Greetings from CODI/UUGI Joint Conference 2009



*Joint Conference? Wasn't this supposed to be a report from the CODI conference? Yes, but CODI and UUGI (that's Unicorn Users Group International, CODI's Sirsi-side counterpart) are holding a joint conference this year, in preparation for merging the two groups. The group's name will change, too -- stay tuned!

RPLS has 2 representatives at CODI/UUGI Joint Conference this year: Matt Wilkerson (Decatur Public Library) and Jo from RPLS.

Monday, April 6	After a long travel day on Sunday (didn't think I'd see de-icing trucks at O'Hare in April, but they were out in force!), I arrived at the hotel at about 9:30. I'm staying at a hotel near the conference site, which was less expensive than staying at the conference hotel, even with the CODI discount. The hotel is connected via skywalk to the conference site, and it's an easy three-minute walk. The conference has definitely expanded in focus. There are Horizon sessions, Unicorn sessions, and Symphony sessions. Occasionally, the program will be somewhat unclear as to which product is being covered in a session, so people are moving in and out of sessions as they search for the best information for their needs. We have an Illinois LLSAP contingent here. I saw Pat Boze from LTLS and Jane Plass from DLS this morning. I haven't heard a count yet of how many attendees there are, but it doesn't seem appreciably larger than some of the previous conferences that were CODI alone. Travel budgets were hit hard this year, and many of the familiar faces that I have seen over the years (especially those from overseas) are missing. The morning's presentations started with remarks from UUGI chair Carla Clark and CODI president Colleen Medling. This is the first and last Joint Conference. As of tomorrow, CODI and UUGI will be no more -- the new organization, "COSUGI" will hold all future conferences and will have its first official business meeting here. An interesting note on pronunciation. This morning's speakers pronounced UUGI at least 3 different ways: ugh-ee, oog-ee, and youg-ee. But there seems to be an agreement that COSUGI is co-SOOG-ee, with a hard "g." The keynote speaker was first this year, to set the tone of the conference. Patricia Martin, the author of RenGen: Renaissance Generation--The Rise of the Cultural Consumer and What it Means to your Business, spoke on the topic "Rise of the RenGen -- Renaissance Generation and What It Means for Libraries." Her theme was that we are poised for a renaissance, and there is a generation that will lead us into this period with a large outpouring of creativity. There will be fusion -- what has value will be retained and fused with the new, and the rest will be shed. For libraries not to be among the things that are shed, they need to empower their users. Users above all want to feel that they are good at things. The users are evolving faster than the institutions (including libraries) around them. They are inner-directed creatives, looking for things that are hackable (can I come in and change it, put my mark on it?). According to Martin, the way for libraries to serve these cultural consumers is to make the library experience participative. The Dewey Decimal System, obstructive procedures for borrower registration, and fines are all examples that Martin cited of instances where libraries rely on outmoded institutional models. Technology will play a large part in the coming renaissance. The difficulty, as posed by one questioner in the audience, is that for many small rural libraries, the infrastructure will not support these changes. How do you facilitate an interactive experience with your customer when you have limited connectivity and bandwidth? Following the keynote address was a presentation by key SirsiDynix executives, beginning with a general introduction and update. There are 72 SirsiDynix employees at the conference, and they all walked down the aisles of the main session, dressed in black shirts. Some of them were mentioned for service anniversaries. Mary Schmidt, who has been so helpful to us with the Serials Module, is marking 10 years with the company. I'll find her before I leave and congratulate her in person. Talin Bingham, chief technology officer, talked about innovative projects that the company is developing. They have four prototype mobile applications (they run on an iPhone). One of these apps is BLU, which is used for finding a local library, searching for material in the OPAC, browsing the library website, getting a map to the library, placing holds, getting recommended reading, and paying fines with PayPal. Talin also spoke of a product where one user interface brings multiple data sources together in a single search environment. RPLS and Illinois are already participating in a similar project, with the pilot of WorldCat Local (which Pat Boze from LTLS will be demonstrating in a future session). Matt Hawkins, chief operating officer, gave an array of numbers: 11.2 -- the average tenure in years of the operations employees at SirsiDynix 67,500 -- the number of cases handled by Client Care (SirsiDynix tech support) in 2008 11,000 -- the number of certified solutions in the SirsiDynix knowledge base, which we at RPLS can search to help you find answers to your questions about Horizon over 58 million -- the number of volumes that were imported into SirsiDynix systems in 2008 22,250 -- the number of participants receiving SirsiDynix training in 2008 (web based, instructor led, or onsite) Terry Jarnagin, vice-president of Client Care, talked about a new support portal that will be previewed here at the conference and will be live to customers soon. I am excited to see this, since we and many other Horizon users have had issues with the old support portal. The better the portal, the better we can serve our libraries with technical information and problem resolution. Berit Nelson, vice-president of product management, spoke about upcoming releases to all the products. Horizon 7.5 will be available this summer. Horizon 7.5.1 is in development (we will probably wait for 7.5.1 for our next upgrade). This is encouraging, since it points to Horizon