WorldCat Local at the U. of Washington Libraries

As a follow up to our camp this summer note that Jennifer Ward and her colleagues at the "other u-dub" now have published an ALA Technology Reports on their experiences with WorldCat Local. Here's the blurb. Use this link to learn a bit more about and order the publication:

http://www.techsource.ala.org/ltr/worldcat-local-at-the-univ-of-washington-libraries.html

Written by three UW librarians who were integral to the WorldCat Local project at UW Libraries—Jennifer Ward, Pam Mofjeld, and Steve Shadle—this LTR issue provides an overview of the UW Libraries' WorldCat Local development, usability testing methods and exercises, and implementation.

"One of the strategic directions of the University of Washington Libraries Vision 2010 Strategic plan is 'Enhance user services,'" report the authors in the Introduction of the report. "Our goal is to 'meet user needs by providing access to resources and services at the point of need an in the users' enviroments.' We strive to meet this goal through this initiative: 'Build or integrate new tools and services for information discovery and delivery.'"

As the authors also note in the Introduction, library staff knew that creating such a tool would require partnership beyond the UW Libraries.

"In the summer of 2006, the UW Libraries approached OCLC to gauge interest in a project to the discovery-to-delivery issue." And the rest is history.

In this sixth issue of Library Technology Reports in volume 44, you'll find:

• Chapter 1: An introduction to the UW Libraries' WorldCat Local project
• Chapter 2: A description of WorldCat Local—what it is, how it works, key features of the application, and a comparison of discovery and delivery of information before and after WorldCat Local was implemented at UW Libraries
• Chapter 3: Information about the user experience, feedback, and testing
• Chapter 4: Usage and Impact of WorldCat Local
• Chapter 5: Planning and implementation documentation, including information about working with OCLC; the UW Libraries' implementation teams; circulation and interlibrary loan issues; and Web services aspects
• Chapter 6: An overview of "working at the network level" for UW Libraries' WorldCat Local implementation
• Chapter 7 and the appendix: A summary of the project as well as the WorldCat Local Impact Summary at the Univ. of Washington

If you have additional follow up to the camp, don't hesitate to post to the blog.

Camp kick off slides

Folks,

I thought you might like to see the slides I used, with the great pictures that Nichole found, to kick off the camp. To download the Powerpoint show here it is:

Camp Powerpoint

Thanks for going camping

Thanks for coming to our first ever WiLSWorld Camp-o-rama. As I think was obvious from the format, it was all up to you to ensure the success of the Camp and you folks all came through like aces. I hope everyone is already thinking about what general topics we might explore when we go camping next year. Just give me a shout when you have an idea. There's just a couple of items post-camp I'd like to throw out and hopefully get some follow up from you.

First off if you blog the Camp, please please please post links to the Camp blog so it ends up having the whole camp-fire story, including the punch lines and moral of the stories. There's already been some pictures and video's posted. Check out John Blyberg's pictures on his Flickr site:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jblyberg/

Second, it would be terrific if everyone would post a sentence or 2, or more if you like, of your take-aways from the Camp. What helped you? What confused you? What do you want to remember over the course of the next year as you explore all those OPAC/ILS options and approaches. Again get those thoughts on the blog and make them available for all the campers, even the ones who couldn't attend this year.

Finally my short take away. I was struck with the idea that our new OPAC/ILS's need to be "a growing organism", accepting input, additions, customizations from ourselves, other diverse libraries and patrons in order to create a system that naturally and seamlessly meets needs. That means our new systems must be specified to be flexible and adaptable requiring a lot of re-thinking on the parts of vendors and librarians alike.

What do you think?

I was never good at camp...

I was the small, unathletic one who cried in her bunkbed every night. I know, such a wuss.

Move forward a few decades, and now I love camp -- at least this kind of camp. I'm the Community Librarian for Equinox, the support and development company for Evergreen open source library software. As someone who attends a lot of conferences, I spend a lot of time in very structured sessions, and I'm occasionally also the "sage on the stage" (or as it sometimes feels, "the fish in a barrel") sweating it out up on there on the podium when the real answers are out there... in the crowd.

So it's good to be here in a setting where we can share ideas in a fun, cooperative manner. Free of fear that the volleyball is going to hit me.

