Online Bibliographic Services Special Interest Section		From the Chair

Before I do another thing—— special thanks are in order.

There are a lot of really good, hard-working, dedicated people who’ve helped me out tremendously this past year — volunteers who wrote down commitments and ideas on the OBS survey, volunteering their time and energy because they believe OBS is a worthwhile SIS. At least that’s the only reason I can think of that people who are already way too busy at work can volunteer to help out and provide comments and advice. You know, it really is people who make the difference in any organization... but, I digress... Anyway, thank you for trusting me to take the OBS reigns for a year. We have horses hitched up, the wagon’s loaded up and ready to go, but wait! Who has the map? Where is the map? Where are we going??

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[insert sweet babbling brook sounds]

Some OBServations

Narcissus would be pleased with OBS, as we will be looking at ourselves at least for the whole year, perhaps longer! Yes OBS fans, this is the —Year of the Mirror— we are going to OBSess with OBStinacy about whether we are OBSolete. For those who haven’t kept up on the OBS question of investigating merging until now, read through your past 2 TSLL’s for more details. Briefly, this investigation arises because a margin of 3-to-1 in favor of investigating merging was tallied from the 1998/99 OBS survey results. The numbers of respondents (54) was hardly a loud mandate when compared to the total OBS membership (317). But, the margin of votes in favor of investigation is simply too large to ignore.

As chair, I figure I have four major areas to take care of for OBS this year:

1. Investigate whether OBS should “merge” with TS SIS;
2. Have corrections and updates made to the OBS Web site;
3. Make sure that OBS education programs are well advertised; and
4. Work hard to avoid scheduling conflicts between OBS and TS business and committee meetings for Philadelphia. That’s a pretty full plate.

Most of the merger investigation will revolve around two biggie elements:

1. Are the OBS statements of its mission outdated and/or not as precise and accurate as they should be? and
2. Are the OBS committees doing what they are “supposed” to be doing? — Or perhaps, do the committees know what they’re suppose to be doing? Phone calls, etc. will need to be made.

Let’s peer at OBS with a telescope for now; then in later columns we can get out the microscope for some serious investigation. Let’s begin our OBServations by gazing at the statement of OBS as it appears in our OBS Web site:

“The Online Bibliographic Services Special Interest Section (OBS-SIS) of the American Association of Law Libraries focuses on all aspects of the various national and local bibliographic utilities. These include public access to bibliographic data online, acquisitions sub-systems, mail message systems, and integration of circulation systems with the online bibliographic data. The Section:

* Facilitates the exchange of information on the choice and installation of local and national online bibliographic systems,

* Provides opportunities for its members to share ideas for more effective and efficient use of their systems,

* Monitors the products and services of the online systems, and

* Communicates concerns of law libraries to the systems and networks.”

The above sounds good, eh? So, what committees does OBS have currently to provide a forum to match the statements above? We have the Local Systems Committee, the OCLC and RLIN committees, the Web Advisory Committee, and the Education Committee. These are what I call the “service” committees. That is, they are the mechanisms that are supposed to serve the needs of the OBS membership specifically, but also exist to help non-OBS members when their needs match the purpose of OBS. The other committee in OBS, the Nominations Committee, is not a service committee but an internal committee — and extremely necessary. Then there is the other crucial component of the OBS “staff” ... your beloved officers.

Well, as the story goes, OBS became a full-fledged SIS in 1977. Imagine back then, twenty-two years ago; the time when bibliographic utilities were “immature”— mere fledglings — and the needs of AALL librarians for information-sharing about those utilities were very mature. In those days, the meeting rooms were full of folks wanting to vent and needing more information than they could get elsewhere. Discussions took place on issues and problems that were more specific to law libraries. The need was so great that beginning in 1987, there was a series of yearly AALL programs called “Micros to Mainframes” whose large rooms were filled with participants. Everyone wanted to know the most current best systems on the market, and they wanted to hear from librarians rather than vendors. Bill Walton, James Hambleton and Richard Leiter spoke on numerous library systems, large and small, but stayed away from bibliographic utilities interfacing local systems. I don’t believe there’s been a systems comparison program like that in many years. I’m happy that one has currently been proposed and is sponsored by OBS for AALL in Philadelphia.

I write about this because certainly some of the larger questions OBS must address pop immediately to mind:

*** Is there still a need for an AALL forum that deals with issues related to online bibliographic utilities? Perhaps utility networks and users councils meet these needs.

*** Is there still a need for an AALL forum that deals with issues related to local systems?

Perhaps these needs are being met via local systems users groups, e-mail discussion lists, and published literature which covers such information (e.g., “Library Systems Newsletter” published by ALA, or OBS/AALL sponsored “Local Systems Directory.”).

I’m going to approach this merger investigation slowly. First I’ll write some TSLL OBS Chair columns, and I’ll attend an AALL sponsored retreat in mid-October in Chicago where all SIS chairs are asked to attend to discuss leadership and strategic planning. After the retreat I’ll talk with some experienced folk who’ve been through an SIS dissolution. I’ll also be asking the OBS members-at-large to help with some phone calls. In a few months, Ellen McGrath will start researching the history of OBS and should also uncover details on a similar investigation of OBS merging with TS-SIS several years ago where the membership voted not to merge. There are many convincing pros and cons concerning merging. But for now, let’s bask in the warm glow of the six programs that were proposed and submitted to AMPSC for 2000 in Philadelphia. These are not in any order. I am very pleased with these proposals and hope you are too. They represent an enormous amount of work just to get them resurrected, polished and submitted by the very short deadline of August 16th. [Insert applause to the OBS Education Committee and all the coordinators and others who helped]

1. Core Competencies for Support Staff: Librarians As Departmental Leaders (Phyllis Post, coordinator)
2. What I Like, Who Has It and Can I Have It? An Update on Library Integrated Systems (Tim Knight, coordinator)
3. Instant Gratification! The Z39.50 Gateway to Searching, Cataloging and ILL (2 part-program, Mary Jane Kelsey, coordinator)
4. The Text Encoding Initiative and Electronic Legal Texts (Kevin Butterfield, coordinator)
5. Leadership Through Experi-mentation: Modern-day Benjy Franklins (Sally Wambold, coordinator)
6. The Alphabet Soup of Cooperative Cataloging: Leading Through Participation in NACO, SACO, BIBCO, and CONSER (Ellen McGrath, coordinator)

Lastly, for now (heh heh.... there will be more later)— please, please contact me, or any OBS officer if you haven’t already made your “merging” opinions known via last year’s OBS survey or talking to me personally. Next column we’ll get into pros and cons that were written in the survey.