being a viable product for the foreseeable future. Gary Rautenstrauch, CEO, spoke of the overall financial health and stability of the company, despite difficult economic times. SirsiDynix had over 300 migrations to their newest product, Symphony, in 2008, including four of the largest library systems in the world (Los Angeles County, Toronto Public, Swift Library Consortium in Australia, the National Library of Spain). In the afternoon, I attended a highly technical session on patron records and improving them for use in statistics. Although this session was not designed for Horizon, I gained some useful ideas for our database. Most important is consistency. The presenter pointed out that a single address could be written dozens of ways, and that standardization helps in retrieving data for demographics and targeted programming. He demonstrated some tools that can be very useful for identifying problems and improving patron data. We have a good start on standardized data entry with the RPLS Policy Manual, but there is more that can be done in this area. RPLS staff can do some cleanup at the system level as well. I also spent a considerable amount of time talking to the representatives from ChiliFresh. Their review engine product has been suggested to Technology Committee as a possible enhancement to the LLSAP database, and I wanted to get several questions answered as well as to see a live demonstration. In addition, ChiliFresh is developing what they are calling a "Social Networking platform" to interface with Horizon. The most useful feature of this project seems to be a mechanism whereby patrons can enter what they have read recently and receive recommendations of other titles, as well as links to other patrons with similar reading interests. The Home Services module in Horizon has started this process for homebound patrons; ChiliFresh's product would expand on this theme and make it available to any interested patron (should their library choose to subscribe). It will be something to watch, for those libraries interested in Web 2.0 functionality. My final activity of the day was my annual dinner meeting with a group of SirsiDynix staff. Our service manager, Pam Arnold, does a wonderful job for us, and it's always good to meet with her and with other key SirsiDynix people from sales, service, and operations who are involved with our account. We may be having an on-site visit soon after the April 21 upgrade, which will be a good opportunity for us to make sure everything is working as it should and to ask questions, see new products, and discuss our operation.
Tuesday, April 7	The day started with a meeting of consortia. This group is always diverse, and it was even more so this year. Not only are there many different types of consortia, but this year's group featured consortia using 3 different systems. The discussion was interesting, and the moderator was from an Illinois library (Niles Public, a member of CCS from North Suburban Library System). The second session revolved around cataloging cleanup, particularly as it related to serials. If this presentation is ever posted (some are, for printing by the conference attendees), I would like to bring it back for the Serials Subcommittee. The presenter has created a serials copy group editor that might be useful for the cleanup work we are doing with serials. I stopped in at the very end of Pat Boze's presentation on Illinois WorldCat Local. She seemed to have a good turnout and was fielding questions and comments from the audience when I arrived. Ed Riding, Product Manager for SirsiDynix, gave an interesting update on where Horizon is going in the future. Horizon 7.5 / HIP 3.20 will be released July 22, 2009. Horizon 7.5.1 / HIP 3.21 is very tentatively scheduled for release the second quarter of 2010. These upgrades will be more complicated than previous upgrades, because they will involve extensive replacement of software at the server level. We may have to upgrade the server operating system, and we will definitely have to upgrade the Sybase software that runs the database on the server. In addition, it is recommended that the Sybase client software on staff PCs be upgraded with this release, in addition to the Horizon upgrade. As I noted yesterday, we can take our time on this upgrade and do not have to do it right away. Sybase 12.5 (the version we currently use) will be end-of-life in December, but SirsiDynix will continue to support it for the foreseeable future. The upgrade that we are planning for April 21 will support additional enhanced content, most particularly in the area of AV. What this means, if we decide to purchase additional enhanced content from Bowker, is that we can now have the same images and reviews for AV items that we currently do for books. I stopped by the Bowker booth for further information and also requested a quote from SirsiDynix for the AV enhanced content. Another interesting product that Ed Riding talked about in his presentation was PocketCirc. This device is a hand-held, PDA-like instrument, with a scanner either built in or attached to a port at the top. It can function as an inventory tracker (similar to our now-obsolete units), and it can do online or offline checkout and checkin. It uses a new SIP2 responder (so new that it will replace all existing versions of SIP -- but this is the only product in the SirsiDynix line that currently uses it) to communicate with the database. It can download information via cable or wireless connection. I spent some time in the Ask SirsiDynix room, talking to Keith Oviatt about our ongoing problems in reindexing our database on the staff side. As many of you have reported, keyword searches (particularly General Keyword) tend to stall out and hang on occasion. This happens most often if the words being searched are very common ("book," "American," etc.), and the usual workaround has been to eliminate the common words and re-execute the search. Reindexing should fix this, but we have been unable to keep the reindex process from repeatedly crashing. Keith has been working on this problem for weeks now. We discussed the fact that we are scheduled for an upgrade, and