Monday, October 18 – Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Holiday Inn, Boxborough, MA

Library of Congress Study of the North American MARC Records Marketplace, R2 Consulting

In January 2009, the Library of Congress retained R2 Consulting, LLC  to research and describe the current marketplace for cataloging records in the MARC format, with primary focus on the economics of current practices, including existing incentives and barriers to both contribution and availability.  Ruth Fischer, of R2 Consulting, will present an overview of their discovery process and the information gathered, along with their interpretation of findings and subsequent feedback from the library community.  There will be ample opportunity for reactions, questions, and discussion.  Please note: R2 does not represent or speak for the Library of Congress.

Saving Today: Adventures in Preserving Born-Digital Material
Co-Presented with the NELA Academic Libraries Section

Andrea Goethals and Wendy Marcus Gogel from the Harvard University Library Office for Information Systems (OIS) will discuss experiences and lessons learned from Harvard’s first two projects to preserve born-digital material. They will discuss challenges of web and email archiving from the perspectives of librarians, archivists, technologists and preservationists. In addition they will suggest first steps that small and large institutions can take toward born-digital preservation.

2CUL: Innovative Technical Services Cooperation

Budget realities and the need to innovate are forcing libraries to start  looking at cooperation and even consolidation of technical services among institutions.  An innovative new partnership, dubbed “2CUL”, has the potential to become the most expansive collaboration to date between major research libraries.  Hear from Robert Wolven, Associate University Librarian at Columbia University about  planned  innovations in technical services cooperation between Columbia and Cornell universities.

Free the ILS! Open Source Integrated Library Systems

Many libraries, networks and consortia are now looking at relatively new open source ILS options as replacements for their commercial systems.  Hear from two libraries who have implemented, respectively, the Koha and Evergreen open source systems and learn about the implications, results,  pro’s and con’s of going this route. Speakers: Stephanie Chase, Director, Stowe Free Library; President, Board of Directors, Green Mountain Library Consortium, Stowe, VT and Pamela Soren Smith,  Technical Services/Systems Librarian,  Howe Library, Hanover, NH.