2010 Annual Meeting Information
Here is the slate of TS-SIS programs and meetings to be held in Denver, Colorado during the 2010 AALL Annual Meeting to be held July 10-13, 2010. The TS-SIS Education Committee is pleased to announce that TS-SIS will be sponsoring or co-sponsoring eleven programs and one "Hot Topic" program. Many thanks to Carol Avery Nicholson, Education Committee chair, and the members of the committee for providing such excellent programming for Denver!
AMPC Programs
MARC and RDA: an Overview (co-sponsored with OBS-SIS)
This presentation explains the changes in MARC (MAchine-Readable Cataloging) to support compatibility with the upcoming cataloging standard, RDA (Resource Description and Access), and the likely influence of those changes on law material cataloging. For years, MARC has successfully supported previous cataloging content standards, such as AACR2. The new cataloging standard, RDA, is designed for our digital world, and is intended to provide more user-friendly access to all types of information resources. Accordingly, MARC formats need to change to facilitate data exchange of records using the new standard. What are those changes, and how will the changes affect law libraries? The presentation will focus on these topics and will help law catalogers and other technical services librarians prepare for the RDA era.
The Semantic Web and RDA: Making the Catalog a Networked Bibliographic Environment (co-sponsored with OBS-SIS)
This presentation will introduce how RDA, the up-coming cataloging standard, can integrate the library catalog with the web services developing out of the Semantic Web. The Semantic Web is an emerging technology that will build a web of knowledge from today's web of documents. Using Resource Description Framework (RDF), the Semantic Web focuses on the identification of information entities and the relationships between them. RDA is similarly based on the entity-relationship model of the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR). Applying Semantic Web concepts to the new cataloging standard can result in the evolution of library data into a more effective and flexible information retrieval tool. This will also facilitate data-mining and bibliometric analysis based on the bibliographic relationships coded in the structured metadata.
Charting New Roles for Technical Services: Faculty Publications and Institutional Repositories
Institutional repositories are designed to collect, preserve, and disseminate in digital format the intellectual output of an institution. As such, institutional repositories are gaining in recognition as a key factor in emerging digital research and the ability to provide free and unrestricted access to faculty research. A faculty publications website provides similar access, but with different requirements and expectations. Faculty publications websites focus on listing the published works of current faculty, and may not provide open access to all of the publications listed. The model that an institution follows will be guided by its mission and the resources available to support it. As traditional work routines in technical services diminish, this program demonstrates how technical services staff can continue to support the library's evolving mission.
Catalogers Today: Skill Sets, Expectations and Challenges (co-sponsored with OBS-SIS)
Is your library short a cataloger but at the same time faced with an administrative mandate to hold or cut costs? Or are you a cataloger looking for a position and wondering how to best achieve your goal? This conversation based on research can help you cope from either end of the spectrum. Dr. Sylvia D. Hall-Ellis, representing the library science professor perspective, describes her research into the changing expectations pertaining to cataloging positions. JoAnna L. Patrick reacts to the research in her role as a law library administrator attempting to balance the constraints of the budget with the need to make materials accessible. And just to make it even more interesting, there is the impending implementation of new cataloging rules to deal with, as RDA replaces AACR2.
SKOS and HIVE: Enhancing the Creation, Design, and Flow of Information
The reality of the Semantic Web is quickly approaching! An increasing amount of attention is being given to The World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Simple Knowledge Organization Systems (SKOS). SKOS is a way of developing standards for knowledge organization systems (i.e. classification schemes, like Library of Congress Classification Schemes; subject headings; and thesauri) that can be used in the Semantic Web. This presentation will give an introduction to the main concepts related to SKOS and discuss how SKOS is relevant to the law library environment. Speakers will also introduce a SKOS-based project called HIVE (Helping Interdisciplinary Vocabulary Engineering), an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) funded open source vocabulary server project that is meant to improve access to interdisciplinary collections.