Keith wants to try the 7.4 version of the reindexing software to see if it will be more successful. Stay tuned for future developments. I also caught up with Mary Schmidt and gave her a congratulations card on behalf of RPLS. It turns out that she has been with SirsiDynix for 20 years, not 10 -- the company executive who made the announcement yesterday got it wrong! All the more reason to congratulate Mary for may years of a job well done. Any success we have with Serials we owe to her patient and good-humored problem-solving. Later in the afternoon, I attended a session for "Horizon refugees." The concern of this group is to make sure that there is a continuing voice for the Horizon users in the group. Even though SirsiDynix is concentrating on Symphony as the product of the future, there is a large customer base that remains on Horizon. Many of the people in the room are in the same position as RPLS -- not planning on migrating to a new system for several years. We are fortunate to have an advocate in Weber State University's Chris Hauser, who was the moderator of the "refugees" group and is also the incoming Chair of the COSUGI Board. Jim Wilson of SirsiDynix, who has served for many years as the company's liaison to CODI, was also present. More numbers, courtesy of Jim and Chris: SirsiDynix currently has about 5500 installations of Horizon, representing 14,000 libraries Of the 762 attendees at this conference, 206 of us are on Horizon And the company still supports Dynix Classic, a legacy system that preceded Horizon. We are not in a position where we have to consider migration any time soon. The day ended with the usual business meetings. This time we had separate CODI and UUGI meetings, then came together for the first meeting as COSUGI. The organization will officially incorporate in June. Twitter fans can check out all the tweets from the conference: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23SirsiDynix I will keep on with my un-blog here. I couldn't limit myself to Twitter's 140 characters or less!
Wednesday, April 8	Rumor has it that it's 80 degrees outside here in Dallas. I don't know -- I haven't had my nose out of doors in three days. That's the one disadvantage of skywalks. Today's first session featured Colleen Medling, recent CODI president, from Salt Lake County Library. Colleen is an interesting and entertaining speaker. She shared the floor with Scott Johnson, CEO of ChiliFresh, and they talked about implementing patron interaction and social networking in the HIP OPAC. Salt Lake County has already implemented patron reviews (take a look -- do an advanced search and enter "harry potter" for a keyword). They are working with ChiliFresh on a new product, where patrons can choose to enter lists of books they have read and enjoyed. From that list, they can get suggestions for further reading and be matched with other patrons whose reading tastes are similar. I asked Scott how his product compared to LibraryThing for Libraries (now being distributed by Bowker). He acknowledged similarities, but he believes his new product is better. It will be interesting to see how Colleen and her patrons like it. Renee McGrath from Montana took great notes on this presentation, if you'd like to read them. Look for the April 8 blog entry on "Catalog as Sticky Place." I then went on to John Perry's session on Client Care. John is the manager of Client Care (SirsiDynix's tech support, which answers all of the questions that we can't answer for you!), and I make sure to meet with him and a group of SirsiDynix staff every year. His department is introducing a newly redesigned Client Care website, which seems to be an improvement over the old one. Ever since the company has put tech support for all of their products under one umbrella, the interface to that area has been clunky and difficult to use. We have high hopes for the new website. RPLS LLSAP staff depend on Client Care a great deal, and it is good to have someone like John overseeing the operation. At the exhibits, I stopped by the EnvisionWare booth (to print out some of the handouts and presentations) and said hello to Bill Routt. Some of you may remember Bill from the RFP process, when he was the Dynix sales rep. He still has fond memories of eating chocolate cake at the Feed Store in Springfield. He now works exclusively with EnvisionWare and other third-party products, but I told him if he ever got back into sales, he needed to put in for Illinois again! From there, I went to the LTI booth, where I met Marsha Hunt, who has shepherded us through the authority control process from the beginning. It's nice to put a face to a name, a voice, and an email address. The main afternoon session was a very informative presentation on EZProxy. As some of you may know, we have long wanted to implement a proxy server for remote patron authentication. Your library's patrons would enter their library card barcode and PIN, and they would be able to access your subscription databases from anywhere, through a standard Web browser. The proxy server would authenticate these individuals as being registered patrons of your library, using their records from the Horizon database. EZProxy is an OCLC product, and we have been given a license through the WorldCat Local grant. However, implementation is anything but "EZ," as Doris and I have been finding out. Part of our problem has been an inability to locate good documentation and setup instructions. Thanks to this presentation, I have links to the best places to find those, and a link to a user's listserv that is reported to be very helpful. We need all the help we can get on this project, and I believe I am bringing back some valuable information. The conference closed with a general meeting with SirsiDynix executives, where they answered questions that had been submitted in advance. Nothing really new to report that hadn't already been said. I think most people were ready to call it a day and head for home. I have made my airport shuttle reservations for tomorrow, and I will pack my bags after I post this. I will be back in the office on Monday, should any of you have questions about the conference.

