented on Whither ERMI?

According to Ivy, the Digital Library Federation’s Electronic Resource Management Initiative (DLF ERMI) provides tools for managing the license agreements, related administrative information and internal processes associated with collections of licensed electronic resources. She talked about ONIX for publication licenses (ONIX-PL), LEWG (Land for Environmental Working Group) and added that LEWG is sponsored by NISO, DLF, and PLS. She encouraged libraries to enter the Shared E-Resource Understanding (SERU) in order to reduce costs for library and publisher and therefore speed up access for users at subscribing institutions. She mentioned standards post ERMI like COUNTER for counting online usage of networked e-resources, SUSHI used to automate request and response model for the harvesting of electronic resource usage data utilizing a web service framework, KBART (Knowledge Base and Related Tools) which is a joint effort of NISO and UK serials group, CORE, I2 (Institutional Identifiers).

MacKenzie Smith, Associate Director for Technology, MIT Libraries, and Diane C. Mirvis, Associate Vice President for Information Technology and CIO, Magnus Wahlstrom Library, University of Bridgeport, addressed The Library System in a Broader Context: Interaction with Other Library Systems.

MacKenzie Smith presented on Integrating Library Resource Management Systems into Campus Infrastructure for Research and Education. She clearly expressed frustration with their resource management system as it is so big and includes so many entities she thinks could stand on their own to make things much simpler. They use DSpace to archive theses. She thinks we should build on and harmonize bibliographic data models, define new conceptual data models, and focus on the data in a data oriented architecture where the web is the architecture. She anticipates data processing to become much more complicated in the future.

Diane C. Mirvis presented on Considering a New Information Topology. According to her, the University of Bridgeport (UB) is a content driven university. She believes it is important to rethink how work is being done by their scholars and their students. She believes information is everywhere and owned by everyone. UB has not been embracing open source very much and they like their partnership with their vendors. They use Voyager, Primo discovery, MetaLib, SFX (all form Ex Libris), and institutional repositories.

Kat Hagedorn, HathiTrust Special Projects Coordinator, University of Michigan presented on Seamless Sharing: NYU, HathiTrust, ReCAP and the Cloud Library.

She talked about Cloud library and said that it is not Cloud Computing although it has some similarities but involves the necessity/desire to share resources: leverage shared investment, reduce local cost. It also involves multiple digital and print repositories that can now move into a cloud that will become a shared network resource. She stated that the infrastructure needed for that includes:

• Understand preservation and make it available for collection development
• Understand what consumers need and emphasize on information access quickly and make print and digital library part of the cloud library
• Outside collections.

She noted that there are perceived needs: they already have ILL including Document Delivery. They also need to make what exists outside their repository that is not currently accessible, accessible. She listed their partners in pilot:

• NYU, model customer
• ReCAP, model supplier, large scale shared academic repository
• HathiTrust, model supplier, large-scale digital repository
• OCLC research and CLIR, consultant and convener

Kat also pointed out that institutions will be interested in being part of a cloud library because of the following reasons:

• Preserving titles that are rare and/or special in some manner
• Remove titles that are duplicated across many institutions
• Added value of shared materials in digital repositories (discovery, search)
• Contributing to a public good

She added that the value of partnership increases as the number of members increases.

Kyle Banerjee, Digital Services Program Manager, Orbis Cascade Alliance, presented on Large Consortium Systems.

She shared some lights on what should motivate an institution to become a member of large consortium systems; they provide:

• Better patron experience: one set of credentials gets you everything, a patron who needs two books should use the same mechanism to acquire it
• Strategic benefits, reduction of redundant systems and workflows, Leadership opportunity, partnership with OCLC: standards based solution resent for long term viability and bringing disparate services together.

However, she objected, this change requires training and communication. She also talked about SUMMIT, the union catalog and browsing system with 9.2 million titles representing 28.7 million items. In addition she found consortial workflow and fairness important:

• Load balancing ensures all institutions benefit/contribute
• After using automatic load balancing for two months, 86% of membership has seen improvement

According to her, in the future, with network ILS, there will be no need to catalog the same record several times and noted that network circulations allow easy formation of arbitrary groups and therefore many things should not be so different at different institutions.

The end of the day two also included a group activity that I talked about in a previous post (Day Two at NISO).

