ASDAL 2006 - Day 2, The Tour

Well, we're up bright and early for the tour day. Hopefully everyone else will be, too! And hopefully nothing will go horribly wrong.

We're in for a shock, though. The bus that we arranged for with Southern doesn't show up until nearly the time when we're supposed to leave. Well, it's a short trip, we should still make it. Bruce does an interesting worship on the bus, and Frank gives us an outline of the day and some local history of the sites we are passing on our way to the Railroad Library.

The Kalmbach Memorial Library is very interesting. It's a special library, dedicated to the collection of periodicals and books and catalogs relating to railroads and model railroads. They have a very nice collection and do a brisk reference business. It's amazing, the kinds of questions they are able to answer there. If someone is looking for the actual specfications of a particular piece of rolling stock, they have the specs. They even have a fair number of instruction sheets for various model railroad kits.

Unfortunately, we can't stay long, because our tickets for the Tennessee Valley Railroad are for 9:00, and we have to get to the station so we don't miss our train. When the train shows up (it was running a couple of minutes late, too), they have two cars attached to the diesel engine (they were working on the steam engine today, wouldn't you know), a closed, air-conditioned car, and one with windows you can open. Of course, I have to have the open windows. There's something about riding in a train, rolling over the tracks, that's really quite fun and relaxing. And if you can have the window rolled down, so much the better! The ride is only 3 miles, but we get to cross a few bridges, and go through a tunnel. Great fun. And at the end, we have time to watch them turn the engine around on a turntable. Really quite fascinating, watching that huge, heavy thing spin around in front of us, and heading off on another track. I can highly recommend this trip.

Then we're back on the bus and heading into town to visit the Chattanooga Hamilton Bicentennial Library, the main public library downtown. They are engaged in a project to digitize a large local history photo collection. And the fun part of this is the process of identifying buildings and people in the photographs. They aren't always labelled, or labelled correctly, so the staff have to use some detective skills to accurately identify both the objects in the picture, and the time period when the picture was taken. Of course, they are underfunded and probably understaffed, but the staff is amazingly dedicated to their task, and I think this is going to be a huge contribution for local history research. Hopefully every community will be able to do something like this!

After the presentation, we have a chance to ride Chattanooga's electric shuttle buses through the downtown area to find a place to eat. We have to skip the first bus that comes past us, because it's full. Apparently, since it's lunchtime, downtown office workers use these busses to get to eating establishments as well! How odd. But we finally make it to the Mellow Mushroom, and have some very nice sandwiches and pizza. I don't know where everyone else went, but I can only hope that their lunches were at least half as good as ours was.

After lunch, we hop back on the electric shuttle and ride down to the Chattanooga Ducks to take a ride through town and out on the Tennessee River. I've always loved riding the ducks, ever since summer camp at Little Grassy Lake in Southern Illinois. I just think they look cool, and it's great to be able to drive straight from the road into water and keep going. We ride up the Tennessee for a bit, and take a close look at Maclellan Island, a bird and wildlife sanctuary adminstered by the Audubon Society. While we're on the river, the driver invites passengers to take a turn at the wheel. So a couple of people from our group take a turn, including Ralph, Linda, and even me! It was great fun. While I was steering, the driver asked if I liked donuts. Well, sure, of course! So he says to crank the wheel all the way over and we'll do one. That was fun. And educational, as it turns out. I learned many things about Chattanooga's history and the Tennessee River that I never knew before. These drivers may be a bit crazy, but they know their stuff.

And now for more history. We're off to the International Towing and Recovery Hall of Fame & Museum. The first tow truck was invented here in Chattanooga, and they've put together a nice museum of the history of towing and a hall of fame for those in the business who have distinguished themselves over the years. It's great looking at all the old towtrucks and seeing how the technology started and how it has changed over the years.