Monday, April 6

After a long travel day on Sunday (didn't think I'd see de-icing trucks at O'Hare in April, but they were out in force!), I arrived at the hotel at about 9:30. I'm staying at a hotel near the conference site, which was less expensive than staying at the conference hotel, even with the CODI discount. The hotel is connected via skywalk to the conference site, and it's an easy three-minute walk.

The conference has definitely expanded in focus. There are Horizon sessions, Unicorn sessions, and Symphony sessions. Occasionally, the program will be somewhat unclear as to which product is being covered in a session, so people are moving in and out of sessions as they search for the best information for their needs.

We have an Illinois LLSAP contingent here. I saw Pat Boze from LTLS and Jane Plass from DLS this morning. I haven't heard a count yet of how many attendees there are, but it doesn't seem appreciably larger than some of the previous conferences that were CODI alone. Travel budgets were hit hard this year, and many of the familiar faces that I have seen over the years (especially those from overseas) are missing.

The morning's presentations started with remarks from UUGI chair Carla Clark and CODI president Colleen Medling. This is the first and last Joint Conference. As of tomorrow, CODI and UUGI will be no more -- the new organization, "COSUGI" will hold all future conferences and will have its first official business meeting here.

An interesting note on pronunciation. This morning's speakers pronounced UUGI at least 3 different ways: ugh-ee, oog-ee, and youg-ee. But there seems to be an agreement that COSUGI is co-SOOG-ee, with a hard "g."

The keynote speaker was first this year, to set the tone of the conference. Patricia Martin, the author of RenGen: Renaissance Generation--The Rise of the Cultural Consumer and What it Means to your Business, spoke on the topic "Rise of the RenGen -- Renaissance Generation and What It Means for Libraries." Her theme was that we are poised for a renaissance, and there is a generation that will lead us into this period with a large outpouring of creativity. There will be fusion -- what has value will be retained and fused with the new, and the rest will be shed. For libraries not to be among the things that are shed, they need to empower their users. Users above all want to feel that they are good at things. The users are evolving faster than the institutions (including libraries) around them. They are inner-directed creatives, looking for things that are hackable (can I come in and change it, put my mark on it?).

