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 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

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

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

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.

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 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).

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.