NASIG Newsletter

NORTH CAROLINA SERIALS CONFERENCE
Reported by Rebecca Kemp

The 16th annual North Carolina Serials Conference took place in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, from March 29-30, 2007.  The conference was sponsored by North Carolina Central University’s School of Library and Information Sciences with the aid of other partners.  This year’s theme was “Serials at Warp Speed: Navigating Transitions.”  Although most attendees hailed from North Carolina, several other states were represented.  Academic, public, and special librarians as well as vendors attended and gave presentations.

This year’s conference was augmented by a half-day preconference, “Implementing an Institutional Repository,” presented by Carol Hixson, University Librarian, University of Regina.  Hixson talked about planning for and implementing an institutional repository.  Hixson indicated that it would be wise for libraries to create a business plan, including figuring out how long to support the IR.  Although Hixson emphasized that IRs will not solve the scholarly communications crisis, she noted that IRs are an excellent way to keep university-related intellectual property together as a promotional tool for the university.  She also discussed the considerable amount of marketing that accompanies an IR.  It is necessary to have a good deal of technical expertise on staff to be able to troubleshoot problems, ensure compatibility with standards, install patches and updates, etc.  Hixson outlined various methods of evaluating the success of the repository.

The conference proper began with the opening keynote, “The Changing Faces of Catalogs: Accelerating Access, Saving Time” presented by Karen Calhoun, Assistant University Librarian for Technical Services at Cornell University.  Calhoun presented the “Net Generation” library users’ preferences: most students surf the Web to find information; the library website and catalog rank very low in the list of students’ information sources.  Calhoun emphasized that the library can not assume that users will simply come to us; we have to put the library “where the user is.”  Some new strategies for libraries are digitizing books, using WorldCat.org, partnering with other libraries to create larger (but fewer) catalogs, and innovating within the catalog.  New catalog software such as AquaBrowser, WPOpac, and Evergreen are more user-friendly than older catalog models.  New products on the horizon are ExLibris’s Primo, Innovative’s Encore, and an open source Extensible catalog.

The keynote was followed by a panel on Institutional Repositories called “Transporters to the Next Generation or Just Another Holodeck?”  Panelists were Carol Hixson (University of Regina); Cat McDowell (UNC-Greensboro), Allan Scherlen (Appalachian State University), and Joseph Thomas (East Carolina University).  Hixson argued that IRs will not change established modes of scholarly communication.  McDowell concurred with this view, indicating that most of the IRs with a good deal of content in them are high research institutions, according to the Carnegie classification.  She held the opinion that IRs are not the vehicles for change that initial proponents thought they would be.  The other panelists brought forward other reasons for having IRs, though: Scherlen posited that IRs have overwhelming benefits for the participants, and that libraries ought to collect electronic faculty output as we do print.  Thomas indicated that IRs require a great deal of administrative, library, and faculty buy-in, but that they are very useful for tenure review and storing university output of any kind, whether videos, art exhibits, performances, etc.

The next session was a general session entitled “Empowering the Library Search Experience.”  This was a two-part presentation by Holly Johnson (Howard County Library, Columbia, MD) and Kristin Antelman (North Carolina State University Libraries).  Johnson presented her public library’s effort to make the catalog more user-friendly.  She demonstrated AquaBrowser catalog searches and features such as the “discover cloud,” which is a cloud of related terms to the search terms.  She also demonstrated the faceted search for refining search results and a library databases search that is linked from AquaBrowser.  Howard County Library has added selected RSS feeds, and it is also considering adding a “Buy it” link to bookstore websites when a patron would like to buy a copy of the desired item.  Antelman discussed NCSU’s implementation of the Endeca-powered catalog interface and the issues that are still outstanding a year after implementation.  Antelman raised a few concerns: serials still present challenges for relevancy ranking, and subject access is still a problem because of the disconnect between natural language searching for subjects and the LCSH terms for subjects.  In the future, NCSU will implement RSS feeds and a search box that can be used in patrons’ browsers.  Also, the Triangle Research Libraries Network (North Carolina State University, UNC Chapel Hill, Duke University, North Carolina Central University) will be instituting a consortium-wide Endeca-powered catalog.

The concurrent sessions followed the general session.  A session entitled “Community College Libraries – How Far Do We Need To Go” was led by Marilyn Carney (Wake Technical Community College).  Carney discussed a survey of area community colleges that had three objectives: to find out how community colleges are enhancing journal collections despite small budgets, how they are responding to increased e-journal usage, and how their libraries have been affected by the switch to more online journals.

Another concurrent session, entitled “The Right of Passage: Going from Print to Electronic – Is it the Right Move” was led by Barb Dietsch (Environmental Protection Agency Library) and Leslie Covington (EBSCO Information Services).  Dietsch and Covington discussed the issues involved in the process of switching a library’s subscriptions from mostly print to mostly online.  Covington was able to provide a vendor’s perspective of this process for a full view of the transition.

Yvette Diven (CSA) and Beth Bernhardt (UNC Greensboro) presented on “The TRANSFER Initiative: Helping Develop Guidelines for Journal Transitions Between Publishers.”  The presenters discussed this United Kingdom Serials Group initiative to establish standard practices for title transfers between two publishers.  Recent updates were provided, and Diven provided a publisher’s perspective on the challenges of title transfers.

Sandy Hurd (Innovative Interfaces) presented a session entitled, “Got Chopsticks? Get SUSHI.”  Hurd described the Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) that will automatically gather COUNTER-compliant usage statistics and transmit these statistical reports to libraries’ information systems seamlessly.  Hurd described work that has been done thus far and challenges that remain. 

Another session, entitled “Implementing ERMS: Opportunities and Challenges” was presented by Rebecca Kemp (UNC Wilmington) and Jeff Campbell (UNC Chapel Hill).  Kemp and Campbell described what an ERM module does and some of the challenges of implementation.  These included customizing the ERM, organizing and creating documentation, workflow changes, training or retraining staff, and integration with already-existing practices and resources. 

Rob Wolf (UNC Pembroke) led a concurrent session, “User-Based Serials Collection Development.”  Wolf described how UNC Pembroke’s library has used innovative methods of collection development, including consulting reference librarians for their recollections of frequently requested journals as well as usage logs and interlibrary-loan requests.

The closing keynote was entitled, “To Boldly Go: Transforming Cataloging and Catalogs to Meet User Needs.”  Presenter Regina Romano Reynolds (National Serials Data Program) first outlined the user needs of the Net Generation.  Today’s students would like libraries to aspire to the ease of use and customer-friendliness of Internet search engines, bookstores and coffee bars.  Reynolds then discussed how the library has historically responded to user needs, i.e., in the creation of metadata.  Reynolds asked whether there is a way to reduce the duplication of metadata created for the ISSN program, ONIX, and library catalogs.  Lastly, Reynolds discussed the new CONSER standard serials record as a case study in a new practice that has the potential to save cataloging time while still retaining a high standard of metadata creation.  Reynolds ended with the hope that libraries will continue to determine how best to serve the user, given all the new technologies at our disposal.