Open Source ILS: What a Service Oriented System Brings to You and Your Library (co-sponsored with OBS-SIS)
Presenters discuss how OS ILS can reengineer your overall library service, and the challenges of its implementation. While the majority of libraries rely on proprietary systems, the OS ILS is a potentially viable approach for some technologically savvy libraries. Questions about what makes Open Source Software different from proprietary software; how it organizes it elements, what tools it uses, and how it operates are addressed. Presenters also discuss how a service-oriented architecture can be incorporated into OS ILS and how a customized system can be interoperable with various systems to avoid repetitive data management. The foreseeable implementation dilemma on in-house knowledge bases and resources for system development and sustainable system maintenance/update will be surveyed.
Bringing Increased Efficiency to Technical Services: Is EOCR for You?
Have you reviewed your acquisitions workflow recently? Is it as automated and efficient as it could be? How would you like it if you didn't have to do pre-order searching in your catalog, didn't have to download bibliographic records, didn't have to create order records in your online system and didn't have to input invoice data for most of your titles? No, it is not a joke, you can do all this by implementing EOCR (Electronic Order Confirmation Records) and OCLC WorldCat Cataloging Partners. Many vendors offer this service for firm as well as approval book orders. This session will provide examples from one vendor on how they provide EOCR services and a library's perspective on how they implemented it.
TS-SIS Education Committee and Executive Board Programs
Database Ownership: Myth or Reality? (co-sponsored with CS-SIS)
For some legal databases, vendors advertise the option to purchase the data outright, whereby the library would “own” the content of the database if the vendor goes out of business or if the library decides to cancel their subscription to the database interface. This “ownership” option is usually expensive but promises perpetual access to the data. What does this really mean? The Barco Law Library cancelled annual subscriptions to two such databases and asked the vendors to provide the content as promised. Learn what was discovered about the hidden costs of "owning" a database and the intricacies of data and metadata manipulation for storage, access and display.
The Ever-Evolving World of Vendor-Supplied MARC Records
As law libraries increasingly rely on online resources, there is a growing need for MARC bibliographic records to represent these resources in the local online catalog. Many law libraries now have access to large digital collections such as Making of Modern Law, LLMC-Digital and HeinOnline, not to mention Lexis and Westlaw, with titles too numerous to be cataloged locally. As a result, law libraries must rely on records supplied by vendors for access to these titles in their local catalogs. Members of the TS-SIS Task Group on Vendor-Supplied Bibliographic Records will discuss the new standards for provider-neutral e-monograph records. The ongoing work of evaluating MARC record sets and working with vendors and others to improve the quality of these record sets also will be explained.
How Are We To Accomplish That Much More With That Much Less?
Pursuant to the cuts that libraries have been asked to sustain while striving to maintain optimum service, we have reorganized, revamped, and realigned processes, tasks, procedures, and, just as importantly, our daily outlook. The draconian moves employed to deal with economic uncertainties take a toll on our collections and the psychological well-being of library staff in professional and support positions. This program, through active discussion by librarians and a mental health professional, seeks to give guidance in dealing with these issues. Part 1 will deal with change management -- how libraries have managed their changing environments due to shrinking budgets and the march from print to electronic. Part 2 will address the human responses to these changes with a presentation by a mental health professional.
What's in a Name: CORE and I-2, New Standards to Improve Efficiency in the Electronic Resources Environment
The current marketplace has numerous products from many vendors to address different aspects of electronic resources. Interoperability between them is essential to gain maximum benefits. CORE (Cost of Resource Exchange) describes a message structure which facilitates the transfer of cost data from Integrated Library Systems to Electronic Resource Management Systems. Identifying institutions with multiple departments, campuses and their hierarchical relationship can be very difficult. I-2 (Institutional Identifier) a proposed NISO standard, under development, is a unique identifier assigned to an institution. I-2 aims to be global, interoperable and unique and will show the hierarchical relationship of an institution with all its subsidiaries. Working group members of these two standards will discuss the need for these standards, their goals, objectives, data elements used and implementation issues.