I. ACRL/NEC ITIG Report    November 2004

The proposed schedule of programs is as follows:

• Friday, November 19, 2004 (Rensselaer at Hartford)
  Joint program with NELIG: "Teaching the Immersion Way and Close Encounters with Lola" (no registration fee)
  Registration full at 54.
  The program will feature alums from the ACRL Immersion Program who will speak about dynamic library instruction. Then, Kendall Hobbs will introduce a database for sharing teaching resources as part of a consortial information literacy initiative.

  NELIG Chair, Barbara Kenney, organized this meeting and I am grateful for her efforts.

• Friday, February 4, 2005 (Bryant College)
  Program on federated searching (no registration fee)
  Anticipate accommodating 40-45.
  Speakers:
  • Overview of federated searching and project management considerations, Melissa Watterworth (Connecticut History Online) and Christine Turner (Five Colleges, Inc.)
  • User Benefits and Challenges, Susan Edwards (Amherst College)
  • Technical implementation, Leah Prescott (Mystic Seaport) and Bob Gerrity (Boston College)

  Christine Turner, Communications Co-Chair, has been instrumental in planning this meeting. I thank her for all the work she has done to bring this program together.

• Date under consideration - please provide feedback
  Friday, March 18, 2005 (Lamar Soutter Library, UMass Medical Center)
  Program on digital repositories (no registration fee anticipated)
  Anticipate accommodating 50+.
  This program is still being developed but a general outline includes:
  • General overview of managing a digital repository and applying archival theory in a digital environment - Eliot Wilczek, University Records Manager at Tufts, has agreed to present this section of the program.
  • Fedora - overview with a technical focus (possibly someone from Yale)
  • DSpace - overview with a technical focus (hopefully, someone from MIT)

  An ITIG business meeting will follow. There is a possibility that the Preservation/Conservation Interest Group may co-sponsor this meeting.

• Thursday, June 2, 2005 (Gutman Conference Center, Harvard University)
  Proposed time: 10-3 with 1.5 hour lunch on your own
  Joint program with Serials SIG on journal archives (electronic and print preservation)
  (anticipated registration fee: $10 ACRL/NEC members; $15 non-members)
  Registration fee will cover the cost of using the facilities at Harvard, catering charge for refreshments, photocopying and related expenses, speaker travel costs, lunch for speakers after the meeting, etc.
  Anticipate accommodating 75-100.
  The date is based on the availability of Vicky Reich from LOCKSS. She will be in Boston for the Society for Scholarly Publishing's Annual Meeting and is available only on this date. This presents a wonderful opportunity to have a nationally recognized speaker without paying travel costs. Speakers:
  • LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe), Vicky Reich (Stanford University Libraries)
  • a librarian implementing LOCKSS (Yale, UConn, or Harvard), Dave Bretthauer (Network Services Librarian at UConn) has expressed interest in speaking and knows Vicky, so they could coordinate their talks.
  • print journal conservation speaker (maybe someone from the Northeast Document Conservation Center)
  • new initiatives and ejournal archiving, Bruce Heterick (JSTOR)

  I can't thank Patty Hatch and the Serials SIG enough for joining us in this effort and providing such terrific ideas and enthusiasm.

• ACRL/NEC Annual Program, Breakout Session
  May 20, 2005
  Presentations on interactive tutorials/streaming videos for database searching by Boston University and Babson College will be followed by a moderated discussion/question & answer period.

Other activity: The ITIG Steering Committee has been doing most of its work by email. A small subset of the Steering Committee traveled to Harvard to meet with the Serials SIG on Oct. 15th. After meeting with the Serials SIG, Frances Schlesinger (UMass Boston), Sue McMullen (Roger Williams Univ.), Nancy George (Salem State), and I met to discuss plans for the other 2004-05 ITIG meetings. Their help and support in bringing these programs together is greatly appreciated.

Melissa Wisner, Digital Systems Librarian at UConn, has agreed to serve as the ITIG-L moderator while Heidi Abbey is on leave during 2005.

Laura Haines, Outreach and Electronic Services Librarian at the Dana Medical Library (UVM), has joined the ITIG Steering Committee. Laura is new to ACRL/NEC as she has just moved here from New Jersey where she was a member of ACRL/NJ's Technology Committee.