Library Camp East post-mortem
I know this post is well overdue, but the last few weeks have kept me extremely busy. Library Camp East was amazing; fun, thought-provoking, and inspiring. John Blyberg and Alan Kirk Gray (as well as the rest of the Darien Library Staff) did a heck of a job preparing for all of us descending into the auditorium. They even gave me a cool mug that my co-workers envy. I also finally got to meet Dan Chudnov and Casey Bisson, whose blogs I've followed for a while now. Jessamyn West and John posted nearly exhaustive lists of posts by LCE attendees for reference. (For what it's worth, Jessamyn also tips her hat to ArchivesBlogs and apologizes for us not meeting at two conferences so far. I share the blame!)
Fortunately for my readers, I have precious little to add in terms of comments (although I tagged some Library Camp-related links on Unalog). I actually was called into service to lead a session by accident (I happened to be scratching my nose), but I was happy enough to moderate the discussion on how techies and non-techies can learn to talk to each other. The discussion was spirited to say the least, and it seems like some good networking occured as a consequence. The OPAC discussion was pretty interesting as well.
At the end of the day, a number of us -- Michael Golrick, Janie Hermann and Peter Bromberg of Library Garden, and Kim Gabert -- talked over beer and appetizers. Much of the discussion centered around ALA, which made me realize I was pretty clueless in regards to its organization. I left early to catch the Metro North train back to Grand Central, where I met up with Julia as we started to make our way home to Washington.
Once again, thanks to everybody! I'd like to see a Mid-Atlantic Library Camp; I just wish I had more resources to make it a reality.
December 22nd, 2006 at 4:02 pm
[...] Dan already emphasized that much of the discussion ignores existing collaborative workflows and that catalogers around the world are busting their humps to create this data. Listening to the Talis podcast with Tim Spalding of LibraryThing and Ross Singer (among others), I was a little surprised that Tim said “Librarians are very restricted in terms of what they can do with [bibliographic data].” I can really respect that people want to experiment with bibliographic data to improve access to information or just for the fun of hacking through it, but the assumption that librarians are very restricted in what they do with it seems a little misguided. I guess some are, but my gut reaction to this comment is something that I ended up leading a discussion about at Library Camp East last September: the divide between “techies” and “librarians,” something that’s often a false dichotomy yet often very real. I get this feeling often when I read threads on the NGC4LIB list, too. Maybe it’s not quite the same divide, but I feel that those who want to play with our catalog data aren’t talking to the catalogers. I realize some are expressing fear, uncertainty and doubt that anyone can mark up the sacred cow of an OPAC, but for every one of them I feel like there are several of us that are willing to play along and even help do the work. In nearly any situation, I’d be glad to provide a dump of a catalog to whomever wanted it as long as they gave me at least a vague idea of what they wanted to do with it. Technorati Tags: Casey Bisson, Cataloging, MARC, OPAC, Open Data, Talis, WPopac [...]