The NISO forum was such a wonderful learning experience for all participants and I believe we all left Boston with a lot of new knowledge that will certainly help us improve processes at our respective institutions.

The 2009 NCLA Biennial Conference was held in Greenville, North Carolina (home of the ECU Pirates!…arrrrr!). Here is my somewhat-condensed version of the sessions I attended.

Improving Libraries through User-Centered Research (Susan Gibbons, The River Campus Libraries of the University of Rochester, NY)

Susan Gibbons discussed the processes, findings, and outcomes of conducting user-centered research on the campus of the University of Rochester in efforts to improve the mission of and importance of the River Campus Libraries. The libraries focused on four major projects from 2004 to present:

• 2004-2006 Student Paper Writing and Research Project of Undergraduate students
• 2006-2008 Barriers to successful dissertations and improvements to library support for Graduate students
• 2007-2009 How do our library users research and what functionality can be added to improve this process
• 2008-2009 What is the role of the Science Library in the Digital Age?

The River Campus Libraries (RCL) began their user-centered research by seeking grant funding for an anthropologist-in-residence position to work with the volunteer research committee to study, collect, and analyze the anthropological and ethnographic data. In addition to completing the IRB process, the committee developed their research method (question->methods->data gathering->findings->change) and outlined the data gathering step to include surveys, mapping, interviews, and photo displays.

2004-2006 Student Paper Writing and Research Project of Undergraduate students

Librarians wanted to know how undergraduate students conducted their paper research and writing process-from getting the assignment to turning it in- and how the library could assist. Librarians solicited students to volunteer for a semester-long study, in which they were asked to illustrate their process, then shadowed by librarians for the semester, and finally engage in retrospective interviews. Findings of the study emphasized that the paper research and writing process for students was not linear (but they already knew that), parents and figures of authority were often included in the research process and students were not always able to identify where the problem is in their process. Outcomes of this study included the RCLs began co-hosting term paper workshops (around the time of midterms), 7 librarians are now also Writing Fellows, non-librarian Writing Fellows now occupy one end of the Reference Desk, and librarians are now helping with ESL students and advising.

2006-2008 Barriers to successful dissertations and improvements to library support for Graduate students

As a commonly-overlooked patron group, RCLs focused on Graduate students to identify barriers to completing a successful dissertation and how the library could increase support to aide in the task. The research committee conducted InSitU interviews; meaning, “show me where you work and how you work.” Findings ranged from on-campus science lab spaces to a lone desk in an off-campus apartment to a converted closet/carrel in the English Department building. Their findings not only reflected a lack of common experiences across the disciplines, but it illustrated why there is a lack of commonality.

For the Sciences:

• team-member oriented
• research is grant-focused
• rely on collaboration to achieve goal
• lab-oriented dissertations

For the Social Sciences:

• research is article-driven
• dissertation is basically previous articles glued together

For the Humanities:

• lone scholar oriented
• feels isolation from department and thesis advisors
• often forms informal support groups with out Humanities students
• dissertation is pre-book format

Thus, the libraries need to manifest their support down to the discipline level and not try to aim for an “across the board” solution for graduate students. Outcomes of this study included a renovated space in the main library for a Graduate Lounge; however they held design workshops for the grads to draw out their ideal space, select color schemes, and vote on the final results. The current Graduate Lounge mirrors the ZSR Graduate Student Lounge in color, lighting, and furniture, but provides 48 lockers and has plans and funding to renovate an identical space on the opposite side of the building in 2009-2010.

2007-2009 How do our library users research and what functionalities can we add to improve this process?

What features and functionalities of the library catalog are impeding users from successful searches? To answer this question the research committee conducted interviews, usability studies, and a Show and Tell session after implementing the eXtensible Catalog project, which seems like an advanced open-source federated searching system. Their preliminary report can be found at http://hdl.handle.net/1802/6873 and the XC system due out in January 2010.

2008-2009 What is the role of the Science Library in the Digital Age?

