Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Thoughts on Computers in Libraries 2006

How can I have thoughts on a conference I did not attend? Isn't my experience rather second-hand? Well, I can not help thinking, I just do, and yes, my experience is only with the reports.

I enjoyed following the conference by visiting the many blogs. You can still do so. One easy way to find reports is go to technorati and enter cil2006 as your search term.

I just found another helpful post, this time by Jill Hurst-Wahl. Librarians working on digital archives using donated materials (old photos, documents, etc.) will want to look at her deed of gift forms.

I thought I might link my readers to more of the reports from the conference, but I found so many of them filled with jargon and acronyms. They are probably fine for IT professionals, but I am sometimes unable to sort out their meanings for my library and the profession. For example, I noticed several reports on FRBR, which seems to be important to future online library catalogs. I have read the definitions, but I am still fuzzy on what it is. If it will improve access to library materials, I am for it.

Writers of library technical blogs, your less technical colleagues are also trying to read your work. Please consider them in your writing. It will advance librarianship and perhaps give you more influence in your home libraries if you do.

Other postings on the conferences:

Conference Reports of March 22

Conference Reports of March 23

Conference Reports of March 24

2 comments:

Jill Hurst-Wahl said...

Rick, you might want to read my follow-up posting to yours at: http://hurstassociates.blogspot.com/2006/03/drop-jargon_29.html

Christina said...

I was introduced to FRBR by David Bigwood (Catalogablog) who says lots of things over my head :) It's actually quite complicated in cataloger terms, but for reference librarians it's very simple: roll up various printings of the same book into an overall record. For example, if someone just wants to read Pride and Prejudice, they might not care that it's a penguin edition or pocketbooks or whatever, they just need the book - this compresses the tons of records into a heading for pride and prejudice. This is more complicated from a cataloger point of view because they know that 1) sometimes you need an exact edition 2) you need to keep inventory 3) what works are alike enough to be rolled up together and when are they too different? editions? translations? etc. Hopefully I'll be corrected if I'm off!
All you need to do is ask!