According to Martin, the way for libraries to serve these cultural consumers is to make the library experience participative. The Dewey Decimal System, obstructive procedures for borrower registration, and fines are all examples that Martin cited of instances where libraries rely on outmoded institutional models. Technology will play a large part in the coming renaissance. The difficulty, as posed by one questioner in the audience, is that for many small rural libraries, the infrastructure will not support these changes. How do you facilitate an interactive experience with your customer when you have limited connectivity and bandwidth?

Following the keynote address was a presentation by key SirsiDynix executives, beginning with a general introduction and update. There are 72 SirsiDynix employees at the conference, and they all walked down the aisles of the main session, dressed in black shirts. Some of them were mentioned for service anniversaries. Mary Schmidt, who has been so helpful to us with the Serials Module, is marking 10 years with the company. I'll find her before I leave and congratulate her in person.

Talin Bingham, chief technology officer, talked about innovative projects that the company is developing. They have four prototype mobile applications (they run on an iPhone). One of these apps is BLU, which is used for finding a local library, searching for material in the OPAC, browsing the library website, getting a map to the library, placing holds, getting recommended reading, and paying fines with PayPal.

Talin also spoke of a product where one user interface brings multiple data sources together in a single search environment. RPLS and Illinois are already participating in a similar project, with the pilot of WorldCat Local (which Pat Boze from LTLS will be demonstrating in a future session).

Matt Hawkins, chief operating officer, gave an array of numbers:

11.2 -- the average tenure in years of the operations employees at SirsiDynix
67,500 -- the number of cases handled by Client Care (SirsiDynix tech support) in 2008
11,000 -- the number of certified solutions in the SirsiDynix knowledge base, which we at RPLS can search to help you find answers to your questions about Horizon
over 58 million -- the number of volumes that were imported into SirsiDynix systems in 2008
22,250 -- the number of participants receiving SirsiDynix training in 2008 (web based, instructor led, or onsite)

Terry Jarnagin, vice-president of Client Care, talked about a new support portal that will be previewed here at the conference and will be live to customers soon. I am excited to see this, since we and many other Horizon users have had issues with the old support portal. The better the portal, the better we can serve our libraries with technical information and problem resolution.

Berit Nelson, vice-president of product management, spoke about upcoming releases to all the products. Horizon 7.5 will be available this summer. Horizon 7.5.1 is in development (we will probably wait for 7.5.1 for our next upgrade). This is encouraging, since it points to Horizon being a viable product for the foreseeable future.

Gary Rautenstrauch, CEO, spoke of the overall financial health and stability of the company, despite difficult economic times. SirsiDynix had over 300 migrations to their newest product, Symphony, in 2008, including four of the largest library systems in the world (Los Angeles County, Toronto Public, Swift Library Consortium in Australia, the National Library of Spain).

In the afternoon, I attended a highly technical session on patron records and improving them for use in statistics. Although this session was not designed for Horizon, I gained some useful ideas for our database. Most important is consistency. The presenter pointed out that a single address could be written dozens of ways, and that standardization helps in retrieving data for demographics and targeted programming. He demonstrated some tools that can be very useful for identifying problems and improving patron data. We have a good start on standardized data entry with the RPLS Policy Manual, but there is more that can be done in this area. RPLS staff can do some cleanup at the system level as well.

I also spent a considerable amount of time talking to the representatives from ChiliFresh. Their review engine product has been suggested to Technology Committee as a possible enhancement to the LLSAP database, and I wanted to get several questions answered as well as to see a live demonstration. In addition, ChiliFresh is developing what they are calling a "Social Networking platform" to interface with Horizon. The most useful feature of this project seems to be a mechanism whereby patrons can enter what they have read recently and receive recommendations of other titles, as well as links to other patrons with similar reading interests. The Home Services module in Horizon has started this process for homebound patrons; ChiliFresh's product would expand on this theme and make it available to any interested patron (should their library choose to subscribe). It will be something to watch, for those libraries interested in Web 2.0 functionality.