With an increase of science information available electronically and the Science Library conveniently located closer to the department, the RCLs wanted to know why the Science students increased patronage to the main library. The research committee divided the library into “observation zones” and asked librarians to monitor these zones three times a day for one week and record activity. Items recorded included any activity occurring (studying, computer use), individual use or group use, academic use or recreational use, and what items did they bring with them (powercords, laptop, coffee). Additionally, the research committee left reply cards on the tables asking the library users “why are you here?” and gathered over 100 responses in 2 days. Next, the committee hosted a design workshop and invited students to illustrate their ideal study space and select furniture and color schemes for the space. This study concluded that the students came to the library as a form of discipline and the physical space of the building created the necessary mindset for academic study, research, and scholarly work.

The Kaleidoscope of Academic Libraries: Marketing our Services to a Multi Generational Population

The library staff at Gaston College were looking for ways to market the college’s library branches in preparation for opening their third branch in September 2009. The staff were also aiming to market the library as a valuable resource on campus to the diverse student body as well as dispel negative stereotypes of libraries in general. In addition to relying on the college’s Marketing, PR, and HR departments on campus, the library staff created opportunities to work and co-market services and programs with the local public library branches. They redesigned the library’s homepage to include more visual identity and promote their changing foyer displays and monthly contests/programs. Although they never really addresses evaluation of their marketing efforts (other than an increase in gate counts), they did provide the following toolkits they found useful:

http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/issues/marketing/index.cfm

http://statelibrary.ncdcr.gov/ld/NCLIbraryToolKit.pdf

Doe v. Gonzales: In which Doe, the humble librarian, won and Gonzales, the Attorney General of the United States, lost

National Security Letters (NSL) have been issued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation since the inception of the Patriot Act of 2001. Seen as administrative subpoenas, the FBI can issue NSLs without any judicial permission or oversight and each NSL is accompanied with a perpetual non-disclosure mandate (or lifetime gag order). Not only can recipients of a NSL cannot discuss the details of the letter or issuance for the subpoena, but they are also restricted from acknowledging receipt of the NSL, what the FBI is seeking, or even that they have been contacted by the FBI. Out of the 400,000 NSLs that have been issued since 2001, the “Connecticut Four” are the only 4 people in the nation who have the legal right to discuss their ordeal.

George Christian (known as John Doe in the case) is the Executive Director of Library Connection Inc. based out of Windsor, Connecticut. Library Connections Inc. provides telecommunications and ILS-hosting for the area’s 27-branch consortium. In July 2005, the IT Manager for Library Connections Inc. was contacted by the FBI to inform the Executive Director that he would soon be issued a NSL but failed to give any additional information regarding the issuance or what the letter would contain. After arriving in July 2005, Christian noted that the letter was written May 13, 2005 about an incident that occurred on February 15, 2005…and concluded that the information the FBI wanted was not a high priority. After calling an emergency board meeting and gaining the unanimous approval of the Executive Committee to take the Attorney General of the United States to court, Christian proceeded with upholding the ALA’s Code of Ethics and the principles of libraries stance on intellectual freedom and patron privacy. With backing of the ACLU, Christian took the matter to the the New York State District Court, which found the NSL statute of the Patriot Act unconstitutional, specifically the perpetual non-disclosure section and it’s impact on library operations, policies, and patron record information. The district court judge ruled that the FBI did not provide sufficient evidence to enforce non-disclosure aspect of the entire NSL process and lifted the gag order. Not only had the gag order prevented the Connecticut Four from filing the lawsuit with their given names and “appearing” in court via closed-circuit TV, but it also prevented them from discussing the case with their families, library staff members, and the library community at large.

Eventually, after appeals by the district court and judgment by the New York 2d Circuit Court of Appeals, the FBI dropped their case for the NSL, stating they no longer needed the information they were seeking. Christian attributes their win to the unanimous support of the Library Connection Inc.’s Executive Committee and the un-evidenced claim of the Justice Department. Although the Connecticut Four are allowed to discuss the case to highlight the NSL portion of the Patriot Act and their experiences with the FBI in relation to library operations, they feel a mass evaluation of the Patriot Act and the FBI’s unlimited abilities to issue NSLs be conducted. Through this ordeal, they were able to change portions of non-disclosure to allow recipients discussion with attorneys, contest the gag order after 1 year of issuance, and libraries are now exempt from receiving NSLs (although only libraries that do not provide telecommunication capabilities–which, where are you going to find that in the US!?).

