American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference Report
| Pages | 29-38 |
| Date | 01 September 2005 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/07419050510633934 |
| Published date | 01 September 2005 |
| Author | Christopher Cox,Alice L. Daugherty,Julia Gelfand,S.G. Ranti Junus |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
American Library Association (ALA)
Annual Conference Report
Christopher Cox, Alice L. Daugherty, Julia Gelfand and S.G. Ranti Junus
LIBRARY HITECH NEWS Number 8 2005, pp. 29-38, #Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 0741-9058, DOI 10.1108/07419050510633934 29
The American Library Association
held its Annual Meeting, June 23-29,
2005 in Chicago, Illinois with the
global theme, ``Knowledge and
Networking.'' Hot and humid described
the weather; cool, savvy, relevant and
exciting described the conference.
Chicago, home to ALA headquarters,
was a terrific conference city, and like
always there were competing demands
on one's time with programs scheduled
from the north shore of Michigan
Avenue to the opposite side of the city
where McCormick Plaza hosted the
exhibit areas and many programs.
The opening General Session
featured US Senator Barak Obama as he
presented his vision of libraries as
``windows to a larger world.'' The
closing session of the conference had an
equally well-known speaker in actor
and author, Henry Winkler, who did not
disappoint his Fonz followers as he
promoted literacy, creative expression
and following one's dreams. Other
keynote speakers who addressed this
year's conference included the futurist,
Dr Lowell Catlett; author Ray
Bradbury; librarian icon and author,
Nancy Pearl; author, essayist, radio
commentator and social critic David
Sedaris, author Erik Larson.
Annual ALA conferences offer so
much stimulation and programming
plus the major exhibition hall that it is
often hard to make choices, and
navigate around. This year there were
900+ exhibitors, and an overall
attendance of close to 20,000.
Capturing a convention this size is
difficult. This conference report offers a
few snapshots of just a few sessions that
focused on many applications using
information technology and issues
surrounding policy, services, new
products and coping with change.
The LITA Preconference introduction
to web services was a good introduction
to developing a mindset for the entire
ALA meeting. More and more libraries
are now starting use web services. Sara
Randall from the University of
Rochester opened the program by
giving the definition of web services
and its components. She described web
services as ``self-contained, modular
applications that can be described,
published, located and invoked over a
network, generally the World Wide
Web.'' Randall moved on and showed
the architecture concepts and
technologies within the web services
described by Tim Berners-Lee on the
W3 web site (www.w3.org/
DesignIssues/WebServices.html). She
briefly explained the services:
.Simple Object Access Protocol
(SOAP) is a protocol for exchan-
ging messages between computers.
.Web Services Description Lan-
guage (WSDL) uses XML to
define messages exchanged.
.Universal Description Discovery
and Integration (UDDI) is used to
find services to exchange messages
with.
.REST (Representational State
Transfer) is a collection of princi-
ples that uses XML and HTTP
protocol to communicate between
computers.
Randall then showed the University
of Rochester Library's Catalog User
Interface Platform for Iterative
Development (CUIPID) project that
combined an XML-based library
catalog with Google-like ``did you
mean'' spell checking. This project will
be presented at the LITA National
Forum in San Jose, CA. in September
2005. Finally, she emphasized that web
services are important to promote
interoperability, including support for
legacy applications and just-in-time
integration.
Eric Lease Morgan followed up with
a more elaborated\explanation of the
service. He defined web services as ``a
computing technique for systematically
disseminating XML content, usually
over a network.'' The definitions of
REST, SOAP, WSDL and UDDI were
discussed, and a couple of simple
hands-on examples on SRW/U (Search
and Retrieve via the Web/Search and
Retrieve via URL) and OAI-PMH
(Open Archives Initiative-Protocol for
Metadata Harvesting) were shown.
He also showed several web services
projects such as the WordNet thesaurus
project from Princeton (http://
wordnet.princeton.edu), and ``semi web
services'' of integrating MyLibrary
content into Notre Dame's campus
portal. He mentioned also other non-
library services such as Google Maps
and Weather Channel on desktops. He
also emphasized the need to start
learning XML and embracing web
services, especially since many users
prefer accessing library resources
through the internet.
Two web services case studies were
then presented. Jeremy Frumkin from
Oregon State discussed the OCKHAM
Initiative project, a collaboration
between Oregon State, Notre Dame,
Emory, and Virginia Tech. Emory and
Virginia Tech received an NSF grant to
build module, interoperable digital
services. The main goal of this project
is to look at the way (technically and
socially) libraries and vendors can work
together, and to come up with best
practices for interoperable digital
library services.
Several initial services were
presented:
.Digital Library Services Registry
(DLSR) enables easy advertising
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