2016 ALA Midwinter Meeting: Day 1 Highlights

I generally travel to both the ALA Midwinter Meeting and Annual Conference on Thursdays so that I can attend the Technical Services Directors of Large Research Libraries Interest Group, otherwise known as Big Heads. They meet on Friday mornings from 8:30-11:30, and they usually have a fairly full agenda. This meeting was no exception, although as both the friend with whom I was sitting and I both noted, their agenda was particularly and surprisingly in the weeds. Here's a quick summary of the agenda and discussion.

Big Heads

The future of physical processing and the disposition of materials in relation to shared print repositories. This was a surprisingly detailed discussion about what physical processing is still done by the members' respective libraries. Member representatives shared whether their libraries continued to label, stamp, security strip, and barcode library materials. Obviously an issue that continues to resonate, but not something I expected to be discussed at this meeting.

Off-site Technical Services. Many member libraries are establishing technical services units outside of their main libraries and sometimes off campus. Member representatives discussed the challenges involved, including the shipment of materials back and forth, staff participation in library events, managers needs to go back and forth for meetings, transportation, the loss of ease in consulting with each other, and parking.

How are we sharing data in a new, distributed, collaborative environment? This item related to the metadata we're creating and maintaining in silos, as in our institutional repositories. We have the tradition of maintaining tradition metadata as MARC records in OCLC WorldCat. How are we going to pull all of the other disparate metadata together? (My suggestion: Google).

What are the impacts on technical services of collaborative collection development? As we enter into collaborative collection development agreements, how do we ensure that we can meet the terms of the agreements, e.g., the cataloging of the items in a timely manner or retention agreements. Do libraries consistently use the 583 field to record retention decisions? Do library staff look at the 583 field before they withdraw materials?

Staff Morale and Structure of Technical Services Work. This was brought up by the Stanford member representative who found that many library staff left for other jobs when Stanford made staff salaries public and library staff learned that comparable jobs outside the libraries earned much higher pay. A discussion ensued about how to retain library staff: flex-time, more cross-training, etc.

A sustainable/consistent model for vendor records. Vendor records, again! We maintain high standards for some vendors, while with others we'll take anything (just to have something). Do we need to maintain consistency. General consensus: this ship has sailed.

BIBFRAME update and Linked Data for Production grant. Several of the libraries shared their work on a variety of BF projects. Better summarized elsewhere.

Update on the CIC Cooperative Cataloging Pilot. The University of Chicago has been a leader in a CIC project to share cataloging expertise across institutions. Their final report has been completed but not distributed pending a discussion by the CIC library directors group in May. 

ALCTS Executive Board I

As ALCTS News Editor I'm an ex-officio member of four ALCTS committees, including the Executive Board which meets for a total of 8 1/2 hours during each conference: four hours on Friday afternoon and 4 1/2 hours on Monday afternoon. This is where much of the business of the Division takes place. The Board votes on a consent agenda, meaning the they ratify in person all the votes taken electronically as well as documents that are submitted by key committee chairs. They include budget documents from Budget and Finance, the LRTS Editor report, the 2016 election slate, and more.

We had a visit from the ALA Treasurer candidate, Susan Hildreth, (the only candidate as the other one withdrew). The ALCTS past-president, president, president-elect, and ALA Councilor all give brief reports. This was followed by discussion items, which is generally the real meat of the agenda. This time the discussion items included the Program Coordinating Committee report and plans to maintain a database of ALCTS programming activity; a review of progress on the strategic plan; a suggestion to form an ALCTS mentoring program; and plans to conduct a membership survey. For the first time in my experience with the ALCTS Board, we ended a little early, getting out by 4:15 or so.

Exhibits Opening

The Midwinter Meeting exhibits opened at 5:30, with hordes of librarians surging down the aisles looking for freebies, advance reading copies, tote bags, snacks, and free drinks. I visited some of my favorite publishers, including HarperCollins, where I got a copy of Louise Erdrich's LaRose. This was especially exciting because I just read her Tracks in December and brought along The Antelope Wife for this trip. I also got Sunil Yapa's Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist, which has been getting a lot of pre-pub attention. After about 15-20 minutes of the exhibits I had a bag full of books and I decided to leave before I started on another bag!