In addition to educating libraries and library users about NSLs and library/patron privacy rights, Christian and the other Connecticut Four are charging libraries with creating a policy/plan for library staff to follow if they receive an NSL. Their experiences has proven that it’s best to be prepared and to follow the revisions and reforms of the USA Patriot Act.

Secrets of the Trade

I attended Bill Grimsley’s magic workshop that was hosted by the Public Libraries section of NCLA. Grimsley specializes in magic/comedy routines for libraries, churches, and workshops. I did learn a few tricks that could be adapted to the LIB100 courses, but as the second rule of the Magic Trade is “never reveal the secret to how the trick is done” I can’t divulge that information.

Errand into the Maze: Results of an Empirical Study Designed to Clarify Whether Works are in the Public Domain

Deborah Gerhardt is the Director of Intellectual Property Initiative and an Adjunct Professor of Law at UNC-Chapel Hill. In conjunction with a Mellon Foundation-funded grant, Gerhardt is studying over 300 cases of copyright publication violation in efforts to idenitfy works that are technically in the public domain. So far, Gerhardt has reviewed 268 district court cases, 106 Court of Appeal cases, and 9 Supreme Court cases and is recording and analysizing her results. Although she did not finish her investigation before the 2009 NCLA conference, she will publish her findings soon along with her Mellon Foundation Report. This session was great for people just starting out with or curious about copyright as it pertains to libraries (Fair Use, sections 108 and 110, DMCA). Random information moment: the next time items will fall into Public Domain will occur in 2018.

Thanks to those who responded to the querry I posed within my first NCLA post. I look forward to discussing your answers with each of you. I hope others as you get a chance will consider responding as well. Thursday morning of NCLA featured several of our LAMS sponsored programs. Beginning with Dr. Larry White, Assistant Professor at the School of Library and Information Science at East Carolina University presenting an overview of challenges facing libraries as they implement “Assessment Planning.” According to White, little is found in the literature on assessment planning for the whole organization and that most libraries don’t build their strategic plans around data collected from assessment efforts. Traditional models of assessment look at efficiency rates, effectiveness, return on investment and educational outcomes. White then suggest a revised approach where we look at our stakeholders, our intangibles, our resources and our knowledge experiences. Libraries need to align their major library services with those associated closest to our stakeholders. Assessment should connect your community to what you are doing, therefore it is so important to involve your customers in every facet. Don’t just let him see you asking for data, or counting only numbers, turn around and show the customer what those numbers mean. Broadcast and share these numbers to your community. Showcase them in a way that conveys the value of the services rendered.

Our second session was a preview of the NCLA 2010 Leadership Institute. Institute facilitators shared the guiding principles, outlined expectations of the four day retreat as well as the application and selection process. Much of this information was shared in my fist NCLA posting earlier in the week. The 2010 institute will be held in November in Asheboro, NC.

The LAMS luncheon featured Waffle House owner of seventeen stores, Gary Fly. I don’t believe he owns any of the Winston Salem stores. He spoke frequently of the Greensboro, High Point, Hickory and Mt. Airy locations. Fly encouraged attendees to view their libraries as he does, through the eyes of the customer. Waffle House mission for their stores include: delivering a unique experience to each customer, providing a welcoming environment, great food, reasonable prices and friendly attentive services. Most of their business comes from repeat customers. How does a store like this compete when the landscape of fast food, just like libraries, has changed so drastically over the last decade? First he took the time to study the landscape and he’s well aware of what these changes are. His approach, is deliberate. It is a “cheers without the alcohol.” Employees seek to offer a unique fun filled experience. The keys to each Waffle House are buried in the parking lot on opening day as a symbol that they are always there for you. The busiest day of the year is Christmas Day. Staff are encouraged to learn the customers names, call them out as they enter the building, remember what their favorites are and give them what they want in a 22 minute turn around time. They use other customers in creating this unique experience.

