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!