MLA 2007 Tuesday 22nd May

Tonight, we're summarising two days - the 7am starts plus jet lag equalled two tired ladies last night!

Monday.

Both of us went to the breakfast meeting hosted by BioMed Central on open access publishing. After an explanation of how BioMed Central operates, which I think is familiar territory for most of us, the attendees were split into three groups which discussed different aspects of open access publishing and how it could or was affecting library service:
a) How librarians could collaborate with research administration and funders to set up central university funds for open access charges;
b) Administering funds for open access publication charges: memberships, individual payments, reporting and accountability;
c) How could BioMed Central adapt open access payment models to meet the needs of the medical research community?
The first two questions generated lots of discussion. Essentially, publication of research always has a cost, and which of the two publication models will prove strongest is yet to be determined. However, the move towards more open access publishing will probably be driven by the degree to which it becomes mandatory for publically funded research to be freely available. The discussion also touched on the use of institutional repositories. A highlight of the session was a talk given by Ellen Finnie Duranceau from MIT on the role of the librarian in an open access world, and how we can become actively involved in the publication contiuum.

During the day, there was considerable interest shown at the ICML stand in the Exhibition hall.

The highlight for Mary was the Emerging Technologies panel discussion session in the afternoon. A selection of new technologies was discussed which included web 2.0 and the impact of tagging as a navigational tool - user generated taxonomies or folkonomies which are a form of self cataloguing (cataloguers were warned to block their ears!) with examples brought up by the session web jockey from sites such as del.ici.ous (see the Evergreen Pines catalogue as an example of these alternative possibilites for a catalogue): Mashups, which will be big ( see the Wall of Books). In 2006 OCLC held a contest for the best mashup called Mashing up the Library. Currently, mashups need some programming skills but will become easier as mashup software is developed : Virtual Worlds (see Second Life) which are increasingly being used to provide user education programs. There was a final wrap up discussion which gave the audience a chance to vote (with clickers) on what the thought the greatest technological challenge would be for them in the next year. Interestingly, there was no one issue which stood out, but web 2 and access issues were big ones.

Tuesday was the final day of the exhibition. After the exhibition closed, Lisa attended the International Cooperation Section meeting at the end of the day. Tony McSean gave his report and handed over to the new chairperson. Bruce Madge has taken over from Becky Lyon as the representative on EAHIL. Lisa gave a report on ICML 2009.

For the Chasing the Sun participants among us, Mary had a special all-day meeting with OCLC regarding the new Flash chat screens and their increased functionality, the administration behind the scenes and the streamlining of the international CTS service with the view to its expansion - hopefully after the training session to be held during next week's Canadian Health Libraries Association conference. (Yes, I'll be blogging that one, too.)

During the evening, Mary attended a dinner hosted by NEJM and Lisa attended two dinners, first with health librarians from New Jersey, followed by a second with some British colleagues. Lots of networking underway.

That's all for tonight folks! It's after midnight.