Then it's on to one of Chattanooga's premier destinations (or at least one of the most widely-advertised after Rock City and Ruby Falls), the Incline Railway. basically a funicular railway that rides a mile up the side of Lookout Mountain. I've been to the station at the top several times, but for some reason, I've never actually ridden the railway until now. It's quite a ride. And it gets pretty steep up at the top. I highly recommend taking the ride.

After we get back down from Lookout Mountain, we head across to Signal Mountain for supper at the Pastaria, a very nice Italian restaurant. I haven't eaten here before, either, but I'm definitely coming back. The food is fantastic, and their waitstaff manage to keep up with our group and make sure we're all well-fed.

Well, that was alot of places to hit in one day, but fortunately, they were all pretty close together, and I think it worked out well. I know I had a good time, and I'll sleep well tonight!

ASDAL 2006 - Day 1, pt.4

I don't know how this always happens, but I get 3 entries in for the morning sessions, and then just one to cover the entire afternoon. Oh well, that's just how it goes, I guess.

I managed to scarf some lunch and then headed back to the meeting room because I needed to be ready for my presentation. Tony was before me, and I am sure that he had a good presentation, but I honestly didn't catch much of it. Too preoccupied with mine, I guess. He did have a good point about collection development that I do remember, though. He said you should go to faculty members, ask them what books they have on their office shelves that they are always turning to, and make sure you have those books in the library collection. Brilliant. I hadn't thought about that, but that's absolutely what you want in your collection. Great way to build it.

Then it's finally my turn to present. I'm not exactly sure what made me want to present this year, but I guess I just had a feeling that it was finally my turn, or something. I had been to several presentations on podcasting and blogging in the last year, so I was interested in sharing a little bit of what I'd learned. I think these are good technologies to embrace, and that's where a goodly portion of our patrons are wanting to get their information these days. They want it delivered to them, they don't want to have to go get it themselves, necessarily. Whatever we can do to make it easier for our base to get the information they need, the better, I think.

But of course, as Dan noted in the Q&A section, unless we're able to publicize these resources, what good are they? If you make a podcast and no one listens, are you still doing a good job? Probably not. Frank's presentation Friday should give us some ideas on how to publicize these new resources to our communities. Should be interesting. He's done some great things for us here at Southern, and I think ASDAL will be interested to hear about it.

Then it was the first Business Session. And the most important thing that happened is that I wasn't elected to the Nominating or Resolutions Committees. Yes, it would be a great honor to serve ASDAL in any way I could, but I've been on those committees before, and I have no great urge to serve again. But I'm sure the people that were elected will do fine work.

Tomorrow is the trip, and it looks like it'll be a good one. There's a fair amount of stuff here in Chattanooga that I haven't done, but isn't that always the way? You live near interesting things, but never visit them unless you're taking out-of-town guests to see them. Oh well, we have guests, so we're going to go see some good stuff!

ASDAL 2006 - Day 1, pt.3

Two more presentations this morning. First up is a trio of librarians from Southern to tell us the history and future of our Library Liaison program. It started with just Loranne talking to faculty to get some input on the book and periodical orders. It has evolved to involve everyone on the library staff working with all the departments on campus. Anything we can do to involve the faculty in building our collection and to get them to think of the library more when they plan their curriculum and programs is a good thing. As always, more must be done in this area, but I think we had a good start and we're working on making it better.

Next up is Steve Sowder telling us that we need to work on the infrastructure of our web pages. Style sheets are going to be a much better way of getting our web pages up. Separating style from content will enable you to update and maintain your site more easily, plus it'll probably make your pages load faster, and that's always good news for your users. Again, looks like I need to spend some more time on the ASDAL web page. I've got to learn this stuff and start using it. It just all takes time, doesn't it? But it has to be done.

Pardon the short blogging this time, there's alot going on, I'm thinking about my presentation coming up this afternoon, and I'm getting kind of hungry. Seems like a long time since breakfast. I'll be back after lunch. Promise.