My final activity of the day was my annual dinner meeting with a group of SirsiDynix staff. Our service manager, Pam Arnold, does a wonderful job for us, and it's always good to meet with her and with other key SirsiDynix people from sales, service, and operations who are involved with our account. We may be having an on-site visit soon after the April 21 upgrade, which will be a good opportunity for us to make sure everything is working as it should and to ask questions, see new products, and discuss our operation.

Tuesday, April 7

The day started with a meeting of consortia. This group is always diverse, and it was even more so this year. Not only are there many different types of consortia, but this year's group featured consortia using 3 different systems. The discussion was interesting, and the moderator was from an Illinois library (Niles Public, a member of CCS from North Suburban Library System).

The second session revolved around cataloging cleanup, particularly as it related to serials. If this presentation is ever posted (some are, for printing by the conference attendees), I would like to bring it back for the Serials Subcommittee. The presenter has created a serials copy group editor that might be useful for the cleanup work we are doing with serials.

I stopped in at the very end of Pat Boze's presentation on Illinois WorldCat Local. She seemed to have a good turnout and was fielding questions and comments from the audience when I arrived.

Ed Riding, Product Manager for SirsiDynix, gave an interesting update on where Horizon is going in the future. Horizon 7.5 / HIP 3.20 will be released July 22, 2009. Horizon 7.5.1 / HIP 3.21 is very tentatively scheduled for release the second quarter of 2010. These upgrades will be more complicated than previous upgrades, because they will involve extensive replacement of software at the server level. We may have to upgrade the server operating system, and we will definitely have to upgrade the Sybase software that runs the database on the server. In addition, it is recommended that the Sybase client software on staff PCs be upgraded with this release, in addition to the Horizon upgrade.

As I noted yesterday, we can take our time on this upgrade and do not have to do it right away. Sybase 12.5 (the version we currently use) will be end-of-life in December, but SirsiDynix will continue to support it for the foreseeable future.

The upgrade that we are planning for April 21 will support additional enhanced content, most particularly in the area of AV. What this means, if we decide to purchase additional enhanced content from Bowker, is that we can now have the same images and reviews for AV items that we currently do for books. I stopped by the Bowker booth for further information and also requested a quote from SirsiDynix for the AV enhanced content.

Another interesting product that Ed Riding talked about in his presentation was PocketCirc. This device is a hand-held, PDA-like instrument, with a scanner either built in or attached to a port at the top. It can function as an inventory tracker (similar to our now-obsolete units), and it can do online or offline checkout and checkin. It uses a new SIP2 responder (so new that it will replace all existing versions of SIP -- but this is the only product in the SirsiDynix line that currently uses it) to communicate with the database. It can download information via cable or wireless connection.

I spent some time in the Ask SirsiDynix room, talking to Keith Oviatt about our ongoing problems in reindexing our database on the staff side. As many of you have reported, keyword searches (particularly General Keyword) tend to stall out and hang on occasion. This happens most often if the words being searched are very common ("book," "American," etc.), and the usual workaround has been to eliminate the common words and re-execute the search. Reindexing should fix this, but we have been unable to keep the reindex process from repeatedly crashing. Keith has been working on this problem for weeks now. We discussed the fact that we are scheduled for an upgrade, and Keith wants to try the 7.4 version of the reindexing software to see if it will be more successful. Stay tuned for future developments.

I also caught up with Mary Schmidt and gave her a congratulations card on behalf of RPLS. It turns out that she has been with SirsiDynix for 20 years, not 10 -- the company executive who made the announcement yesterday got it wrong! All the more reason to congratulate Mary for may years of a job well done. Any success we have with Serials we owe to her patient and good-humored problem-solving.

Later in the afternoon, I attended a session for "Horizon refugees." The concern of this group is to make sure that there is a continuing voice for the Horizon users in the group. Even though SirsiDynix is concentrating on Symphony as the product of the future, there is a large customer base that remains on Horizon. Many of the people in the room are in the same position as RPLS -- not planning on migrating to a new system for several years. We are fortunate to have an advocate in Weber State University's Chris Hauser, who was the moderator of the "refugees" group and is also the incoming Chair of the COSUGI Board. Jim Wilson of SirsiDynix, who has served for many years as the company's liaison to CODI, was also present.

