Category: Events

Was I really in Barcelona last week?

We only got back from Barcelona 3 days ago and already it seems more like it was 3 weeks ago. There’s nothing like 400 unread emails in your inbox to make you forget about what you were doing the week before!!!
For those of you who enjoy looking at holiday photographs, there’s nearly 400 of mine on Flickr, or you can find all the conference photos here. Tim from Birkbeck has also been adding Barcelona photos to Flickr. Tim’s head also appears in this serendipity photograph taken late on the Wednesday evening in a random bar — someone’s (maybe Chris from Lincoln?) hand got in the way and I can almost here a voice saying “I will crush you!” in the background 😀
day5_205
The 4 presentations I took part in are available at: https://library.hud.ac.uk/barcelona
The list of Library 2.0 examples used in the Web 2.0 session is:

…phew — hopefully there was something of interest in that little lot! I’m sure were at least a hundred more examples I could have included and, if you’ve got a good one, please post a comment with the details 🙂
The plan is to gather together all of the presentations from the conference and add them to the wiki. It’s currently branded the “Dynix User Group UK” wiki but, once the various European User Groups start to come together, I’m sure it will get a more generic title — I quite like SLUG (SirsiDynix Libraries User Group), although that’s quite similar to SMUG (SFX & MetaLib User Group).
Don’t forget, if you’re a SirsiDynix library in the north of England (Unicorn, Dynix, or Horizon), there’s a meeting at the University of Bradford on May 17th. A trip to the (in)famous Kashmir Restaurant for a curry is on the cards for those who attend 🙂

Barcelona – DUG/EUUG 2007

Bryony and I have been in Barcelona now for just over 24 hours and my feet are already knackered from all the walking we’ve done!
The joint DUG/EUUG SirsiDynix Conference starts on Wednesday, but we decided to fly out for a few days of sightseeing in advance.
A few of the photos from today and yesterday are on Flickr, although I haven’t finished tagging and adding descriptions yet…
day2_013 day2_023 day2_030 day2_043 day2_034 day2_004 day2_008 day2_022 day1_013 day2_016 day1_009

OPAC Survey results – part 8

Library and Information Show 2007
I’ve just about recovered from LiS 2007 and hopefully I didn’t cram too much into the 30 minutes I had for my session!
There’s a few photos from the event on Flickr…
lis07_015 lis07_002 lis07_014 lis07_010 lis07_009 lis07_006
OPAC Survey
I think the previous post will be the last batch of graphs unless I uncover something new in the data. Instead, many thanks to my colleague Lisa (Senior Assistant Librarian for Applied Sciences and Computing & Engineering) for sifting through the respondent comments for the common themes.  The full figures will be in the report, but here’s a snifter of the “feature comments”…
The most common wanted feature was federated searching (both electronic resources and other libraries’ holdings), with over 30 responses.
Next up, being able to customise the OPAC (look & feel and adding new features), with over 15 comments.
Relevancy ranking was specifically mentioned by at least 10 respondents, with 9 wanting personal borrowing histories, Amazon style wish lists, and saved session results.
1 respondent wanted to be able to search by colour of cover and another wanted wiki style functionality adding to the OPAC.
For the “final comments” section, here’s a sample…
10 respondents felt that “2.0” style features could be a distraction and that the OPAC should be kept simple. Another 10 said that lack of staff expertise or money was stopping them from being able to make the changes they would like to their OPACs.
However, the most common theme was laying the blame squarely at the feet of the vendors — broken promises, slowness of feature delivery, etc.
Lisa also picked out a handful of the comments that she felt stood out and here’s just 3 of them…

It seems that OPACs are too busy trying to please every customer. They spend too much time developing and not nearly enough time releasing software. The ability of the library to customize the OPAC should be the primary feature. Developing extensive APIs and building in flexibility should be at the top of the list for development. Let librarians develop the specific tools they want or need. Allow librarians to create add-ons and templates and distribute them to other libraries. OPAC vendors need to concentrate on search technology and not the next great feature.

I think we should always keep in mind the key aim of the OPAC is so users can locate/access resources. These new web 2.0 type enhancements can be fantastic, but there is a danger in using them just because we think we should.

We took a risk in 2002 and extensively customized our OPAC outside the confines of vendor support. Our efforts have been extremely successful and it has essentially become our new model for the direction we’re heading in the future. We’ll be doing MORE customization and application development in the future, rather than less. We’re much more likely now to move away from traditional library automation vendors as we consider what comes next.
(Phil Feilmeyer, Hennepin County Library)

UK Library 2.0 Un-Conference anyone?