ASDAL 2006 - Day 1, pt.2

Keith Clouten leads off the presentations today. He's been active in ASDAL since the start, I think, and has served in nearly all of the available offices. So he's well qualified to speak about the history and his hopes for the future of ASDAL. He has retired from active librarianship, but is spending his time travelling and helping out other libraries around the world. So we were lucky to get him, I think.

I first met Keith at the 1993 conference at (then) Canadian Union College, the first ASDAL conference outside of the US. It's amazing how much has changed since then. We were impressed by the fact that they had an online catalog, but we still had to go to their library to use it. And we did. Lee and I were trying to find some call numbers for some Adventist materials, so we took advantage of our opportunity to check the call numbers that had been assigned by the guy who invented the SDA Classification Schedules. Now, of course, I can just bring it up on my desktop, and I don't have to travel to Canada. It's kind of a pity, since the scenery around there, and especially in Banff, was spectacular. I must go back sometime.

But I'm getting distracted from Keith's presentation. It's actually about change, and how the demographics are shifting from a US-centric church to a more broadly-based world church. There are many more universities and university library springing up all over the world, and the internet is enabling them all to be connected. It's time for ASDAL to take advange of this broadening base.

Ah, I have also been given a charge by Keith. He is relating a dream he has of the future, where ASDAL has helped provide information services to all SDA libraries. And apparently I have designed the portal to all of those resources just before I retired. That's probably what did me in, I'm guessing. But it sounds like a good idea. Multi-language capable, unified databases and catalogs, and several other functionalities built in. I'll have to give it some thought.

The challenge is to grow, to help libraries develop all over the world, and at home. We have alot to give, and much to share. We're doing some, we can always do more.

ASDAL 2006 - Day 1, pt.1

Yes, since you asked, we had a very nice ice cream social last night. Marge and Carol and their husbands made home-made ice cream, and we had many toppings. Can't beat home-made ice cream, I say. We also had a chance to look at the posters, and I actually had a couple of ideas to add to my presentation. I hope Loma Linda won't mind.

After a (too short) night's rest, we're back for the first day of the regular conference. Ruth, Linda and Genevieve all welcome us, then turn it over to the illustrious President of Southern Adventist University, Dr. Gordon Bietz, for our morning devotional. He encouraged us to continue passing on knowledge to the next generation, because memory is important for growth.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get my timing right, so all the photos I took are not good. So sorry, no picture of Gordon for you this morning.

ASDAL 2006 - ARS, pt.4

The two presentations in the afternoon are follow-ups from last year's conference. And some projects that have been in the works for many years. Marsha Rasmussen reports on the Ellen G. White Estate Research Center that they've started up at Southwestern Adventist University. She has a slideshow that gives us a virtual tour of the facility, and it's pretty impressive. It's kind of small, but it looks good. I especially liked the etched-glass representation of the Christ of the Narrow Way painting. It looked very impressive. I'm going to have to get down there and see it sometime.

They also face the usual problems of limited space and budget, but I'm glad they're moving ahead. They are also moving ahead with some interesting programs aimed at kids to get them interested in Ellen White and denominational history. I'm glad they're doing something like that, and it sounds like they have some interesting plans for expanding this ministry.

Then Michael Campbell presents what has been happening with the SDA periodicals digitization projects. There are more titles available, but the existing ones aren't quite complete yet, so there may be some way we can work together to fill in those gaps. Poor Michael, he says he's running on no sleep. Sounds like he's had quite the adventure getting here. I'll have to get that story sometime. Maybe when he's more rested.

Fred Bischoff is here from the Adventist Pioneer Library project. They're about to come out with a new edition, and they've got some nice new additions. Unfortunately, Fred has brought his Mac, and I can't make it work with our data projector. We don't have the right adapters anywhere, and it won't recognize his S-Video output for some reason. Oh well. We didn't have alot of time, anyway.

