American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference Report
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/07419050610713664 |
| Pages | 7-17 |
| Published date | 01 September 2006 |
| Date | 01 September 2006 |
| Author | Gina Costello,Christopher Cox,Alice L. Daugherty,Connie Haley,Millie Jackson,S.G. Ranti Junus,Fu Zhuo |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
American Library Association (ALA)
Annual Conference Report
Gina Costello, Christopher Cox, Alice L. Daugherty, Connie Haley,
Millie Jackson, S.G. Ranti Junus and Fu Zhuo
LIBRARY HITECH NEWS Number 8 2006, pp. 7-17, #Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 0741-9058, DOI 10.1108/07419050610713664 7
The American Library Association
held its Annual Meeting, June 22-28,
2006 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The
conference was the largest convention
held in the city since Hurricanes
Katrina and Rita devastated the region
in August and September 2005. There
were 16,964 attendees and over 1,000
volunteers deployed to projects at
libraries throughout the city. They
helped to restore facilities that were
ravaged by flood waters.
The opening General Session
featured Madeleine Albright former
Secretary of State and bestselling
author of Madam Secretary. Madeleine
Albright 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, Cokie Roberts who is currently
the chief congressional analyst for ABC
News and is the author of the national
best-seller, We Are Our Mothers'
Daughters, which reveals the often
surprising stories of the fascinating
women of the American Revolution.
Other keynote speakers who addressed
this year's conference included
Anderson Cooper who has been a
reporter for 15 years. Mr Cooper is the
anchor of CNN's prime-time evening
news show Anderson Cooper 360ë,he
joined the network in 2001 and has been
hosting the program since March 2003.
Based upon his book Dispatches From
The Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters,
and Survival, Anderson Cooper related
everything he saw and experienced as a
correspondent and an anchor in 2005
with the same journalistic curiosity and
emotional accessibility that rivets his
television audience. Mrs Laura Bush,
First Lady of the USA, was invited to
speak at the School Libraries Work:
Rebuilding for Learning: A National
Town Hall Meeting
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.
Contracting for content in a digital
world
Millie Jackson
During the past ten-15 years
librarians have wrestled with issues
regarding licensing, online versus print
content, access and the issues of the big
deal. On Friday, June 23, 2006, five
experts in contracting for digital content
led a day long pre-conference
``Contracting for content in a digital
world'', sponsored by LITA exploring
the past and looking at the realities of
our present and future regarding digital
content. Organizer Sybil Boutilier, San
Francisco Public Library, moderated
the panel. Panelists included Anne
Okerson, Associate University
Librarian for Collections and
International Programs at Yale
University, Helen L. Wilbur, vice
president of Consortia and Major
Accounts for Thomson Gale, David
Ferriero, Andrew W. Mellon director
and chief executive of the Research
Libraries at the New York Public
Library, Miriam McIntire Nisbet,
legislative counsel, ALA Washington
DC office, and Brian Green, manager of
EDItEUR.
Anne Okerson led off the morning's
discussion with five topics that have
been on her plate:
(1) Long-term preservation.
(2) Future of the big deal.
(3) What to do when the tables turn
and the librarians team up with the
vendors.
(4) What happens when the reader is a
robot?
(5) What possibilities does Open
Access offer us?
Using taglines from the sixties to
punctuate her points, Okerson
examined the anxieties we have and the
progress we have made. The anxiety
over the loss of access and content in
the digital environment remain real and
suspicions about the Big Deal that
publishers are offering are all of great
concern. When discussing teaming up
with vendors, Okerson said it was like
``reprints on steroids.'' She likened this
relationship to Pogo's line: ``We have
met the enemy and he is us.'' Digitizing
content is placing the library in a
marketing position and should make us
question what is and is not fair when
vendors want to use our collections.
These projects place all parties in very
different roles than we have been in
traditionally and alter the balances we
have grown accustom to over the years.
New issues are constantly appearing
which change the landscape we think
we know.
One of the recent threads on
Liblicense addressed data mining,
reminding Okerson of Asimov's Robot.
What do we do when robots are sent to
mine our resources? Librarians have
always assumed we knew what users
did with the content we provide but in
the digital world, this is no longer true.
Data mining is one more issue that
presents questions in contracts and
negotiations. Finally, the Age of
Aquarius and Open Access are upon us.
The questions surrounding OA include
how we will provide access, the
changes this will cause and is causing in
the business models and in contracting
and licensing.
Helen Wilbur, vice president of
Consortia and Major Accounts at
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