In this Issue Fall Conference Report: Virtual, Digital, and Funded New England Economic Information Online The Scholarly Web Site A Visit to the Worcester Women's History Project News from NEBIC Announcements ACRL/NEC Spring 2000 Conference NETSL Spring 2000 Conference ITIG Presents "Emerging Technology in Libraries" Return to the Masthead

ACRL New England Chapter News Online Winter 2000, No. 89 ACRL/NEC 1999 Fall Conference Report Virtual, Digital, and Funded: Transforming Library Collections and Access Peter Deekle Wheaton College On an unseasonably warm and sunny November 19, 1999, Bernard Margolis, President of the Boston Public Library, greeted more than 250 librarians at the Library's Rabb Auditorium for a day long program about digital library collections and access. The conference was co-sponsored by ACRL New England and the Boston Library Consortium. The keynote speaker, Library Journal’s insightful Roy Tennant, manager of UC/Berkeley's Digital Library SunSITE, began his remarks by debunking several pervasive digital myths--for instance, assertions that soon everything will be digital (which confronts the reality of hybrid libraries as sources for both digital and traditional media); that digital formats are qualitatively better than print; that digital formats will replace print; that digital resources are cheaper than print resources; that digital resources are equally available for all disciplines; or that all digital library projects are equally worthy, by definition, of support. Noting key issues and trends, Tennant suggested that libraries could expect "more of the same" AND more of what digital technology could offer. He predicted that the term "library" may one day refer to a digital library, but the trend toward hybrid libraries (containing both digital and traditional media) is already becoming reality, and this hybrid will increasingly offer services and resources to users, regardless of time or place, and meet the expanding demand for personalized academic support. The staff of the emerging hybrid libraries will need new technology competencies to fulfill new roles. Perhaps his most telling comments were reserved for individual librarians and their approaches to the organization of knowledge and access to information. He reflected on the qualities of a good search and retrieval system, in the process reminding everyone that our intricate library systems, often created for the bibliophiles among us, tend to "get in a user's way." Slides of Roy Tennant’s presentation may be viewed at http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/~manager/Presentations/BLC/. David Remsen, Bioinformatics Manager at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, followed the keynote speaker with a highly visual and lively presentation representing his work with digitized images. Remsen, linking the practice of marine biology to an understanding of literature in the field, commented on disturbing issues of preservation and permanence in the digital age. He demonstrated the added value created in digitizing rare and inaccessible collections. Like Tennant, Remsen saw libraries developing and managing hybrid mechanisms for storage, access, and use of resources in the future. Three librarians followed the conference luncheon with useful strategies for fund-raising. Cathy Norton, director of the Marine Biological Laboratory and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute Library, stressed the value of long-range planning and incremental steps for projects, as part of developing successful fund-raising proposals. She noted the current appeal, and corresponding fundability, of projects aimed at assessing technology's impact on teaching and learning. Elaine Martin, library director at UMASS Medical Center, offered detailed advice on proposals for digital library projects. She cited several sources for information about federal grants to libraries and specific government grants for preservation and access (http://library.umassmed.edu/grantfunding.html#Federal). Brown University's Special Collections head librarian, Rosemary Cullen, discussed project development and provided a demonstration of images from Brown’s Ameritech-funded African American Sheet Music Digitizing Project (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award97/rpbhtml/aasmhome.html). She also talked generally about the appeal of special collections for fund-raising projects. Arnold Hirshon, NELINET Executive Director and the concluding speaker, reminded everyone that access to information involves the collaboration of many libraries. Rather than anticipate state-by-state projects, Hirshon advocated the regional opportunities for library collaboration. He spoke from his experience in Ohio and Pennsylvania about the access advantages of single and multiplatform bibliographic systems as they contribute to virtual union catalogs (VUCs). Some advantages of a single platform VUC include a high degree of data integrity, the seamless transfer of search terms, fully merged search results, and fully interactive circulation data. But single platform systems are expensive to create and operate, requiring replacement of all local systems at same time and the synchronization of local and central system data. Agreements to form multiplatform VUCs are easier to achieve since they do not require unanimous consent from all member libraries, and they can be very cost effective (using existing Z39.50 compliant local catalog systems). But Z39.50 variances can contribute to more complicated searching for users, and their quality depends on adherence to standards by local participants. Hirshon ably articulated functional, procedural, protocol, and delivery issues associated with virtual catalog endeavors. He identified several characteristics of VUC excellence, including a common interest among participants and a belief in cooperation; evidence of strong institutional and library leadership; and recognition of local needs. Strategies for creating and managing successful virtual union catalogs should incorporate plans for determining membership requirements (long and short-term), determining the platform, establishing adequate local funding to support operating costs, and providing an effective ground delivery system. A realistic understanding of the time needed for project development (such projects take years, not months) is also important. Hirshon cautioned everyone about using interlibrary loan historical data to predict the potentially much greater usage activity associated with virtual union catalog endeavors. His spirited presentation was, characteristically, supported by well-chosen cartoon art. Slides of Arnold Hirshon’s presentation may be viewed at http://www.nelinet.net/~ahirshon/virtual-catalogs.htm. Return to the top