As a customer of the Library, Fly would like to see libraries offer a Barnes and Noble approach, comfortable furniture, good signage and a warm friendly environment. Amazon like service with customer reviews of books read and suggested reading lists. A Netflix model - here are the titles you pre-selected as those of interest; just send them back and your next ones will arrive via campus mail. Below are ten steps Fly offers to help libraries on their way to success:

1. Employ friendly greeters - encourage them to smile.

2. Communicate frequently your service priorities.

3. Does your staff appear attentive?

4. Is their order and structure in place?

5. Communicate the mission statement!

6. Build strong, lasting relationships.

7. Promote your brand.

8. Hire the best and brightest folk- with a unified system of training in place!

9. Know what your value is.

10. Work really hard to deliver what your customers expect.

“The Library Diversity Committee: Serving Knowledge, Serving You,” was a very well organized and thought provoking session . Representatives from UNC-G, NC State, UNC- C and ECU shared strategies for the library based diversity committees. Each representative shared details surrounding their individual successes. Most had a recurring theme of acquiring the right personnel, offering the right type programming and building greater collections of available resources. The general consensus of the group was not to label programs offered as “diversity.” Something about the word made folk think someone was trying to shove something down their throat. Choosing other topics that not only focused on race but other areas of discrimination also boosted interest. I plan to look at the representative websites for their goals and objectives, it could be that the timing may be right for WFU. I was particularly interested in the film series that some of the schools offered. Perhaps if we loose the word diversity in the committees name, we might find a happy medium for this type strategically planned programming here at ZSR.

My final workshop of the conference was entitled “Library Workforce Challenges in North Carolina.” This session reviewed findings from a comprehensive study of career patterns on graduates (1964 onward) from the 4 NC LIS programs and also the Central Piedmont Certification program. The WILS study was conducted via a survey. I have listed just a few of the highlights discussed in the session, but for a clearer and more detailed presentation and summary look here - http://www.wilis.unc.edu.

Survey responses were about 2627 or 35%. 82% were female with an average age of 50. 11% were non white. The average salary was 51,952. 33% work in school libraries, 20 % in public, 31% in academic and 16% in special.

How many are likely to leave the profession in five years or 2013?- 49%

How many of them are likely to have left already? - 12 % of the workforce.

How many are likely to leave the workforce in ten years or 2018? - 63%

Salary, career progression, support for continuing education, mentorship, recognition and a more flexible work schedule were each attributed as keys to retaining and motivating librarians and library workers.

A panel of representatives from across the state then spoke on how these findings might impact our course of action with regard to workforce relations in North Carolina Libraries. Susan Nutter shared the NCSU story. Hire the best and pay them well. Her fellows are paid well and given top responsibilities right up front. Sometimes libraries fail with new graduates because they watch and teach them to death. As young graduates many are eager and full of passion. Don’t treat them to be so cautious. Are you the employer of choice?

This was a great discussion and a great note to end the conference workshops on. The closing session featured Barbara Armstrong White, management consultant from UCAN Educational Services of Fayetteville NC who shared “Service Strategies that transform and Move us Forward.” White reminded the audience that from economic and other disasters humanity is brought to the forefront. Train yourself to think of the other personsjourney of life has been. We owe our communities our attention!

Day two at NISO has been as intense as day one with a lot of information to digest within just one day. Everybody was pretty relaxed (and exhausted) and comfortable with each other as we all got well acquainted the day before. Today’s talk was much about collaborative work and consortial partnership. Vendors believe that by adhering a consortium, libraries could put their voices together to acquire resources. Doing so will significantly reduce cost for each member of the consortium.

The most exciting part of the day was when we were divided into groups to discuss what libraries want in Library Resource Management Systems. We also answered interesting questions that we shared with the whole conference. Below are some of the question and the answers we came up with:

1. What did your group talk most about?

• Talked a lot about ILS and discovery tools

1. In the area, which features are needed?

• Standards and interoperability and real time sharing of data
• Need to be able to input and output data from ILS to other systems like patron info, financial info
• Getting data out is not difficult but functionalities like patron renewal needs some work
• Interoperability is very important and when you talk about different products it does not make sense to people
• Need to have our system authenticate with other systems.
• Would be interested in something like a data warehouse that would house all library data resources around which other systems would revolve.
• The ability to get data in/out through API based on standard and interoperability
• We don’t know if it is any cheaper to join consortiums like WorldCat local
• Would like vendors to open up their product a little bit more to the customers
• Need for systems to talk to each other.

1. Name one specific bottleneck in the area. What is causing the problems in getting work done, in training people? What is the one thing holding you back?

