13 is a lucky number

Again this year I attended a workshop presented by Pat Wagner from Denver. She and her husband run Pattern Research. She is a mediator for conflict resolution. She listened to stories from the audience and offered advice on how to resolve those conflicts.

Now for the much anticipated workshop. Even though there was two sessions, it was standing room only at each. The workshop was about 13 digit ISBNs and how they will affect Workflows. Currently the plan is that both 10 digit and 13 digit ISBNs will be assigned to books during 2006 and then all 10 digit ISBNs will cease on January 1, 2007. The presenter, Mark Witteman from SirsiDynix, gave us an introduction to what each of the numbers in an ISBN means and how the numbers will transfer to the new 13. This change will affect the following areas: title control numbers, searching and bibload match points. Since we use OCLC numbers as title control numbers first with ISBN as the second choice, this should not affect us to much. Searching will be altered because when we upgrade to the next version of Workflows - GL3.1 - all 10 digit ISBNs will be converted to 13s automatically. So, when a patron clicks on a title on the Your Information Store website, the title will not be found in our catalog because it is looking for the original 10 instead of the newly converted 13. As for the bibload issue, again we use OCLC numbers as the main match point, so this will not be as big an issue. In our catalog MARC records the 10 digit ISBN will be in the 020 tag and the 13 will be in the 024 tag with a first delimiter of 3. I will need to make sure that the 024 is searchable in Workflows. Go to www.isbn.org to read more information about ISBNs.

During the afternoon break they drew names for the drawings that the exhibitors had and I won a DVD set, an inspirational book and a non-fiction audio book for the library Yeah!

Has he left the building?

Rachel Singer Gordon, webmaster for LISjobs.com, wrote a book called The Accidental Systems Librarian. Her work experience was much like mine. She started a job working in reference and agreed to be responsible for the technology at her library without the formal training. She eventually learned that a lot of librarians take on these responsibilities and after interviews with them, her book came about. Emporia Public owns her book and I was looking forward to hearing her talk.

I also attended a talk about how the LOUIS consortium of libraries in Louisiana handled Hurricane Katrina and Rita. Especially hard hit was the University of New Orleans which is on Lake Pontchartrain. Two-Thirds of their campus was damaged by water. Even though the library was on higher ground and escaped a lot of the damage, the university's infrastructure was down. Before Katrina there was 47 employees at the library. Afterwards 46 were displaced outside of Louisiana, 68% were homeless and 11 decided not to return to work for various reasons. The presenters also offered some advice on what a library could do better to handle emergencies. Much of their disaster plans were based on recovering data and books, not on how to communicate with staff without phones and Internet access.

We have a new account manager - Laurie Chase. I met with her and she asked if we had considered moving to IBistro. IBistro is an upgrade to WebCat that closely resembles an online book store like Amazon or Barnes & Noble. I told her we had thought about it at one time but there were issues with the cost and we were still getting used to having an online catalog. I guess we can discuss it again.

At the exhibitor booths I came across Overdrive which is a company that provides access to downloadable audiobooks. Our own State Library is setting up an account with this company to provide titles.

Two events that stirred up the day: a conference attendee fell asleep and snored in one of the sessions and I saw Elvis complete with gold and white jumpsuit in the men's room.

The Better to See You With

This morning was about numbers. At the morning session I learned that over 910 attendees have registered and there will be 30 exhibitors. The CEO of SirsiDynix, Patrick Sommers, shared that there are 7,000 + independent libraries or consortia worldwide who are using either Workflows or Horizon products. SirsiDynix has 650 employees total. He also mentioned that last year there was 1.1 billion library visits in the United States which is 9 times the number attending sporting events. Just at this conference there are 100 breakout sessions for attendees to choose from.

Emporia Public Library uses the Unicorn Workflows software which is produced by the SirsiDynix corporation. Any library who uses this software can join the Unicorn User's Group International or UUGI. With conference registration we pay $25 in fees for this organization. It was proposed today that the fees increase to $100 and be paid yearly whether one attends the conference or not. This fee would be paid per production server license. So a consortium of 20 libraries with only one Unicorn server would pay $100 and so would Emporia Public. One advantage would be that UUGI votes are based on production severs. So Emporia Public would have one vote and the consortium of 20 would have one vote also.

I attended a session about exporting MARC records from Title Source into Sirsi / Unicorn so that we can have some titles show up as On-Order and would be able to take holds. Once the item arrives and is cataloged a full record from OCLC can overlay the Title Source record. This might be useful for very popular titles. The presenter said this can also be used with Midwest Tape. I am not sure though if there is much demand for holds on on-order DVDs.

There are some faces that I recognize from last year and many new ones!

Lessons from the Sea

Of the speakers that I heard this afternoon the one that impressed me the most was the one that was not SirsiDynix related. Each year Sirsi has a featured author speaker. This year it was Linda Greenlaw. A fisherman at heart she has since become a writer and "adventure" speaker. She was part of the book The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger. She told about her rise from cook to deck hand to captain; perhaps the only female ever to captain a swordfishing boat.

When she wrote her first book, called The Hungry Ocean, she had to enter the world of New York publishing which was a culture shock to her. Her publicist asked what type of makeup she used and she replied with "Chapstick."

She is a no-nonsense person who loves fishing, her home town of Isle Au Haut (off the coast of Maine) and her family. She shared her lessons of life that she learned at sea but could be applied to anyone. Some of those lessons are: education is never wasted, opportunity knocks - but it is up to you to open the door, mutual respect, work hard and have your own measure of success. Her best advice came from her mother: You can be anything you want to be. Greenlaw said that her mother probably didn't have a life of lobster fishing in mind for her daughter, but she is happy getting familiar with the new careers of writer and speaker.

She also has written The Lobster Chronicles. After the talk she signed copies of her book.

Greetings from Music City!

I met up with the staff from Ottawa library and made it to KCI in the rain just fine. Our flight left on time and we arrived in Nashville without any trouble. We took a special Gaylord Opryland Shuttle to the hotel and checked into our rooms. The hotel / resort is huge! It has a man-made river running through it. The central part of the hotel (with the river) is a giant botanical garden under a glass roof.

After settling in we walked down to where the conference will be and grab our registration packets and name tags. We had tickets to the 6:30 program at the Grand Ole Opry so we strolled across the street and ate catfish at the Nashville Palace before the show.

The show at the Opry was 2 1/2 hours and being broadcast live on the radio. There were many singers but the ones I recognized were: Vince Gill, Porter Wagoner, Connie Smith and Little Jimmy Dickens. After the show we walked back to hotel in the crisp, cool night.