WiLS OCLC Summaries

April 9-22 |  March 26-April 8 |  March 12-25 | February 25-March 11 


WiLS OCLC Summary - March 12-25, 2008 (pdf)

Contents:

WiLS News

• WiLS OCLC Peer Council is May 20

Mark your calendars for the Spring 2008 Peer Council meeting, May 20 in Madison. WiLS is excited to bring our featured speaker, OCLC's Renee Register, to Madison to talk about a new project using ONIX bibliographic data from publishers and vendors. The OCLC Next Generation Cataloging Project explores how this data can be used for early addition of metadata to WorldCat, with enhanced quality and consistency.

In the afternoon, learn how to get more circulation out of your materials in a practical, hands-on book repair workshop, given by DEMCO. Participants will learn and practice basic repairs for both hard and softbound books. Materials are included but preregistration will be required.

For more information about the Spring 2008 Peer Council meeting visit the WiLS web site. Peer Council Representatives are also invited to vote for Peer Council officers and answer a question about the spring meeting agenda. Distribute to your interested co-workers, but only one response is allowed per computer.

• Basic Cataloging Training in Minneapolis

WiLS and MINITEX are partnering to offer more training options for library staff. One of the first such opportunities is a series of three workshops that provide an overview of cataloging according to Anglo-American Cataloging Rules (AACR2r), Library of Congress Rule Interpretations and other cataloging standards. The workshops may be taken individually or as a set. Contact OCLC Support at WiLS (support@wils.wisc.edu, 608-263-5051) for more information.


• Upcoming WiLS FREE Web Conferences

April 3, 1:30p.m.: Connexion Client keeps Getting Better and Better

This first in a series of joint webinars with MINITEX highlights a variety of enhancements from recent versions of the OCLC Connexion Client. Do you know about all the new display options and navigational changes? And the OCLC supplied macros that are a cinch to use and can save you time? Did you know that genre headings can now be controlled? How about importing and exporting records in Dublin Core? Come learn about all this and more! We'll also cover what you need to know to upgrade to the newest version 2.1. Register through WisLine and download handout (pdf).

April 8, 10:30a.m.: Authorities and Identities (Connexion Editing Techniques)

In this session designed mainly for catalogers, NOT just authoritarians, Victor Gorodinsky, cataloger at UW-Madison Memorial Library, will give a whirlwind tour of authorities, authority records, and authority control. We'll also look at how authorities, in combination with FRBR concepts, have been leveraged for use in the innovative new project, WorldCat Identities. For more information visit the Connexion Editing Techniques web page.

April 10, 10:30a.m.: Making a Metadata Map: Dublin Core to Local Field Names (WiLS Hour)

Whether you are defining your first project or gearing up to run a digital program with multiple projects and collections, this WiLS Hour will help you. In this session we will talk about creating metadata maps and sharing them using the Wisconsin Heritage Online wiki. For more information visit the WiLS Hour web page.

See our full listing of FREE Web Conferences: >>> calendar

General

• OCLC offers sessions at PLA

Are you attending the Public Library Association conference in Minneapolis this week? Do you have a gap in your program schedule? Consider dropping in on an OCLC session and you'll take away more than a free tote bag. More details are on OCLC's PLA Registration web page but here are the highlights for each day.

Thursday:

Friday:

Saturday:

For more information on sessions and speakers, and to register, see OCLC's PLA Registration web page.

• New Shared NetLibrary eBook Collections

Now through June 23rd, OCLC is offering three new shared NetLibrary eBook collections: Ready Reference, Academic and Community College. The Ready Reference collection includes materials that answer the most frequently asked questions in libraries of all types. Core reference titles include encyclopedias, dictionaries, almanacs, atlases and handbooks. The Academic collection includes subject-specific reference titles in key areas of interest to four-year institutions. Community College includes titles for general education community college and vocational programs, including nursing/health, design/drafting, culinary arts, education, criminal justice, industrial arts and more. Learn more on the WiLS web site.

• OCLC Research Feature: Audience Level

This prototype system, developed in conjunction with OCLC's Audience Level research project, uses library holdings data in WorldCat to calculate audience levels for books represented in the WorldCat database. The Audience Level prototype and its related research project are part of a broader data mining activity at OCLC Research, which seeks to explore various ways to leverage intelligence from system files, and "make data work harder." View the prototype or learn more at the OCLC Research web site.

Cataloging

• See also Connexion Editing Techniques.

• Tips and Tricks: Best Practices for Cataloging Streaming Media

Ever been faced with the need to catalog streaming audio or video? The OLAC (Online Audiovisual Catalogers) Cataloging Policy Committee, Streaming Media Best Practices Task Force has written a guide. The HTML version can be found at http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/units/cts/olac/capc/streamingmedia.html.

•Connexion Client end of life

The end of life date for Connexion client version 1.70, 1.72 and 2.00 is April 1, 2008. Starting on April 1, logons will be disabled in version 1.70, 1.72 and 2.00. Users are asked to upgrade to version 2.10 as soon as possible.

Users of the Connexion browser will not be affected.

For more information about installation and a link to download the software, see Recent enhancements to Connexion client on the OCLC web site.

Reference and Resource Sharing

• Report on Resource Sharing 2.0: Future Directions in Resource Sharing Seminar

We are fast approaching a time in resource sharing where providing services without being attuned to user needs is tantamount to forcing users to find alternative sources to fill their information needs. We need to open our thinking to new ways of delivering information, alternative methods of communicating with our users, and embracing resource sharing as a core service in our libraries.
So began Re-Thinking Resource Sharing: Current and Future Innovative Directions, issued June 2006. On March 13th, 2008, WiLS sponsored a seminar to provide an update on the Re-Thinking Resource Sharing initiative and to engage library staff in looking at new ways of meeting user information needs. Presenters Brenda Bailey-Hainer and Mark Beatty energized the audience for some very productive small group discussions.

Key issues that emerged included:

For more details and presenters' materials, see the Resource Sharing 2.0 web page.

• Seventeenth Annual MINITEX Interlibrary Loan Conference

At the 17th annual MINITEX ILL Conference on Monday, May 5, 2008, in St. Paul, Minnesota, keynote speaker Elizabeth Lane Lawley will speak on "Forecasting the Future of Social Computing,” and Julia Blixrud will reflect that when it comes to ILL and the Electronic Environment "We're Living in Interesting Times."

Join MINITEX for these compelling talks and more. For more information and to register (now through April 25) visit the MINITEX web site.

Digitization and Preservation

• Now Forming: CONTENTdm Upper Midwest User's Group

MINITEX and WiLS are forming an Upper Midwest User's Group for CONTENTdm. To facilitate the group, the former "wicontentdm" email list has been transitioned to a new list called "upmwcdm." All members of "wicontentdm" have been moved to the new list, and new members are encouraged to join.

Plans are underway to have an annual user's group meeting, so stay tuned! For more information, contact Kirsten Houtman, 608-265-2728, khoutman at wils.wisc.edu.

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Compiled by Nichole Fromm, nfromm at wils.wisc.edu

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