• The proprietary system is a big bottleneck in this area that is holding back

It was a good feeling when my group selected me to be the note taker and the speaker of the group as each group was asked to make this selection.

Just like yesterday, I have a lot of information to share and don’t be surprised to see more posts coming your way during the weekend. I now have to go catch a flight back home.

Mary Scanlon and I attended the Thursday session of NCLA’s 58^th Biennial Conference in Greenville, where 543 registrants converged on the Greenville Convention Center.

The speaker at the day’s Ogilvie Lecture was Mary Boone, State Librarian of North Carolina, who commenced her address by countering our awareness of parlous times for libraries by citing positive statistics for the state: NC is the 4^th fastest growing state, 10^th most populous, and is projected to be the 7^th most populous state by 2030. On the other hand, there have been hundreds of thousands of jobs lost in the traditional big three job areas– tobacco, textiles, and furniture, as a new economy has emerged based on technology, banking, pharmaceuticals, and auto-parts , yes auto-parts. She underscored the importance of NC libraries and the services they provide, despite cuts to their own resources (17.9% cuts at ECU, for instance, the home university for this conference). She singled out NC community colleges’ challenges as they try to support a new curriculum that addresses the education and training needs of the new workplaces. I’ve read, for instance, that community colleges are jumping on the bandwagon for educating in emerging green technologies. Yet community colleges have had resource cuts of 25-41%.Public library use is at an all time high, heavily used by people seeking new jobs and forced to apply online, when some have never touched computers in their lives (some public libraries have also found it necessary to take reservations for story hours!). However, she remains optimistic that one can define one’s core mission and still provide essential services. For instance, she cited innovative strategies in the face of materials cuts:librarians going into the stacks and displaying literary classics in lieu of the latest bestsellers, with the result that these venerable works are flying off the display shelves.She closed by urging us to redefine and update our mission and do different, if necessary, with less.

I attended the RASS luncheon, which featured author Jill McCorkle as speaker. She prefaced her readings with engaging and humorous accounts of her writing process, disclosing that she tends to jot intriguing snippets of conversations on slips of papers, napkins, paper towels, etc. which she then stows away for future use. She cited one such remark from this summer, coming from a woman in a grocery store who observed that “the humility had been just terrible” of late; Ms. McCorkle emphatically agreed-and added that quotation to her cache for future use.She was queried, inevitably, about her archival practices (her papers are at UNC ), and she assured the audience of librarians that she does indeed place these slips she’s used in a story in an envelope, to be archived with her other literary output. Her readings from her most recent short story collection, Going Away Shoes, were delightful, full of wit and insight.I am looking forward to finding out how the tales ended.

Each day of the conference offered a session on the greening of libraries, and not surprisingly the sessions were all highly popular, with enthusiastic presenters and audiences alike. The choice of the day was “NC Public Libraries Going Green,” presented by Jody Risacher, Director Cumberland County Public Library & Information Center, Jodi Hojosy, Green Business Program Coordinator, and Dan Barron, Chair NCPLDA Green Libraries Task Force. They offered a very interesting and encouraging overview of Green Library initiatives in NC, including the NC Green Libraries Project (Mr. Barron’s portion) and included a specific account of how the Cumberland County Public Library earned the local Green Business Certificate. That opportunity had fallen into their laps when Sustainable Sandhills approached the library as part of an initiative to assist businesses and institutions in the area with sustainability planning and to encourage them to embrace more environmentally friendly modes of business. The Library now has an informative web page, “Thinking Green, Working Green,” that is filled with information resources, including books and dvds owned by the library, as well as links to external information sources for consumers, provided by governmental and by environmental agencies and organizations.

“Utilizing Library Space for Learning Opportunities,” presented by two UNCG librarians, Kathy Crowe (Associate Dean for Public Services) and Mike Crumpton (Assistant Deans for Administrative Services) took us through the process of assessing, devising, and developing learning spaces. They conducted an environmental scan, assessed how the students use space and what they need, considered changes and updates, and began the planning and renovating processes.They considered changes in how students approach learning and studying, such as active and reflective orientations, group and individual study, technology and other resource access issues. They determined that they needed to create a larger instruction lab, expand collaboratories and group spaces, develop a Learning Commons (the new term for Information Commons), expand service areas such as vending machine and copy center areas as well as the Archives space, reduce and resituate government documents, and reduce as well the reference collection. As a means to these determinations, they used three assessment approaches, an in-house survey, observational studies, and focus groups. Focus group results revealed that the 24/5 expansion was popular as were café booths, collaboratories, group areas and vending. Many considered the library’s environment conducive to study, and confirmed the need for quiet space areas. Fortunately, UNCG has made the expansion of Jackson Library one of its highest priorities, and the proposed design will expand the tower for book stacks and create a center for academic and student life.

