Computers in Libraries, 2006

Just got back from the 2006 Computers In Libraries conference. This is always an excellent conference. I started going to it several years ago mostly because it was a good professional conference that I only had to travel down into D.C. to attend, but in recent years, I've been attending because I think there are presentations there that show us the future of the library.

This year, the big theme was "Libraries 2.0." I got the impression that it means that we need to make our online presence more interactive, and be more responsive to patrons who visit our brick and morter installations. Most of the ILS vendors are getting on the bandwagon to varying degrees, but I saw a presentation by Andrew Pace of the North Carolina State University Libraries that showed the new interface for their catalog. They licensed technology from Endeca, the same people that provide the front-end for the Barnes & Noble and Walmart web storefronts. They've done amazing things with the search capabilities and with the parsing of the MARC data to make narrowing and broadening your search much easier.

This followed a presentation by Roy Tennant on The Future of Catalogs. Roy said basically that catalogs were very good at keeping track of your collection, and helping you find items that either you know are in your collection or are known to exist and you hope they are in your collection, but are not always as user-friendly as they perhaps could be when you are searching for materials on a particular subject.

But I think the most important thing I learned this time is that we have to make a fundamental shift in our perception. The library web site must be perceived as a destination, not an originating point for patron searching. We should do our best to provide them with the information they're looking for, but we can't expect them to always start with our website to find that information. They're probably starting with a search engine. We're just going to have to be better at making the information and links that we have available and findable to searchers. I also learned that they want that information available to them on whatever device they happen to be using to search for that information - desktop PC, laptop, Mac, PDA or cellphone. We have to be able to deliver content in a variety of formats simultaneously.

This is a really good conference, and I think more Adventist librarians should be attending. Usually it's just people from CUC and Southern (and I'm not sure how Southern got started, but I'm keeping up the tradition), but I'd like to see more of us there next year!

I must admit, I also go for the good food in the area. I'm a bit worried though, because next year the conference is back at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City, and I won't be able to go to the same great eateries. I hope they've built some more in that area in the last 7 years.

Hope to see you there, and we'll do lunch!

Conference Registration

We're trying something new this year with the registration for the Annual Conference. We're going Online! And taking credit card payments as well as checks. Lee and I have wanted to do something like this for awhile, but we were never able to figure out a way to make it happen. There are several organizations out there on the web that are more than happy to take registrations for conferences and other things for you, but they all want you to pay them a fair amount of money both up-front and on a regular basis. I'm sure that they are very good companies, and that they are easy to work with, but we never felt that ASDAL wanted to spend the kind of money they were asking. If our conference was regularly being attended by several hundred people, then maybe. But for now, we had to come up with something different.

I think it was Ruth that suggested PayPal. They are well-known, secure, and most of all, they don't require start-up fees or monthly payments. At least not at the basic level that we would need. But I wasn't sure that we would be able to get the amount of information through them that we would need for planning a conference. What kind of room would people like? Who would their roommate be? That sort of thing. So we had to find a way to get that information on our own but still let people use PayPal to pay with their credit cards.

I had a form that I had used before for submitting proposals for poster sessions or conference presentations as well as a form for registering for the conference that didn't really do anything apart from adding up the amount of money a registrant would have to pay. So with a great deal of help from Ron, the systems person here at McKee Library, I was able to merge the forms in a way that would send both us and the registrant an e-mail detailing the information they were submitting. It's not a pretty e-mail, as you will be able to see when you register, but it does convey the basic information. And we were able to figure out a way to pass a variable cost on to PayPal. That's basically what's been taking us so long to get the registration process started this year.

So I apologize to everyone for taking so long, but it is up now on the conference website (http://www.asdal.org/conf/2006/), so we invite you to send in your registration and come and see us here at Southern this summer!

One final note, I'm posting this after the form went "live," and after I announced it on the SDA-Librarian discussion list, and our first registrant is Cynthia Helms! So congratulations Cynthia.

It's been awhile

I know, it's been awhile since I entered anything in this blog. I've been meaning to keep it up, but the longer you go, the harder it is to get back into it. Sorry about that.

Anyways, the last day of the conference was very good. It was billed as a "post-conference", so attendance was down a bit from the regular conference, nevertheless, those of us who were left had a very good time. Chris Blake did a very good presentation on Conflict Resolution, Annette Melgosa showed us a video and led a discussion on "Communicating Across Cultures", and after lunch Gilbert shared his thoughts on Servant Leadership. He always has the best pictures for his PowerPoint slides. Then it was finally time for Genevieve to be part of the panel discussion on Effectively Communicating with Administrators. She'd been a bit worried about this, but was able to share some interesting stories and insights on how she dealt with Southern's administrators. Carolyn led out, and Ralph Köhler and Annette contributed as well. After the break, Linda Mack and Bruce McClay shared some thoughts on Communicating with Faculty & Students, and Paulette Johnson taught us how to think Beyond the Grapevine. All good presentations.

For supper, Paul & Marge Seifert took us out to the local "must-visit" restaurant, Valentino's. Man, what a place. All-you-can-eat Italian buffet. I'm lucky I don't live in Lincoln, I'd be eating there too much. It was crowded, but the food was very good.

Sabbath, we went to first church, and then took ourselves to the Henry Doorly Zoo over in Omaha. The weather was extremely warm, but the zoo was great fun. Oddly enough, the desert exhibit turned out to be a good place to go for a break from the heat! We went on our own, and not with the rest of the ASDAL people on their tour because we were leaving straight from there to drive back to Collegedale.

But I have to give it to Sabrina and her staff, this was a very good conference. I just hope we can do as well when you all come to visit us at Southern this year!