Introduction

Hi,
I'm Janet White, librarian at Blackhawk Technical College. Out of frustration with our current OPAC, we have been investigating alternatives such as the Polaris System and AquaBrowser. But these systems are expensive for our small budget.
However, I was intrigued with an article a while back in NextSpace, the OCLC newsletter. It was an article by Tom Storey called Moving to the Network Level. He wrote, "Local OPACs have served a purpose but if I were designing an information discovery system today there would be no local catalog. OPACS represent a tremendous duplication of effort." Is this happening? It would be great to have a sophisticated searching system for all or part of one large union catalog.
I am hoping to find out more about what has been done to make searching library records a more user friendly process that is afordable.

Tara Kilby

I'm the library tech at blackhawk technical college. One of my responsibilities is the operation and maintenance of the library's automation system, thus my interest in the camp.

Introduction

Hi, I'm Peggy Shaffer. I work for Lakeshores Library System and since 2003 I have been a system administrator for SirsiDynix Unicorn (now Symphony). I'm interested in open source catalogs because the SirsiDynix product is old and needs updating, badly. I'm not sure that will happen so I want to explore other possibilities for catalogs.

Introduction

Hi all, my name is Jennifer Ward and I'm from the other UW - the University of Washington in Seattle. My official title at the UW Libraries is Head of Web Services, but like most of us I wear many different hats. Probably most relevant in the context of WiLS is that I am a member of our WorldCat Local pilot/implementation team, manage the Libraries' usability program, and am always on the lookout for ways to seamlessly integrate relevant library content and resources into the user's environment.

We were the first site to go live with WorldCat Local back in April of 2007. It's been a very positive experience for our users -- they no longer have to look in and navigate all of our discrete silos to find and get to resources. Of course, there's still a long way to go with working at the network level and making access truly seamless for our users, but the possibilities there are hugely exciting.

Introduction

Hello, my name is Van Carpenter and for 7 years I've been the Director of Library Services at Northland Baptist Bible College. Here at NBBC library we have experienced all of the challenges of a academic library servicing the needs of a small college. This will be my first foray into the face-to-face interaction of WiLS - so, I'm looking forward to it. The busyness in the field has kept me away far too long.

I'm very much interested in the topic of OPAC's and ILS's and, in particular, open source. We have had a Liblime Koha installation for at least two years, and we will soon be migrating to Liblime's Zoom ILS. We are interested in pushing the development cycle envelope and keeping the feature enhancement curve going. As a small college this can be difficult - even in OSS, but in a consortium this task becomes easier.

Fishing for Who, What, Which, When

Hi.
I'm Lauren Blough, the Automation Project Manager at South Central. My current interest in technological "discovery" is determining the total cost of ownership for the shiny new products and services. While software development scales new heights and services continue to evolve with more and more entrepreneurs applying their expertise, it's a challenge to integrate the pieces in a manageable local product/service. Costs are dividing into smaller and smaller units at higher and higher prices, some complicated by the switch from one-time fees to subscription models. Researching OPAC and open source topics is both exciting and mistifying when I try to figure out who has implemented what with which resources (does that statement accurately illustrate bewilderment?).

Use that Feed: Redux

Folks,

I think I blew the URL for the feed before, apparently some feed readers want to see "http://" rather than the original "feed://".  Go figure.  

So use that feed,... again. Put it into your favorite news reader like Google Reader or Bloglines and you'll always be up to date on the latest postings on the WiLSWorldCamp blog. Here's the feed URL:

http://wilsworldcamp.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Use it, don't abuse it. Be there or be square.

Later,

Mark

Replace, all or part?

Thanks for the question, Mark, on what gives--are we looking at replacing our whole ILS, or do we maintain our OPAC interface AND put up additional resource discovery interfaces such as WorldCat Local, VuFind, Primo, or Blacklight.

In reading over the posts to this blog, I am noticing two things that folks have mentioned. One is that their libraries are either in the process of replacing their ILS or looking to decouple their public library catalog interface and offer something completely new.

From my limited pointed of view, replacing the whole ILS is a long, slow, tedious process involving a lot of decision makers. Yet so much innovation is going on in user interfaces now. I'd hate to be stuck with my clunky Voyager interface for years longer while I wait for it to slowly upgrade, or wait for the whole RFP process to take place.