All the talk about unconferences over at Library 2.0 Ning got me wondering how many people would come to one based in the UK?
If you’ve not come across the term before, an unconference tends to have a general theme (e.g. Library 2.0) but the actual agenda for the event is decided on the day by whoever turns up. In fact, the people who do turn up are the “right” people for that particular event. There may be a small number of pre-planned sessions (e.g. someone talking about how they’ve used a blog in their library), but the idea is very much that you decide what you’d like to learn about and then one (or more) of the delegates volunteers to talk about it.
All attendees are expected to participate in some way — either by giving a short presentation or talk (vaguely relevant to the theme), or by asking questions during the sessions. Once the agenda for the day has been agreed, there will typically be multiple sessions running at the same time and a “two feet” rule applies — if the session you’re in isn’t of interest or isn’t what you thought it would be, you just leave and join one of the other sessions.
As you can imagine, the emphasis is very much on networking, discussion, spontaneity, serendipity, and the sharing of experiences. In fact, in some ways, an unconference emulates the networking that goes outside of the sessions at a formal conference.
So, if there was such a unconference in the UK, would you consider going?

So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, good night…

As reported at the Gordian Knot, Pat Sommers (CEO, SirsiDynix) has resigned.
I don’t think we were expecting Pat to come to the joint EUUG & Dynix User Group Conference in Barcelona, but it will be interesting to see if anyone from Vista attends.
The conference programme is shaping up nicely, so I’m looking forward to seeing new sights and old friends, as well as making new friends. Just in case anyone is undecided about attending, here’s what the view should be like from your hotel bedroom window…

(Cathedral of Santa Eulàlia)
p.s. if you are planning to attend, please let me know if you’d like adding to the Google Map for the event!

CODI 2006 – Salt Lake City (day 3, final update)

Well folks, CODI 2006 is over!
It looks like it was another excellent conference, so congratulations to everyone involved in organising the event and many thanks to those of you who kept the rest of us up-to-date with your blog posts and photographs 🙂
If you were at CODI 2006 but you’re not a blogger, please consider posting your session notes and conference summaries to The Gordian Knot — there’s a lot of Horizon & Dynix sites out there who would love to read them!
The updates from the final day are…
Phyllis has posted:
» CODI 2006 — Customizable, Flexible
» CODI 2006 — day 3. Pocket Circulation
Over at the CODI 2006 / Salt Lake City, there’s:
» Mary’s week so far
» Carol’s update
Kevin has posted:
» Sumary of Codi2006 Days 2 and 3
The codi2006 tagged images at flickr are now up to 459 — that almost 3 times as many as last year!

“So you were teetotal until your library became an 8.0 beta site, huh?!”

CODI 2006 – Salt Lake City (day 3, update 3:00pm GMT)

It’s 9am in Salt Lake City on the 3rd and final day of CODI 2006.
Let’s catch up with the overnight action!
There’s now nearly 300 photographs tagged with “codi2006” at flickr 🙂
Over at The Gordian Knot, Super Susan and Luke have been playing catch up:
» The Missing Face (Steve Nielsen)
» Good news for serials catalogers
» OZDUG stars shine at CODI meeting
» The World of Indexes According to Shelley
» Migration – The Path to…
There’ll probably be a couple more updates, but let me say that I hope everyone has a great final day and a safe journey home!

CODI 2006 – Salt Lake City (day 2, update 5:30am GMT)

It’s 11:30pm in Utah, so the 2nd day of CODI 2006 is coming to an end.
Here’s a quick update of the latest action…
Over at the CODI 2006 / Salt Lake City blog:
» Biblio’s Angels
» ’70s party
» The day after the 70’s party

Phyllis has a post about RFID:
» CODI 2006 – Day 2
Kevin has posted some more photographs to his flickr account:

And finally, I reckon Ben‘s in danger of getting RSI in his shutter finger!

CODI 2006 – Salt Lake City (day 2, update 2:30pm GMT)

It’s now 8:30am on day 2 of CODI 2006 in Salt Lake City and I guess most delegates will be breakfasting at the moment.
Let’s catch up with the action…
Over at The Gordian Knot, Susan “suzyq” Johns-Smith has posted her analysis of the opening keynote speeches:
» A Cautious Beginning
Ben has confirmed that those librarians were doing the internationally recognisable “YMCA” dance:
» CODI 2006 photos (first set) are now on Flickr
And at www.thezbar.net, the anonymous blogger/bloggerette/bloggerino is indeed venting their spleen:
» VISIONS OF CODI: DAY ONE
…I remember being amazed at the number of people who sat knitting during presentations at CODI last year. I now have nightmares that one day I’ll do a presentation and the entire room will be filled with people knitting away (clackerty-clackerty-clackerty-clackerty-clackerty…) 😀