|
It has been a busy year for meetings,
as evidenced by the half dozen reports which follow. The pace of change
and the need to keep up with more and more developments on the serials
front are well documented in this column. The reports discuss many things
which are new or changing rapidly--for example, systems, publication
formats, cataloging models, collaborative projects and even the definition
of a serial. The proliferation of electronic serials has already made
a significant impact on the day-to-day workload in acquisitions, collection
development and cataloging activities; many libraries are moving toward
their second or third generation of integrated library system; and Web
tools are being used more and more to improve our effectiveness. Change
has become the expected way of life in the library, and these reports
provide an intriguing look into the state of serials in 1997.
1997 SPECIAL LIBRARIES ASSOCIATION ANNUAL CONFERENCE
Jill Hackenberg
From June 7-12, the Special Libraries Association
held its 88th Annual Conference in Seattle, Washington. The theme was,
"Information Professionals at the Crossroads: Change as Opportunity."
Attendees numbered about 7000 and exhibitors 466, both almost the same
as last year's SLA Conference in Boston. The Web site created by SLA
for this conference is located at http://www.sla.org/confmeet/conf.html.Over
thirty-five SLA Divisions and Caucuses planned informative sessions
for all attendees. The highlight of this conference was the keynote
speaker, Bill Gates, Chairman and CEO of Microsoft Corporation, whose
campus is located just outside of Seattle.
Gates' speech was highly anticipated. To accommodate
a large audience, it was held in the biggest meeting hall in the Washington
State Convention and Trade Center. Some attendees were overheard the
day before asking, "What time should I arrive for the Gates talk to
get a good seat--or any seat at all, thirty minutes, one hour ...?"
The hall of adjoining rooms was filled by 8:30 am, one half-hour before
Gates began. Over 6000 were in the audience, and multiple screens were
set up so that all could see the stage.
SLA President Sylvia Piggot introduced Gates
by stating that Bill was once a library assistant in the fourth grade.
During his hour-long talk, Gates discussed the opportunities ahead for
libraries and information professionals, commenting that "Libraries
are an absolutely critical resource and will play a more central role
than they ever have before." He then mentioned that timely information
delivery plays a critical role in the current business environment,
and therefore knowledge workers need to be connected to databases and
to each other in order to acquire the most current information.
Gates then invited Amy Dunn Stevenson, a member
of the Information Services team from the Microsoft Library, to talk
to the audience about their library's Web site and to describe the information
resources available for Microsoft's population. The Web site itself
is impressive and offers many ideas that other corporate and academic
library Web sites can use. The site offers stock quotes and market and
research information and, as Stevenson stressed, was "built by librarians."
It is also designed to be a place for all Microsoft product groups to
put information to facilitate sharing of data within the company. Gates
mentioned his support of this arrangement: less wasted paper from printing
and routing reports and other documents. Microsoft's Information Services
Web site averages over 100,000 hits per month. Readers can view the
Microsoft Library Web site at: http:// library. micro soft. com/.
Gates allowed time for a few questions pertaining
to his talk. One attendee asked his opinion about the future of paper.
Gates replied that some things will take a while to be phased out in
lieu of electronic access and some may never disappear, for example,
the newspaper, which he himself professes to still like in its current
form.
This speech was touted as being one that could
be accessible over the Internet, via NetShow streaming video. It was
broadcast in real time on June 9 and is available at the Microsoft website
and on video and audiotape. Go to http://microsoft.saltmine.com/netshow/SLA97.htm
for the streaming video.
Gates' speech and forty-four other sessions that
have been taped (audio and video) are available for purchase from SLA.
Contact SLA at http://www.sla.org/conf
meet/tapesale. html or 1-800-373-2952 (9-5MST).
In addition to Gates' talk, the conference offered
a host of interesting programs that had attendees deciding between many
good speakers that had programs at conflicting times. Many rooms were
filled by the starting time, with people seen spilling out into the
hallways.
