As much as I love ALA, I have to admit that I am not a big fan of holding it the first week of January. I fretted too much and too often that it would dampen both my holiday spirit and my ALA spirit. Alas, like Christmas for the Grinch, somehow or other ALA came just the same. So time to get ready.
This year will be my first ALA in six years without a LITA Board meeting. While liberating at first, I’m sure it will feel weird not to spend so much time with my LITA colleagues. Be sure to check out the LITA event schedule.
Of course I will have a little more time to attend some OCLC events and meet with libraries who have signed up for the new Web-scale Management Services. I’m happy to say that in the few short weeks since my year-end update, the number of libraries signed up for WMS has increased to 18 and there are 5 libraries using the services in production. A few of them will be joining me on Sunday to talk about their experience.
Sunday, January 9, 4:00 – 5:30 pm
Hilton San Diego Bayfront, Sapphire Ballroom P
Library Management Services in the Cloud: More Reality than Dream
Join Andrew Pace and early members of the Web-scale Management Services user community as they share their progress to-date and the realized and potential impact to library staff and users.
Library Management Services in the Cloud: More Reality than Dream
Join Andrew Pace and early members of the Web-scale Management Services user community as they share their progress to-date and the realized and potential impact to library staff and users.
To my chagrin, I realize that I am up against Ted Danson, but in my defense, I still have a little bit more hair, I am a librarian, and sometimes you just want to go where everyone knows your acronym.
I also recommend that you catch my colleagues Robin Murray and Kathryn Harnish as they present the larger fruits of some of the underlying work on WMS.
Saturday, January 8, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm
Hilton San Diego Bayfront Hotel, Aqua Room 314
The Power of Data, Technology and Community: the OCLC Platform Strategy
Speakers will discuss how the platform enables OCLC, libraries and other technology and industry partners to work together to meet local and global needs for streamlined workflows, improved decision-making, and ultimately exposing information about collections in new contexts.
The Power of Data, Technology and Community: the OCLC Platform Strategy
Speakers will discuss how the platform enables OCLC, libraries and other technology and industry partners to work together to meet local and global needs for streamlined workflows, improved decision-making, and ultimately exposing information about collections in new contexts.
Robin has a great post that just went up on the OCLC Cooperative blog that talks about some of this from a data perspective.
Of course, these are just two of a long list of OCLC-sponsored events at ALA. There are many more from which to choose!
Happy New Year, everyone. I hope to see a lot of you in San Diego!