Then we still have time for our ever-popular Business Session, as Jim puts it. With elections out of the way, there is some interesting discussion of how collections are coming along, what is getting cataloged these days, and how we can share this information with each other. Watch the Adventist Resources Section page of the ASDAL web page for some new sections and updates. So I have some work to do, it seems.

The group will get to go on a tour of Southern's Heritage Room and some archives, but I get to run back over to the library to grab some quick supper and help set up for this evening's poster sessions and ice cream social. Should be great fun.

ASDAL 2006 - ARS, pt.3

Bill Sumners is the Director and Archivist for the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives in Nashville, TN. He's here to speak to us about the ways his archives communicates with users and potential users. With the whole outside world, actually. It's good to get these views from institutions outside our small circle of institutions.

He says you have to start with the people that are your main core of users. Let them know what you have, so they can make good use of those materials. They aren't going to come into your library if they don't know that there is something there that they can use. The web is a really good way to start. Give good information about what is included in your collection, what your institution can and cannot do for users, your mission, and contact information. Sure, it sounds basic, but that's only because it is basic. Hopefully we all have that sort of information on our websites.

Key things, he says, are 1) Make it look good, 2) Make sure it's easy to navigate, 3) Make sure it's uncluttered, 4) Keep it up to date, 5) Make sure it will download quickly to as many users as possible, 6) Include contact info, 7) Include links to related sites, 8) Solicit feedback and amend your site accordingly. OK, maybe I didn't get all of the points, but these are basic Best Practices. If our web sites don't follow these principles, maybe it's time to look at our websites again.

We're about giving access, not as much protecting the collection. At least not as much as we used to be, at least not to the detriment of making the collection useful. Our collections are of little value if they are never used. If the collections do get used more, you've been successful.

Well, now it's time for lunch, so I'm going to see if I have time to grab something quick and get back so other people can set up. Yes, I'm the AV guy again.

ASDAL 2006 - ARS, pt.2

Dr. Jud Lake was up next. He had a good presentation on categorizing, analyzing and dealing with web sites, books, and other information critical of the SDA church and Ellen White. A very good overview, I thought, of the various independent ministries, where they came from, and what sort of information they put out. I know that some of our libraries try to collect all of this information, and some of us try not to collect some of the more controversial works. But we all need to be aware that this information is out there. And the most important way to deal with the people who write these things and the people who might have questions after reading these things Jud says, is with love. Point them to Jesus and the Cross, and he believes that all of the SDA beliefs and Ellen White writings will stand up to that test.

I thought this followed on very well from Dr. Blanco's opening devotional. And, it give us some practical advice as librarians. We need to be familiar with the information that is out there so we can point people the the right resources when they need them. And it doesn't hurt if we've collected these resources in our libraries, either! I may have some purchases to make after the conference is over.

Next, a break, and then a look at how the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives works. Should be interesting.

ASDAL 2006 - ARS, pt.1

Welcome to my blog entries for the 2006 Conference. Sure, I should've started with the School Librarians Section meetings, but those were on Sunday, and I was too busy getting my presentation for Tuesday ready. Hopefully the extra time will be worth it. We'll see.

The Adventist Resources Section started out with a very good devotional by Dr. Jack Blanco, former Dean of the School of Religion here at Southern. He reminded us that the most important thing is our relationship to God. If that isn't right, then our study of the Bible won't be right, our service won't be right, and our relationships won't be right. We need to re-dedicate ourselves every day to God to keep this relationship going. We closed with a kneeling silent prayer, where we were to open our hearts to God (which should really happen every day), then Dr. Blanco closed with prayer. A very good start to a conference, I think.

If I can get his permission, I'll post the audio on the ASDAL web page, since I'm trying something new this year, recording the presentations on the computer as MP3s. We'll see if it works. Watch this post for updates!

Next up, Jud Lake on "Those Irritating Web Sites" from various independent ministries.