Goodbye Dallas!

On Thursday Steve and I said goodbye to Dallas and made our way back to Kansas. We encountered a grass fire in Oklahoma that looked out of control. It was burning towards the highway. Because of all the smoke the highway was in danger of being closed. It was good that we left Dallas when we did. Plus, Steve got the joy of driving through a thunderstorm around Wichita. But despite all that we made it back safe.

See you all Monday.

P. S. The beds at the Sheraton were wonderful!

Cataloging News

I found out Wednesday that the cataloging rules that were established in 1978 (AACR2) are being rethought. The news rules entitled, RDA, might soon replace the Anglo American Cataloging Rules. The need for a change comes from the rapid advancement of technology and the need to make catalogs more patron friendly and not so intimidating. Also as the world becomes more interconnected it is felt that the current rules are too Western centric. I will have to look at this more.

One session detailed how we could integrate barcodes into a bibliographic report using special fonts. This would allow us to print off a list of books and then scan the item IDs instead of typing them. If this works for us it would be especially useful for inventory and database cleanup.

Back to Business

Today I learned about the many sources of documentation for Symphony. There are several outlets to find help like the Client Care Portal, customer Wiki and listservs set-up by regional user groups.

One session seemed liked a good idea, but it ended up being for Horizon users which I didn't realize from the session description.

The user groups for Unicorn/Workflows and Horizon will merge during this conference and become COSUGI.

Steve discovered some programming batch files he can use on the Sirsi server.

Sue told me to have Fun

The social that SirsiDynix threw for the conference attendees on Monday night had a Wild West theme. I think the saloon girls liked my mustache.

Oh yeah work. I learned about the new features for cataloging in Symphony. The new features include label printing automatically and being able to change call numbers globally. The other best session of the day was the procedure a library in Massachusetts used to move from the C client to the Java client. We will need to make the same transition soon so I can use their handouts which were great.

Steve says "Hi."

Our Okie Twins

On our way to Texas we stopped in Ardmore, Oklahoma and spotted this restaurant: The Two Frogs Grill. Why are they tied up? We don't know and were afraid to ask. We decided to eat at Denny's instead.

Q&A

As Terry, from Ottawa Library, and I were getting some tea two staff members from SirsiDynix walked by and one asked the other "Are you ready for the barbecue?" They were not talking about ribs and cornbread, they were talking about the Question and Answer period that usually ends the conference. Up on stage were 4 executives from SD and the conference attendees got to ask any questions that were not touched upon at the conference. There were questions about when new functionality would be available, when current functionality would be phased out, when more staff would be hired and the like. Once again Mr. Davidson was vague about why the CEO resigned. "Change is inevitable" he said.

I found out that Kansas City was considered as a site for next year, but KC did not make an effort for the business, whereas Detroit did. In 2009 the conference will be in the fall and the short list of sites includes Orlando.

Let's Share

Today I attended the Reports Sharing session where I learned how to login to the forums and also make suggestions for new report features. There is also a Wiki created by UUGI where users of Sirsi's software can contribute tips. I will have to look at that later.

The Outreach session that I went to was an information session on how to use the Outreach module. During the session the presenter used the Java client which might help Rosa Lee. It looked like it gave the title and author of the items in the interest lists. At least I have a name and e-mail address of someone at Sirsi who might be willing to help.

I also heard real life project management experiences in one session. The presenter actually has a degree in project management. I didn't know that existed. She said that 80% of good project management is good communication. http://www.pmi.org