...
2CUL-related activities at the ALA Annual meeting in Chicago last month included a presentation by Bob Wolven at the ALCTS Heads of Cataloging Interest Group. In his talk, Bob gave an administrator's view of the challenges we face in assessing cataloging from a cross-institutional perspective – specifically, in the context of 2CUL. He stressed how the decisions we make regarding cataloging and other technical services operations will often reflect how we weigh common, but competing, underlying values. Bob's presentation is available on the TSI wiki from the 2CUL Articles & Presentations pagehttps://confluence.cornell.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=192447651 – see the most recent entry in the chronologically arranged list. In a different kind of meeting, several of the TSI steering committee and working group members who attended ALA got together for a "2CUL TSI Happy Hour" in Chicago's historic Palmer House lobby bar. Former Director of LTS Cataloging & Metadata Services at Cornell, Glen Wiley, joined us to catch up on 2CUL news (and gossip). Glen now holds a similar position (without the 2CUL component) at the University of Miami Libraries.
Also at ALA, a subset of the 2CUL Alma Negotiating Team (Xin Li, Bob Wolven, Kate Harcourt, and Jim LeBlanc) met with representatives from Ex Libris to continue work on a draft contract for joint implementation of an Alma LMS. These negotiations are moving slowly, but surely forward. Of particular note is our concern to be able to test Alma more fully before we commit to implementing what is a conceptually slick, but not yet fully functional system (at least in our minds). Ex Libris understands this concern and we are working towards an implementation plan that will allow for some kind of "pre-testing." For those interested in what development partners and early adopter library staff are saying about Alma, there is an unmoderated Alma discussion list (ALMA-L) to which Ex Libris customers may subscribe – see the ELUNA Alma E-Mail Email Lists page for more details (thanks to Columbia's Mark Wilson for this information).
...