More numbers, courtesy of Jim and Chris:

SirsiDynix currently has about 5500 installations of Horizon, representing 14,000 libraries
Of the 762 attendees at this conference, 206 of us are on Horizon

And the company still supports Dynix Classic, a legacy system that preceded Horizon. We are not in a position where we have to consider migration any time soon.

The day ended with the usual business meetings. This time we had separate CODI and UUGI meetings, then came together for the first meeting as COSUGI. The organization will officially incorporate in June.

Twitter fans can check out all the tweets from the conference: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23SirsiDynix

I will keep on with my un-blog here. I couldn't limit myself to Twitter's 140 characters or less!

Wednesday, April 8

Rumor has it that it's 80 degrees outside here in Dallas. I don't know -- I haven't had my nose out of doors in three days. That's the one disadvantage of skywalks.

Today's first session featured Colleen Medling, recent CODI president, from Salt Lake County Library. Colleen is an interesting and entertaining speaker. She shared the floor with Scott Johnson, CEO of ChiliFresh, and they talked about implementing patron interaction and social networking in the HIP OPAC. Salt Lake County has already implemented patron reviews (take a look -- do an advanced search and enter "harry potter" for a keyword). They are working with ChiliFresh on a new product, where patrons can choose to enter lists of books they have read and enjoyed. From that list, they can get suggestions for further reading and be matched with other patrons whose reading tastes are similar. I asked Scott how his product compared to LibraryThing for Libraries (now being distributed by Bowker). He acknowledged similarities, but he believes his new product is better. It will be interesting to see how Colleen and her patrons like it.

Renee McGrath from Montana took great notes on this presentation, if you'd like to read them. Look for the April 8 blog entry on "Catalog as Sticky Place."

I then went on to John Perry's session on Client Care. John is the manager of Client Care (SirsiDynix's tech support, which answers all of the questions that we can't answer for you!), and I make sure to meet with him and a group of SirsiDynix staff every year. His department is introducing a newly redesigned Client Care website, which seems to be an improvement over the old one. Ever since the company has put tech support for all of their products under one umbrella, the interface to that area has been clunky and difficult to use. We have high hopes for the new website. RPLS LLSAP staff depend on Client Care a great deal, and it is good to have someone like John overseeing the operation.

At the exhibits, I stopped by the EnvisionWare booth (to print out some of the handouts and presentations) and said hello to Bill Routt. Some of you may remember Bill from the RFP process, when he was the Dynix sales rep. He still has fond memories of eating chocolate cake at the Feed Store in Springfield. He now works exclusively with EnvisionWare and other third-party products, but I told him if he ever got back into sales, he needed to put in for Illinois again!

From there, I went to the LTI booth, where I met Marsha Hunt, who has shepherded us through the authority control process from the beginning. It's nice to put a face to a name, a voice, and an email address.

The main afternoon session was a very informative presentation on EZProxy. As some of you may know, we have long wanted to implement a proxy server for remote patron authentication. Your library's patrons would enter their library card barcode and PIN, and they would be able to access your subscription databases from anywhere, through a standard Web browser. The proxy server would authenticate these individuals as being registered patrons of your library, using their records from the Horizon database.

EZProxy is an OCLC product, and we have been given a license through the WorldCat Local grant. However, implementation is anything but "EZ," as Doris and I have been finding out. Part of our problem has been an inability to locate good documentation and setup instructions. Thanks to this presentation, I have links to the best places to find those, and a link to a user's listserv that is reported to be very helpful. We need all the help we can get on this project, and I believe I am bringing back some valuable information.

The conference closed with a general meeting with SirsiDynix executives, where they answered questions that had been submitted in advance. Nothing really new to report that hadn't already been said. I think most people were ready to call it a day and head for home.

I have made my airport shuttle reservations for tomorrow, and I will pack my bags after I post this. I will be back in the office on Monday, should any of you have questions about the conference.