Over twenty Continuous Education courses were
held prior to the conference covering a wide range of topics from outsourcing,
managing upward, and managing a one-person library, to electronic global
sleuthing.
At the Computer Science Roundtable, a group of
librarians and vendors held an interesting discussion about the future
of serials in the print form. This topic arose because the ACM (Association
for Computing Machinery) announced that in three to five years it will
be out of the print business. The company plans to offer all of its
newsletters and journals only in electronic form starting around the
millennium. As the roundtable considered this announcement, many pros
and cons was raised about this decision. The ACM stated that its user
population would be one of the most prepared for this shift, as the
members are very electronically savvy; in fact, some have already requested
that this change take place. Representatives from the IEEE (Institute
of Electronic and Electronic Engineers) and AMS (American Mathematical
Society) were also at this session and stated that their companies would
not be willing to make this kind of major shift for quite some time,
while others in attendance said they were not completely surprised that
a group such as the ACM was undertaking this task. The AMS stated that
many users are still not linked to the Internet, that many article submissions
still come in print form, and that communication with some authors is
taking place using the US mail.
The ACM also notified the roundtable that when
they accept new papers for publication in the future, the paper will
be put up on the ACM Web site as soon as possible rather than waiting
for the print publication to be ready.
In the session "The Web in the Blink of an Eye,"
Richard Wiggins of Michigan State University discussed some of the enhancements
that make accessing the Internet faster and faster and how these advances
reveal more and more bottlenecks. Once an obstacle is overcome, another
arises. This trend continues until great leaps of improvement in one
aspect of technology will not be felt because other dependent or related
features cannot keep up. One example of this phenomenon is the Concorde.
This very fast plane delivers passengers to London and Paris in record
time, but in order to save any additional travel time in the future,
researchers will need to focus on the time wasted on the ground in airports
and taxis, not in the air, to see great improvement.
Greg Notess from Montana State University discussed
the pros and cons of many popular Internet search engines in "Choosing
and Using Internet Search Engines." He concentrated on four major search
engines: AltaVista, Excite, HotBot, and Infoseek. HotBot was found to
search the largest number of sites, with Excite second. His studies
have revealed that each search engine does some things well and that
there was almost no overlap in the amount of material returned from
many of the search engines! This means each engine is searching wholly
separate chunks of the Internet and among the major four listed above,
not one result was found to be in each of the four result sets! Go to
http://cu.imt.net/~notess/search/to
see his summaries and reviews of the best search engines. There are
also charts and graphs that display the quirks of each engine in an
easy to read format and a useful bibliography.
Numerous library tours and receptions were held
in popular tourist destinations in and around Seattle, such as the Space
Needle, Pacific Science Center, Seattle Art Museum, Pike Place Market,
Boeing Factory and the Microsoft campus.
A reception was held for the SLA Texas Chapter
in the Microsoft Museum where they saw exhibits showing the evolution
of Microsoft as the industry leader in computing and were given tours
of the corporate library by Microsoft library staff. One unique feature
of this library is an impressive "vault" of over 5000 software packages
from Microsoft and its competitors. The Microsoft campus is sprawling
and very picturesque. The Microsoft Corporation sponsored many sessions
and other official events, and it was obvious that SLA was pleased to
have Microsoft involved with the conference.
Plans have already begun for the 89th Annual
Conference, to be held in Indianapolis, IN on June 6-11, 1998. The theme
will be "Leadership, Performance, Excellence: Information Professionals
in the Driver's Seat." Visit the SLA '98 Web site at http://www.sla.org/confmeet/indy.html
for information.
Hackenberg is Coordinator, Reference and Electronic
Services, Science and Engineering Library, University at Buffalo, Buffalo,
NY 14260, (716) 645-2946, <jmh7@acsu.buffalo.edu>.
~~~~~~~~
By Susan Davis, Column Editor with contributions
from Cynthia Clark, Darcy L. Jones, Jill Hackenberg, Linda Smith Griffin,
Linda Dugget and Alison C. Roth
|