The Charleston Conference: 25th Anniversary Celebration of a Meeting
| Pages | 10-12 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/07419050610653904 |
| Published date | 01 January 2006 |
| Date | 01 January 2006 |
| Author | Julia Gelfand,Anneliese Taylor |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
The Charleston Conference:
25th Anniversary Celebration of a Meeting
Julia Gelfand and Anneliese Taylor
10 LIBRARY HITECH NEWS Number 1 2006, pp. 10-12, #Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 0741-9058, DOI 10.1108/07419050610653904
Every first week in November the
streets of the historic district in
Charleston come alive with librarians
who specialize in serials, acquisitions,
collection development and recently
digital preservation issues; and
publishers and suppliers engaged in
marketing, selling and licensing content
to libraries. This year, the November
2-5 days attracted just shy of 1,000
participants, making it the largest
conference ever at Charleston. It is also
the longest run of a conference not
sponsored by a society or trade
association. The brainchild of Katrina
Strauch, Collection Development
Librarian at the College of Charleston,
she launched it as an informal
brainstorming of librarians with similar
professional responsibilities but the cat
got out of the hat and it has steadily
grown for 25 years. A favorite meeting
of most who attend, and for some the
only professional meeting they make, it
enjoys success because it rarely gets
press coverage, and all parties are on a
collegial equal footing. Now organized
by a committee with Katina overseeing
things it remains a ``down home'' with
lots of time for schmoozing, meeting
and enjoying the best of Charleston's
low-country cuisine. The theme for this
celebratory occasion was ``Things are
seldom what they seem'' and nearly all
speakers recapped how business is not
what it used to be and libraries are very
different today as staff learns to deal
with a greater and growing remote
population of users with all levels of
technology experience.
Katina sets the stage for the
Charleston conference throughout the
year with her publications, Against the
Grain and the Charleston Advisor. The
conference, with this one being no
exception, is full of practical advice
where explanations are made by
publishers and suppliers, many
librarians ask lots of questions and
interactions are friendly and
considerate. The information industry is
known to send their new staff to the
Charleston conference to learn how
their customers think and do business
with the trade.
There was a Vendor Showcase for a
half a day. Not to compete with the
exhibition halls of the major
associations' annual meetings this was
just a hallway with lots of tables for
people to greet one another, and see
what is new. That is the focus, what is
hot and new and coming down the pike.
Vendors are expected to attend sessions
at Charleston, not be the sole occupants
of the stand or booth. Several pre-
conferences on a range of topics
including vendor negotiations,
managing serials, eJournal update,
statistics for librarians and the changing
landscape of technical services units.
There are several plenary sessions on
different themes, concurrent sessions
and trying to schedule 190 speakers in a
building with far too few adequately
sized meeting rooms is the major
obstacle of this conference.
Jerry Kline, president of Innovative
Interfaces or III, one of the big OPAC
companies talked about the changes
underway in that marketplace. III has
many projects underway including
ERMS, federated searching, e-commerce
software, linking to institutional
repository content, refining link
resolver technology, RSS feeds, DOIs,
imaging projects among others.
Concerns about the trend that 70
percent of users reportedly go to Google
before checking a library's holdings or
licensed databases is disturbing. He also
suggested the mounting challenges of
collection expansion that result in more
cross library borrowing, resource info-
sharing among consortia members, the
uniqueness factor and the expanding
universe of publishing.
Tom Turvey from Google, probably
anticipating pressure from a thousand
librarians calmly shared how Google's
goal is ``to create a comprehensive,
searchable card catalog respecting
copyright.'' There are three different
ways to browse according to Turvey,
and each contains advertising around
the screen. First, a limited scope where
a reader finds about 20 percent of the
content; a library or public domain
which unlocks restrictions for access;
and a library with copyright restrictions
where there is no scrolling and perhaps
a couple of snippets of content. Readers
can go to a library and borrow the book,
or buy the book ± this just tells them
what they need and is not meant to be a
substitute.
Mary Sauer-Games from ProQuest
remained confident that ProQuest is
headed in the right direction as Google
is not a publisher and is not a librarian,
but does great web searching. The
publisher's role in a digital environment
is to extend access to information and to
respond to market needs and to add
value to new and existing content and
manage the intellectual content. Her
example of the Parliamentary Papers, a
big and expensive collection makes it
more attractive as a teaching tool. Mark
Sandler the Collection Development
Officer at the University of Michigan
responded to how the Google project is
evolving there.
Mark Kendall from Yankee Book
Peddler offered five key challenges for
booksellers in his session, ``Selling
books in a world of technology.'' They
are:
(1) shift from content to technical
operations and building an inter-
face for e-ordering;
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