Libraries: DEDCC : 2008 Annual Report

Meeting Notes > Annual Reports

07/01/2008
2008 Annual Report

TO: Five College Library Directors
FROM: Janet Ewing, Chair DEDCC
DATE: June 30, 2008
RE: DEDCC Annual Report, Spring 2007-Summer 2008
The Digital Environment Development and Coordinating Committee has had a very active year which saw several adjustments to our membership and some interesting projects and programs.
Membership: Jan Jourdain and Leslie Button rotated off of DEDCC in spring 2007 to be replaced by Rebecca Henning, Anne C. Moore, and Mary Stettner. In the spring of 2008 we had some further turnover with Sika Berger being replaced by David Podboy and a reinstatement of a member from Hampshire in the person of Rachel Beckwith. The rotations have brought fresh ideas and perspectives to the group, but have also been a challenge for continuity in some instances. Janet Ewing has remained the chair, now finishing her third year. We anticipate rotating the chair position this summer and we also will be welcoming a new member, Emily Alling, as a replacement for Anne.
Brown Bags: DEDCC hosted two informal brown bag lunch sessions over the past year. On May 8th, 2007 at Smith College we talked together about digital assets and what was happening on each of our campuses. (http://www.smith.edu/libraries/staff/fivecoll/brownbag7.htm) There was a brief show-and-tell from each school and quite a lot of questions and discussion on the particular tools as well as the general challenges and issues surrounding this topic. On February 15th, 2008 we held a brown bag gathering at Amherst College to share with each other what we’d seen and heard from recent conference events. (http://www.smith.edu/libraries/staff/fivecoll/brownbag6.htm) This was quite popular, and easy to do, and DEDCC will try to make it an annual or even semi-annual event.
Next Generation Library Catalogs Program: For the second time since our founding, DEDCC organized and hosted a half-day conference which, thanks to support from the Librarians’ Council and Simmons GSLIS, we were able to open to a large regional audience. Because it is a topic DEDCC considers extremely important for the Five Colleges, we focused this conference on a real-world consideration of next generation library search systems. ( http://www.smith.edu/libraries/staff/fivecoll/nextgen.htm) We hoped to help educate ourselves and our colleagues on the issues and the possibilities in rethinking our current library catalog model in light of new technologies and new expectations from our users. The conference was held at the UMass on November 7th, 2007. We had a provocative opening talk by David Lindahl from University of Rochester on broad concepts surrounding the “next generation” idea followed by presentations from Jennifer Ward of University of Washington and Anne Prestamo of Oklahoma State University on their implementations of WorldCat Local and AquaBrowser respectively. Attendance topped 300 and the feedback we received both via our survey and more informally was extremely positive. As an added bonus to the wider library community, the event was podcast through the Simmons GSLIS program and is available for review online. Overall the event was tremendously helpful to DEDCC in furthering our understanding and galvanizing our interest in moving the Five Colleges in this direction.
Projects: In winter and spring of 2007, DEDCC undertook an investigation into ways to enhance the content of our library catalog. We recommended Five Colleges license the Syndetics product and worked with the vendor on pricing and with other five college committees – most notably the ALEPH Management Committee (AMC) and the Research, Instruction and Outreach Committee (RIO) – on its successful implementation. Currently we are in the midst of an exploration to determine if there is an existing next generation product that would represent both a significant step forward from the quirks and limitations of our ALEPH catalog and a low enough overall investment (staff time and dollars) to be worth an effort to find funding at this juncture. Because of the low investment angle, we have discarded some of the more labor intensive and/or expensive options for now and focused on WorldCat Local and AquaBrowser. After our information sessions on those two products there are still some outstanding questions to answer but we hope to formulate a recommendation on the issue before the end of the summer.
It has been a busy and productive year. Along the way DEDCC has tried to keep the Directors -- and our colleagues -- informed with various reports and documents, for example: the Syndetics recommendation, debriefing on the NextGen program, websites for our brown bags and programs, the scan of current NextGen systems, etc. We have also experimented internally on ways to improve our working communications by using collaborative tools such as our committee ‘ella’ (Sakai) site, project and brainstorming wikis, del.icio.us tag groups, web scheduling tools like Doodle, etc. We may well focus our next brown bag on these web 2.0 tools as we’ve found using them to be both helpful and educational.


