My ALA Anaheim 2012 Schedule

It is that time of year again where representatives from the library profession all gather for the annual Annual Library Association meeting. This year it is in Anaheim, California on June 21–26. And as the pace of technology continues to push libraries into new areas of content and service, this meeting promises to be an exciting one. Or, at least I'm planning on having a fun and engaging time. Here is my tentative schedule of public events. If you'd like to get together to chat outside these times, please get in touch.

Updated to correct the date for the LYRASIS lounge.

LYRASIS Lounge

Time: Saturday, June 23 Friday June 22, 2012 from 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM
Location: Anabella House - Magnolia Poolside Meeting Room and Private Patio

LYRASIS members, friends, and those interested are invited to join staff for this get-together. RSVP via Facebook or email.

Conversation Starters: Discovery Here, Discovery There: Pros and Cons of Local or Remote Hosting of Discovery Tools

Session in the ALA scheduler
Time: Saturday, June 23, 2012 from 9:15 AM to 10:00 AM
Location: Anaheim Convention Center - 208A
Discovery systems are powerful tools to help users find information resources across the breadth of the library's online holdings. Many of these tools offer APIs for libraries to build their own user interfaces to the search index, allowing a library to keep site visitors within the library until the time they access the full text of a resource. What are the pros and cons of keeping discovery local? This talk will explore the user interaction, interface design, and user expectations of such homegrown interfaces.

Discovery systems continue to be a hot topic, as is the question about whether libraries should run their own systems or subscribe to commercial services. This is a topic that is also addressed in the FOSS4Lib Control versus Responsibility 40-question survey tool. I'm interested to hear Ken Varnum's take on it and the kinds of questions that come from the audience.

As an aside, ALA is two new session formats this year: 5-minute/20-slide "Ignite" style sessions and 45-minute "conversation starter" sessions. This is one of the latter.

Kuali OLE: Community Ready Software for Your Library!

Session in the ALA scheduler
Time: Saturday, June 23, 2012 from 10:30 AM to 12:00 PM
Location: Anaheim Convention Center - 210D
Kuali OLE (pronounced oh-lay) is in the first year of building a community-source library management system that takes advantage of existing Kuali Foundation software. Operating since July 2010, and supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Kuali OLE is one of the largest academic library software collaborations in the United States. This program will provide an overview of our current software release and how you can get involved with Kuali OLE at your library.

At LYRASIS I'm hearing lots of questions from our members about the Kuali OLE project. I'm heading to this session to see what the needs of libraries would be as a part of forming a strategy for LYRASIS. OLE is an important open source software project for library automation of a kind we haven't seen in a decade (since the foundation was laid for Evergreen and Koha). The fruits of the early labor are just ripening, and the results could have a profound impact -- not only on the ILS marketplace but also in how libraries come together to work on shared software development. Note that this is one of several sessions at ALA featuring the OLE project.

New Library Technology Paradigms: OS vs Black Box vs Hybrids

Session in the ALA scheduler
Time: Saturday, June 23, 2012 from 1:30 PM to 3:30 PM
Location: Anaheim Convention Center - 206A
Some libraries build new Open Source Products, some adopt existing ones and others buy packaged products. How do libraries make the choice? What are the trade-offs, benefits and pitfalls of building something in house, using an existing OS solution, buying something out of the box or building a hybrid solution. Our panelists will talk about how and why they build systems and what drives their decision making processes.

Here's the place in the program where I'll be speaking. Joining me on the panel moderated by Evviva Weinraub is Bohyun Kim and Megan Banasek on the decision-making process for choosing software. I'll be talking about the FOSS4Lib Decision Support tools and the other two speakers will be talking about their experiences.

ACRL / SPARC Forum: Campus Open Access Funds: The State of Play

Session in the ALA scheduler
Time: Saturday, June 23, 2012 from 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM
Location: Disneyland Hotel - Disneyland Grand Ballroom South
A sustainable, Open Access scholarly communication system requires robust, stable sources of funding. One key source of such funding are campus-based Open Access funds – pools of money provided academic institutions specifically earmarked to help authors offset the cost of journal publication. These funds have sprung up on campuses large and small, in colleges and universities across the U.S., Canada, and increasingly, worldwide. How are these funds created? Where are they located and who administers them? Where does the money come from? Are authors using these funds? Where can my institution turn for information on creating such a fund?