Some of my library patrons have told me "your library catalog is 10 years out of date." And "I can't find anything unless I know what I'm looking for." Frankly it isn't really true that the catalog is 10 years out of date. People forget how fast things have changed! But it sure seems like it when other interfaces around us like for Amazon and Google seem to be updating all the time and are so simple while our catalog is still using old search strategies. We've only last month implemented relevancy ranking in search results as the default, and this is only in one type of search--words anywhere. If you do a title search, it's still alpha order. And we still can't really do any sort of faceting of search results.

So for all of these reasons, I'm looking to make our public library catalog software something that runs far faster and is far easier to revise and update than what we have currently. And I don't want to wait. Long ago we used locally created interface software called NLS--it was decoupled from our ILS. Frankly with live linking out to grab the circulation status, I'm thinking decoupling our OPAC interface a better choice for library patrons now, given that there are far better indexing and web searching tools available than there were when we moved off the old NLS platform. By decoupling our catalog interface from our ILS, we'll be able to more quickly innovate and more quickly integrate journal article searching and other types of data with our catalog data. (Yes we have MetaLib and we can do metasearching, but in real-time it isn't quick. I'm really thinking pre-harvesting and indexing of various data feeds is a better solution for patrons in most cases.) Because if it's one thing I hear and see all the time, it's that people won't wait. If it's not fun to search and the results are overwhelming, they soon leave.

And besides, I think my co-worker Steve Meyer, and other library bloggers whose names I am not currently remembering have a good point that it's time to make software much faster than we've been able to in the past. It's time to actually control the interface our public sees. And maybe we'll learn something about indexing in the process.

Questions for the Camp to Talk About

Folks,

So what questions do you want answered at the camp?  Here's one from me:

How come it seems like if I want a super cool next gen OPAC, I have to run my current old ILS and also run one or more special extra cool add on thingies on top of it?  Huh what?  What if I only want to run one thingie and have it all?

Mark

Introduction

Hi, campers! My name is Nichole Fromm. This is my third or fourth WiLSWorld, but my first one wearing a WiLS "staff" ribbon on my nametag. I'm as interested in the OPAC as everyone here, so here are a couple lines about where I'm coming from...

When it comes to OPACs I'm afraid I'm easily distracted by shiny things, despite a background in and love for cataloging.

I'd rather satisfice than maximize. I'm a big fan of efficiency, yet I can fritter and tinker with the best of them.

Looking forward to this (hopefully) bug-free camping experience!

Camp topics

I'm interested in Open Source, the changing library marketplace (including the OPAC) and the next generation ILS. I think there is crossover between these topics--for example Open Source could be included in the discussion on the next generation ILS. And the changing library marketplace could be part of a discussion on OPACs and/or the next generation ILS.

Introduction

Hi, I'm Susan Foran, authority control librarian and cataloger at UW-Milwaukee Libraries. I'm interested in the future of cataloging and metadata. All those fancy public interfaces aren't much good if the data isn't accurate. I'm interested in next generation ILS and effective staff-side clients that make creating and maintaining the public interface possible.

Camp is next week

Folks,

The Camp is coming up fast, just next week and it's time to get just a touch more serious about the event. Thanks to all of you who have posted information about yourselves and your interests to the Camp Blog. If you haven't already submitted your introductory post there's still time.

For the next couple of days and through this weekend I think it would be effective to have folks post on the blog two primary bits of information.

First off, add your topics of concern and make sure you add labels. Our current label line up, which at least in part will help to drive our discussion groups is:

LABELS
introduction (12)
OPACs (9)
libraries (8)
next generation ILS (8)
resource discovery (5)
Open Source (4)
announcements (4)
camps (4)
Public Libraries (3)
access services (2)
PALS (1)
dogs (1)
how tos (1)
interlibrary loan (1)
library software marketplace (1)

So post up you topics and labels and we'll approach the first cut on our topics for the camp.

