August 2009 Archives

Meet you at the Forum

By Andrew K. Pace on August 27, 2009 9:09 AM |
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On of my favorite conferences is coming up.  LITA Forum will be in Salt Lake City this year and the theme is "Open & Mobile."  Save the dates--October 2-4, 2009.  There are some great concurrent sessions planned--mobile technologies, open data, open source software, lightening talks, and some really great looking poster sessions.  Lest I forget three fantastic keynoters:
If you're in the mood for an extra day in Salt Lake, two LITA members are sure to dazzle with their pre-conference offerings.  Jason Griffey will be talking about the future of Mobile, a great pre-conference that extends the excellent article Jason wrote for netConnect last year.  And Nina McHale will help libraries navigate the tricky issues surrounding Accessibility with updates, a live tour of several assistive technologies, and industry updates.

I love the programming at the Forum, because it is literally the only conference I go to where I am torn between which session to attend.  This headache for conference organizers (just too much good stuff!) should be joy for conference attendees with shrinking professional development budgets or concerns about getting the most for their money.  I should mention that I have never witnessed such a hard-working and dedicated group of volunteers as the ones who put this Forum together.  They are to be congratulated.

But I have thus far neglected the best part about LITA Forum--the people.  If you want to socialize, network, chat with vendors and sponsors in a relaxed atmosphere, or make that connection that will spark an idea or solidify a fleeting thought, then LITA Forum is the place to be.  LITA is fun and inclusive.  LITA is valuable.  These are tough financial times for travel and professional development.  Librarians, IT professionals, and support staff need to choose wisely from an array of conference offerings.  If I had to narrow my choices down to one conference per year or pay for extra professional development out of my own pocket, you'd find me at the Forum.

Did that sound too much like a commercial?  If not, then let me add that you should ACT NOW! and save $50 off of registration.  I'm already registered, are you?  

Seriously, this year's Forum is shaping up to be fantastic.  I'll be in Salt Lake City the first weekend in October and I hope to see lots of people there.

Web-scale: Portfolio Director's Cut

By Andrew K. Pace on August 18, 2009 4:21 PM |
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As you might imagine, I've been doing a lot of presentations about Web-scale lately...both the general concept and how it applies to the web-scale management services that my team is building for circulation and delivery, print and licensed acquisitions, and license and rights management.

Lots of people have been asking for copies of the presentation that I gave at ALA.  I used to always have problems sharing slides.  For one thing, the joke slides never work out of context; for another, I try very hard to avoid bulleted lists of things, also making context-less Powerpoint viewing difficult.  Now I can gladly say, "Let's go to the video tape!"

webscale-presentation.jpg


Powerpoint, slides, and video all in one.  Unlike movie directors, however, I find video of myself a bit hard to watch, so I hope the rest of you will enjoy it.  There's a good Q&A session at the end that was actually my favorite part of the presentation.  The presentation covers not only the general web-scale strategy and cloud computing platform, but also more specifics about the Web-scale management services Library Advisory Council, pilot participants, component functionality, and development timelines.

There are a lot of other great conference presenatations and updates available on the OCLC Presentations site--a little something for everyone.

Why do we continue to silo our supply chains?

By Andrew K. Pace on August 13, 2009 2:27 PM |
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Okay, so I have not been the most faithful blogger, lately.  I was going to make an excuse about increased micro-blogging on Twitter or social activity on Facebook, but those have fallen rather dormant as well, so I have no good excuses.  I do, however have some good news, and that is some guest postings from my friend and colleague, Matt Goldner.

So today, guest columnist, Matt Goldner, Product and Technology Advocate, contributes his thoughts on sharing systems and workflows to deliver a more effective experience to patrons.  In his new role, Matt will be on the road visiting libraries to see what new things are happening in the community.  I'm hoping he will be a frequent poster to Hectic Pace (Hectic Goldner?) and make up for my periodic slacking.

Take it away, Matt....


goldner_matt.jpg

While attending the 2009 Information Delivery Services (IDS) Conference in Oswego, I saw a challenging presentation on a new service the project is building for the members. The Getting It System Toolkit (GIST) was discussed and demonstrated. The service offering itself was interesting and well thought out but it is the concept behind it that really challenged me.

For the last 12 years most of my focus has been on breaking down the silos users experience in trying to discover and access
library collections. The focus of GIST is instead to break down the silos that library staff experience in their supply chains for information selection, acquisition, accessioning and description. The truly radical part is the premise that libraries are simply another supply chain to each other and that the workflow between inter-library loan departments and acquisition departments should be broken down.

The end goal of GIST is for ILL and acquisition departments to use the same service to manage their selection and ordering process with the ability to also get the descriptive record into the systems it needs to reside in. I view this type of thinking as critical to the future of libraries. We often continue to maintain workflows and look for new systems that will support these old methods. Instead projects like GIST challenge some basic concepts and assumptions and give us the opportunity to change workflows to match the real needs of today's library.

For more information on GIST: http://idsproject.org/Tools/GIST.aspx

-Matt

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About the Author

Andrew K. Pace

I am Executive Director for Networked Library Services at OCLC. I am also President of LITA. On occasion, I am known for pontificating "on stage, in writing, and via the web" on a variety of issues important to libraries.

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