Mary Scanlon and Kathy Makens, Electronic Resources Librarian at Durham Public Library, presented a BLINC session on “Social Networking for Career Advancement:It’s Not Your Teenager’s Facebook.” With her usual verve and energy even at the end of a long day spent a-conferencing, Mary explained the various social networking tools and correlated them with professional uses to which they could be put– totally unfazed and undeterred by connectivity poltergeists. She discussed email alerts, useful for journal articles; RSS feeds for both journal articles and blogs; Twitter for conference and professional association coverage; and Facebook, for similar purposes. I had not heard of RT-re-tweet forwarding; or twibes -twitter tribes ,what else, graced by a librarian twibe; or Pipes for filtering the inevitable abundance of RSS feeds (used with a Yahoo account). The audience, coming from various levels of experience, was very engaged, and peppered the two presenters with questions at the end of the very informative session.

The first day of the NISO forum on Library Resource Management Systems went very well and touched on some of the different means that libraries are now using to manage their resources to respond to the changes in the library environment.

After a great continental breakfast where I started networking with Grace Liu, Systems Librarian from the Leddy Library at the University of Windsor, Canada, the day began with a great welcome introduction from Todd Carpenter, Managing Director of NISO. During his introduction, Todd quickly pointed out that it is important to know that every organization is different from others and this should be taken into consideration while planning any implementation whether open source or commercial. He did not forget to thank Ex Libris and EBSCO for sponsoring the event.

The Keynote Presentation titled Toward Service-Oriented Librarianship was given by Oren Beit-Arie, Chief Strategy Officer at Ex Libris. He pointed out that collaboration between libraries is the way to go as it can generate savings that libraries can use toward other important means that have been neglected. Continuing, he noted that based on some Ex Libris interviews, libraries want to:

• Meet users needs by providing a single interface for discovery and delivery of library and institutional data

• Do more with less by consolidating workflows, traditional with “digital library”
• Support collaboration to increase productivity
• Build future services with SOA-based interoperability and network-based deployment options
• Incorporate user provided data etc.

Oren also mentioned some framework changes for physical content management systems like Aleph Millennium, Voyager, and Unicorn; electronic content management systems like SFX, Verde, III-ERM, and Metalib; digital content management systems like Digitool, contentDM, Fedora, and DSpace. In addition, he noted that libraries will significantly benefit from integrated systems in a much more modern way using new frameworks like Usenet Resource Downloader (URD) that allow for local, remote, and deep search, URD as decoupled front-end as single entry point for discovery and delivery of all material types including Unified Resource Management (URM) systems for selection, patron management, access rights etc.

The most exciting part of the day was when it sort of like became a dialog between Andrew Nagy and I when I asked him some questions after his informative presentation on VuFind. A couple of my questions were as follows:

1. Most of our students like VuFind but our staff and faculty, not so much. What improvement do you think can be done to improve VuFind to satisfy both students and faculty and staff?
2. We implemented VuFind on a server that has 1 gigabit of memory allocated to VuFind. However, lately, as the number of VuFind users increases (I believe), VuFind has been causing the server to crash. What solution would you suggest in resolving this situation and how much memory should be allocated to VuFind?

He responded by saying that there isn’t anything that can done to satisfy faculty and staff as VuFind has been developed to be a more modern tool for better resource discovery including social features that student may be more used to. Consequently, it is understandable when users who are not very open to experimenting with new technologies express dissatisfactions toward VuFind. He also mentioned that my boss (meaning Erik Mitchell) contacted him about the VuFind server crashing issue and according to him this issue was due to a bad server configuration. He also said that the issue is now resolved.

I still have a lot more information to share but it will be tomorrow as today was a busy day.