Second, figuring out who's going to give the 3 quick key presentation. You might remember from the very first posting about the camp:

At the Camp there will be 3 short key presentations based on the blog discussions, of 10-15 minutes each distributed throughout the afternoon. These keys will be designed to stimulate conversations and provoke ideas among the participants. Following each there will be discussion breakouts, on specific topics as determined by the participants both from before-conference blog entries and on site during the Camp

Who wants to step up? We're looking for thought provoking ideas and at 10-15 minutes no big prep time. Instead what can you say to make the attendees think and talk and create even more ideas? Suggest yourself or suggest another attendee. Post it on the blog and will come up with 3 for the Camp. At some camps they might wait until the event to decide the quick key speakers, but I think it would be more librarian style polite to at least give our quick key volunteers a couple of days to semi-prep .

Post to the blog. Email me any questions you might have. See you on Tuesday in Madison.

Later,

Mark

Introduction

Mike Simpson, of UW-Madison DoIT ... boring details, personal philosophy, geeky technical rambling.

Hmmm, something specific to the camp: possibly original, merely the messenger.

Things won't stand still

One of the things I would like to discuss is the fact that the library software market-place will not stand still. Products are being developed so quickly that it makes it difficult to close the door. We thought we had evaluated all of the PAC Discovery tools out there, and now there are 3 more that we really should look at. It's not that we don't want to, but where do you draw the line?

When you apply this to Open Source ILS options, the problem is compounded.

Are others struggling with this issue?

Introduction

I’m Karen Boehning, the Technology Coordinator at the Winnefox Library System. We’re headquartered in Oshkosh at the Oshkosh Public Library. Winnefox provides technology support and runs an ILS for its 30 member libraries in five counties. The ILS is SirsiDynix Symphony. The catalog is Web2, a product developed by DRA before its purchase by SirsiDynix. Web2 is highly customizable via html and has provided us with more flexibility than is possible with other SirsiDynix catalog interfaces.

I am interested in the direction of catalog development, including faceted searching and federated searching. Two studies we have done on catalog searching shows that our users do a lot of known-item searching. I have concerns about catalog development that seem to be focused on giving the user something/anything, making it harder to find specific items. This may primarily affect public libraries, but I don’t want the public-library point of view to get lost in the process by failing to participate.

Introduction

Hello

I am Linda Orcutt and I administer the shared automation system (V-Cat) for the Wisconsin Valley Library Service (WVLS), headquartered in Wausau. There are 23 members in 32 locations. V-Cat has recently appointed a migration committee to study the various options available for the next ILS. V-Cat currently runs on SirsiDynix Horizon. We are looking at open source as well as the standard vendors. We are tenatively looking at migrating at the end of 2009.

Introduction

I'm Paula Ducas, the cataloger and automation librarian for the Appleton Area School District. Our school district is the 6th largest in the state, with 40 traditional and charter schools. We are on Dynix Horizon and DRA classic prior to that and are in the process of looking for our next ILS. We are seriously looking at Open Source library software for the price, of course, but also to deal with the diverse needs of our district. Being able to customize quality software to meet the needs of our district is extremely appealing. The question is how to determine the quality and the resources needed to make the software work for us.

Introduction

Hi,
My name is Karla Smith, and although my official title is "Automation Librarian", I think of myself more as the "OPAC/ILS Wrangler" for Winnefox Library System.

One of the reasons I am attending this camp is because I worry that the public library patron's needs get lost in all these "The OPAC Sucks" discussions. Most of the prominent people leading the push for Next-Gen OPACs or doing away with the OPAC entirely are from academic backgrounds-- and their patrons have vastly different needs than our patrons. I did a study of the logs from our OPAC, and they clearly indicate that our patrons are looking for known-items -- specific title or author. I am hoping to hear if any other public librarians have looked at their patrons' search patterns.

Stephen Elfstrand and MnPALS: Introduction and Summary

Hi All,

I'm Stephen Elfstrand, Executive Director of PALS; the office supporting the MnPALS Consortium of Libraries in Minnesota. I've been here nearly a year now. Many of you know me from my previous position as Head of Systems and Circulation and the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. I'm looking forward to seeing you all again at WILSWorld.


MnPALS consists of the MnSCU public higher education institutions including State Universities, Community Colleges and Technical Colleges. Basically everything except the University of Minnesota. In addition, we have several state government libraries such as the DNR and Legislative Reference Library and we have several private institutions such as St. John's / St Ben's and Gustavus Adolphus. There are 63 libraries in all. We are currently using Aleph from Ex Libris,as our library management system and have we think the largest multi-ADM environment of any Aleph site. Since Ex Libris is working on a successor product to both Aleph and Voyager, we know there is a system migration in our future.