This forum will explore all of these questions and more, as a panel of experts delve into the latest developments in creating, implementing and sustaining this crucial resource.

Presenters include:

• Chuck Eckman, Librarian and Dean of Library Services at Simon Fraser University
• Sue Kriegsman , Program Manager for the Office for Scholarly Communication at Harvard University Library
• Andrew Waller, Librarian at University of Calgary

These panelists will share their experiences in establishing and running some of the most visible and longest-running Open Access Campus Funds in existences, and discuss what’s working, what need fine tuning, and what they see pending as new developments on the horizon for these crucial resources.

Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative update

Session in the ALA scheduler
Time: Sunday, June 24, 2012 from 10:30 AM to 12:00 PM
Location: Anaheim Marriott Grand Salon A-C

Community forum to share news and views on the LC Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative.

I'm expecting lots of news here, particularly with the recent news of the modeling initiative. I'm also eager to hear how librarians can participate more deeply in the effort.

As an aside, if this session wasn't going on I'd be going to the Responsive Web Design: get beyond the myth of the mobile Web. Responsive web design is an important technique, and I'm glad to see it getting some play to a broader library audience.

Chat Library Technology With Me at the LYRASIS Booth

Exhibitor information in the ALA scheduler
Time: June 24, 2012 from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM
Location: Exhibit floor booth 2001

Want to talk open source software? FOSS4Lib? Ebooks? Discovery layers? Come meet with me at the LYRASIS booth and we can chat about these topics and more.

The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Research, Digital Scholarship and Implications for Libraries

Session in the ALA scheduler
Time: Sunday, June 24, 2012 from 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM
Location: Anaheim Convention Center - Ballroom A
Tony Hey will describe the emergence of a new, ‘fourth paradigm’ for scientific research – involving the acquisition, management and analysis of vast quantities of scientific data. This ‘data deluge’ is already affecting many fields of science most notably fields like biology, astronomy, particle physics, environmental science and oceanography. The term eScience or eResearch is used to describe the development of the tools and technologies to support this more data-intensive, collaborative and often multidisciplinary research. This revolution will not be confined to the physical sciences but will also transform large parts of the humanities and social sciences as more and more of their primary research data is now being born digital.

Tony Hey is Vice President of Microsoft Research Connections, and he has a lot of good things to say on the 'data' that we should be listening about.

The Ultimate Debate: Cloud Computing: Floating or Free Falling?

Session in the ALA scheduler
Time: Monday, June 25, 2012 from 1:30 PM to 3:30 PM
Location: Anaheim Convention Center - 213AB
The Ultimate Debate returns for the seventh straight year with a lively discussion over the promises and pitfalls of cloud computing. Three panelists will tease out the various components of cloud computing to give you the insight needed to decide if you should be in the clouds or on terra firma.

A recent article on GigaOm ((The cloud will cost you, but you’ll be happy to pay, by Dave Roberts, GigaOm Cloud Computing News, published Jun. 9, 2012)) said, "The good news is that you’re not going to mind that your cloud computing budget will be higher than what you’re paying now for IT, because you’ll be able to do more." I wonder if that is true. Cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service specifically has taken off in libraries of all types and sizes, but I haven't seen where we've engaged in a cost-benefit analysis. I expect this "ultimate debate" will shed some light on the topic.

Drive Your Project Forward with Scrum

Session in the ALA scheduler
Time: Monday, June 25, 2012 from 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM
Location: Anaheim Convention Center - 203A
NPR Librarian, Janel Kinlaw, shares lessons learned from adapting Scrum, an agile process framework, to content management projects. She’ll discuss how this approach freed the team to innovate in structuring projects, gathering feedback from end-users in real-time, identifying risk and scope creep sooner and aligning library goals to the broader objectives of the organization. Janel will demonstrate where the Scrum process took us further than traditional methodologies.

This last session is for the geeky side of me. I haven't worked in a formal Scrum environment, but I enjoy hearing of the story of those that do.