	Meeting Notes > Annual Reports 07/01/2008 2008 Annual Report TO: Five College Library Directors FROM: Janet Ewing, Chair DEDCC DATE: June 30, 2008 RE: DEDCC Annual Report, Spring 2007-Summer 2008 The Digital Environment Development and Coordinating Committee has had a very active year which saw several adjustments to our membership and some interesting projects and programs. Membership: Jan Jourdain and Leslie Button rotated off of DEDCC in spring 2007 to be replaced by Rebecca Henning, Anne C. Moore, and Mary Stettner. In the spring of 2008 we had some further turnover with Sika Berger being replaced by David Podboy and a reinstatement of a member from Hampshire in the person of Rachel Beckwith. The rotations have brought fresh ideas and perspectives to the group, but have also been a challenge for continuity in some instances. Janet Ewing has remained the chair, now finishing her third year. We anticipate rotating the chair position this summer and we also will be welcoming a new member, Emily Alling, as a replacement for Anne. Brown Bags: DEDCC hosted two informal brown bag lunch sessions over the past year. On May 8th, 2007 at Smith College we talked together about digital assets and what was happening on each of our campuses. (http://www.smith.edu/libraries/staff/fivecoll/brownbag7.htm) There was a brief show-and-tell from each school and quite a lot of questions and discussion on the particular tools as well as the general challenges and issues surrounding this topic. On February 15th, 2008 we held a brown bag gathering at Amherst College to share with each other what we’d seen and heard from recent conference events. (http://www.smith.edu/libraries/staff/fivecoll/brownbag6.htm) This was quite popular, and easy to do, and DEDCC will try to make it an annual or even semi-annual event. Next Generation Library Catalogs Program: For the second time since our founding, DEDCC organized and hosted a half-day conference which, thanks to support from the Librarians’ Council and Simmons GSLIS, we were able to open to a large regional audience. Because it is a topic DEDCC considers extremely important for the Five Colleges, we focused this conference on a real-world consideration of next generation library search systems. ( http://www.smith.edu/libraries/staff/fivecoll/nextgen.htm) We hoped to help educate ourselves and our colleagues on the issues and the possibilities in rethinking our current library catalog model in light of new technologies and new expectations from our users. The conference was held at the UMass on November 7th, 2007. We had a provocative opening talk by David Lindahl from University of Rochester on broad concepts surrounding the “next generation” idea followed by presentations from Jennifer Ward of University of Washington and Anne Prestamo of Oklahoma State University on their implementations of WorldCat Local and AquaBrowser respectively. Attendance topped 300 and the feedback we received both via our survey and more informally was extremely positive. As an added bonus to the wider library community, the event was podcast through the Simmons GSLIS program and is available for review online. Overall the event was tremendously helpful to DEDCC in furthering our understanding and galvanizing our interest in moving the Five Colleges in this direction. Projects: In winter and spring of 2007, DEDCC undertook an investigation into ways to enhance the content of our library catalog. We recommended Five Colleges license the Syndetics product and worked with the vendor on pricing and with other five college committees – most notably the ALEPH Management Committee (AMC) and the Research, Instruction and Outreach Committee (RIO) – on its successful implementation. Currently we are in the midst of an exploration to determine if there is an existing next generation product that would represent both a significant step forward from the quirks and limitations of our ALEPH catalog and a low enough overall investment (staff time and dollars) to be worth an effort to find funding at this juncture. Because of the low investment angle, we have discarded some of the more labor intensive and/or expensive options for now and focused on WorldCat Local and AquaBrowser. After our information sessions on those two products there are still some outstanding questions to answer but we hope to formulate a recommendation on the issue before the end of the summer. It has been a busy and productive year. Along the way DEDCC has tried to keep the Directors -- and our colleagues -- informed with various reports and documents, for example: the Syndetics recommendation, debriefing on the NextGen program, websites for our brown bags and programs, the scan of current NextGen systems, etc. We have also experimented internally on ways to improve our working communications by using collaborative tools such as our committee ‘ella’ (Sakai) site, project and brainstorming wikis, del.icio.us tag groups, web scheduling tools like Doodle, etc. We may well focus our next brown bag on these web 2.0 tools as we’ve found using them to be both helpful and educational.