We are investigating several approaches for Next Gen Library Systems. An example is Open Source ILSs. We recently paid Equinox and LibLime to come to our office and do two-day seminars and go into greater detail than what is available in the 1-2 hour "gee-whizz" demos we've all seen at conferences. Day one was a technical seminar that discussed HW, system architecture, development environment languages. etc. We have actually installed both on servers here. Day two was a functional review of each system and a review of the development plans. Our conclusion is that neither are really ready for a major shared system for an academic library consortium that needs a full feature set that includes Serials, Acq, ILL, Course Reserves, booking, etc. but that they are both moving in the right direction and we are tracking their developments closely.

As for discovery layers we looked seriously an Open Source product that uses SOLR and Lucene: Fac-Bac-OPAC and got fairly far along with it. Later though we looked into VUFind and thought that it had a more advanced feature set, especially for Web 2.0 features, tagging etc. So we decided to go to that as a platform. We hope to release our VUFind for use by any library that wants to use it by August 15th.

We are also brokering OCLC WorldCat Local for several libraries, so I guess we are taking a "let a thousand flowers bloom" approach to the future,rather that trying to figure out what "The Best Way" is. It is significant in this regard that we have a wide variety of libraries and so there may not be one solution that works for all. We hope at a "reference work day" next spring we can have some of our members compare and contrast VUFind and WCLocal in terms of retrieval, display and user acceptance.

We are brokering OCLC Link Manager for some of our members but we are also looking into the CUFTS open source OpenURL linking product for future use. CUFTS is also working on open source ERM and federated search tools, which we find interesting. Since state budgets for higher ed are not growing, rather the opposite and of course library services budgets are tight as well, it is unlikely that we can afford to buy Metalib or Primo - types of products. Our conclusion is that we will have to grow our own to some extent if we want to offer any beyond-the-OPAC/LMS services to our members in the future.

Introduction

Hi everyone, I'm so late in introducing myself that I had to get Mark to send me another invitation to post to the 'blog ....

Anyways, I'm Deb Shapiro, and I am an instructor at the UW-Madison School of Library & Information Studies, SLIS. I teach cataloging and metadata and organization of information. I've been looking at NextGen catalogs sort of from the performance/usability side; how do they search, can you understand the results, what kind of "bling" do they have (reader recommendations, cover art, tagging, etc.). I'm coming to camp in the hopes of getting a firmer grip on how they work; the under the hood stuff. My hidden agenda is that I am looking forward to when it is that I will be able I can stop teaching cataloging students the MARC format! <grin>

My favorite reading so far on NextGen catalogs is Marshall Breeding's Library Technology Reports from last summer: Next-generation library catalogs / Marshall Breeding, Library technology reports, v. 43, no. 4

And I'd really rather be teaching cooking, or art than cataloging ...

Introduction

I'm Vicki Teal Lovely and I'm the Software Applications Supervisor at the South Central Library System (SCLS). We are a 41-member public library consortium using Dynix Classic. We've been investigating our next-generation ILS since 2000 and have had several false starts. We're closing in on making our final selection. But at the moment I'm very interested in Open Source. My specific areas of responsibility are Acquisitions and Serials, but I'm also concerned about all modules in general.

Introduction

My name is Amy Gannaway and I'm the Cataloging and PAC Support Specialist for the South Central Library System, and I provide support to our member libraries for the cataloging and PAC modules for our ILS. As Heidi already mentioned, we are currently evaluating a new ILS and OPAC, so I have been following next generation OPAC and ILS developments for the past year or so. I am looking forward to getting a new OPAC for our catalog because our current OPAC is showing its age.

Use that Feed

Folks,

Use that feed. Put it into your favorite news reader like Google Reader or Bloglines and you'll always be up to date on the latest postings on the WiLSWorldCamp blog. Here's the feed URL:

feed://wilsworldcamp.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Use it, don't abuse it. Be there or be square.

Later,

Mark

So what are you doing after ALA ....

So what are you doing after ALA?  Let's go to Camp.  The 2008 WiLSWorldCamp on Next Generation OPAC and ILS: Expectations and Discussions.

You can join Roy Tennant, John Blyberg, Karen Schneider, Jennifer Ward, Sue Dentinger, Jason Etheridge, and Steve Elfstrand  and all go to Camp together.  Many of our campers will be presenting and attending some of the great programming about Next Generation OPAC and ILS at this years ALA Annual conference.  Including sessions such as:

Building and Supporting Koha, an open-source ILS

There's No Catalog Like No Catalog:  The Ultimate Debate on the Future of the Online Catalog

Creating the Future of the Catalog and Cataloging

and many more.

WiLSWorld Camp is July 22, 2008, 1:00-4:30 p.m., at the Madison Pyle Center.
Registration is $40 and you can Sign Up Here

To help us prepare for Camp we've started a Camp Blog. Open for reading to anyone, Campers get to post, comment and help direct the conversations and content activities of the Camp. Check out the WiLSWorld Camp Blog

If you're unfamiliar with the camp process check out this Wikipedia article on the first Camp and then for an example Camp go look at the Library Camp Kansas wiki

Sign up now and come prepared to share your stories and ideas around the Camp Fire at the Pyle Center.

Introduction

My name is Heidi Oliversen and I am the Circulation Support Specialist for South Central Library System. We are currently investigating ILS vendors and their products, including a new OPAC. I'm interested in staff and patron access services.

Introduction

My name is Alison Ross. I'm the cataloging librarian for the Eastern Shores Library System and manage both the cataloging and interlibrary loan departments. Our library system is currently in the process of moving to a new ILS, so what's available and what may be coming in the realm of the Next Generation OPAC and ILS have been very much on our minds. As we have never been completely happy with the current Horizon OPAC available for our patrons, and as we begin planning for the setup of the ILS and OPAC of our next system, I am very interested in learning more about what's available now and what people are doing with it as well as what may be coming down the line and how it may impact our service.

Introduction and Final Report on Resource Discovery, U. Wisconsin Madison

Hello, I'm Sue Dentinger, Network Services Librarian for the Library Technology Group and University of Wisconsin Digital Collections. With Kelli Keclik, I recently co-chaired a "Resource Discovery Exploratory Task Force". We were charged with developing a vision for information resource discovery in the Libraries that supports teaching, learning and research at UW-Madison. Our goal was to better understand our patron’s and their information seeking behaviors and come up with ideas on how we can better satisfy their information and resource discovery needs.

As part of this, we undertook an online survey of our library patrons, held focus groups and listening sessions (where we got an earful!), looked at several resource discovery projects or products which might be an improvement over what we have now, used CrazyEgg software to get a start on better understanding how our patrons currently use some of our web pages, and finally we produced a report detailing our recommendations. The report and recommendations are available via: http://uwlibdiscovery.blogspot.com/2008/06/executive-summary-of-our-final-report.html

The committee has just ended, and now library management will be deciding how to deal with these recommendations. But I really appreciated the opportunity listen to our clientele and think and read a bit more about the many problems our patrons have using our licensed resources to find what they need and exploring better solutions. So I'm looking forward to this chance to interact with all of you on this topic.

Introduction

My name is Jim Novy and I am the System Services Technician for the Lakeshores Library System. Ever since our automation consortium discovered that the EPS/Rooms catalog our ILS vendor, SirsiDynix, pushed us to go to will not work for us I've been investigating alternatives. I've been involved in developing a driver for the VuFind open source catalog, www.vufind.org, that will let it query our SirsiDynix Symphony database, as well as looking into several initiatives to aggregate patron circulation data to provide recommendations and better relevance ranking.

introduction

My name is Kirsten Houtman and I'm a Member Services Librarian at WiLS. I'm interested in next generation OPACs and ILS. Since I do quite a bit of OCLC service support here at WiLS, I am particularly interested in how the directions OCLC is taking WC.org and WC Local fit in with the future ahead of us. Mark mentioned the cat-dog discussion, so I thought that I'd comment that though I work with many "cats"in my professional life, I am a dedicated dog person at home. Cats are cute and fluffy and I understand their appeal, tho (they do make me sneeze however).

Another Introduction

My name is Heather Weltin and I am currently Head of Access Services and Interlibrary Loan at Memorial Library at the Univ. of WI-Madison. I am interested in the next generation of ILS and OPACs because my day-to-day responsibilities revolve around patron’s access to our collections. The future of both will change the future of Access Services and ILL.

Introduction

I am Tatiana B. Miller, Collection Management and Resource Sharing Librarian from Medical College of Wisconsin Libraries. I manage two departments formerly called Technical Services and Interlibrary Loans. I am interested in the Next Generation OPAC and ILS. Our library is moving to our new WebOPAC now. I am interested in learning new ideas and see what other libraries do with their OPACs.

Welcome to WiLSWorld Camp

All registrants to the Camp will receive an invitation to contribute to the WiLSWorldCamp Blog. We believe the Blog is critical for initiating discussions leading to the topics, discussions and quick key sessions at the Camp itself. So participating in the Blog by posting and commenting is essential to the success of the Camp.

We hope that each WiLSWorldCamp camper will post an introduction about themselves. It doesn't need to be lengthy or in depth. But if you could:

• list a couple of areas of interest in the Next Generation OPAC and ILS
• give your self and your initial posting no more than 3 tags/labels that describes your viewpoint and interest in the Camp
• Any other interesting stuff you want to share (there's always the dog v. cats as pets discussions)

Here's a quick snapshot guide and reminder to posting:

Once you've signed in and chosen New Post, you'll see the editing page. Just a couple of important points to remember when posting to the WiLSWorldCamp blog. We want very much to track the ideas on the blog for use in the camp. So using "tags", which Blogger calls "labels" is very important. Please make sure you add labels to all your posts. In the bottom right there's the label area. You can click the toggle link (see all or hide all) to see all previous used labels and then click them to add, or you can type in your own new labels. As with any blog then remember, use links



create good titles, and of course remember to Publish your Post.




A camp is a creation of the participants, so thanks for making the WiLSWorldCamp happen. Later, Mark

Come Camping with us

What do Roy Tennant, John Blyberg, Karen Schneider, Jennifer Ward, Sue Dentinger, Equinox, Ruth Dukelow and Steve Elfstrand all have in common? They're all going to Camp together, and you can go to.

WiLSWorld Camp, July 22, 2008, 1:00-4:30 p.m., at the Madison Pyle Center.
Registration is $40 and you can Sign Up Here


To help us prepare for Camp we've started a Camp Blog. Open for reading to anyone, Campers get to post, comment and help direct the conversations and content activities of the Camp. Check out the WiLSWorld Camp Blog

If you're unfamiliar with the camp process check out this Wikipedia article on the first Camp and then for an example Camp go look at the Library Camp Kansas wiki

Our Camp is going to be centered around the topic:

Next Generation OPAC and ILS: Expectations and Discussions

Sign up now and come prepared to share your stories and ideas around the Camp Fire at the Pyle Center.

For more details see previous WiLSWorld Camp postings.

WiLSWorld Camp 2008, Madison WI

WiLSWorld Camp, July 22, 2008, 1:00-4:30 p.m., at the Madison Pyle Center.

Next Generation OPAC and ILS: Expectations and Discussions
Join us for the first ever WiLSWorld Camp, a half day pre-conference designed and delivered by the attendees. In this our inaugural effort the topics will be concentrated on the upcoming next generation of library catalogs and integrated library systems. We will talk about what we can expect or hope for and more to the point what libraries and patrons really want and need. There are many libraries throughout our region currently grappling with the process of getting a new system and many more in eager anticipation or dread of the looming process. In many minds what libraries mount for patron use over the next year or two could make or break their place in patrons' hearts and minds.

The Camp Process
All attendees are encouraged to present at or facilitate a discussion. Everyone is also asked to share information and experiences of the event afterwards. We'll establish a blog, with an RSS feed, to support the Camp. Before it occurs, all registered attendees will be encouraged to post their ideas for specific topics, pertinent readings, sample web sites and systems, attendee lists and any other background materials they believe to be of use. These entries will inform the content outline for the Camp. At the Camp there will be 3 short key presentations based on the blog discussions, of 15-20 minutes each distributed throughout the afternoon. These keys will be designed to stimulate conversations and provoke ideas among the participants. Following each there will be discussion breakouts, on specific topics as determined by the participants both from before-conference blog entries and on site during the Camp. Key points from discussions will be reported back to the Camp as a whole and all participants will get to vote and rank key points, concerns and ideas to create a Camp report.

Some background on Camps can be found at: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BarCamp