Ex Libris Mid-Atlantic 2009
On November 5 and 6, 2009 Binghamton University Libraries hosted the annual Ex Libris Mid-Atlantic (EMA) Conference at the Binghamton University Downtown Center. This was the first time I was the local host for any conference and it was a quite learning experience. While their were a few bumps in the road, I felt, and the evaluations showed, that it was a very successful conference. We ended up having a total of 51 attendees, which I thought was a nice number for this conference considering it was a new concept to Aleph sites. EMA started out as a Regional User Group for Voyager, a product of Endeavor. When Ex Libris and Endeavor merged, it became the Ex Libris Mid-Atlantic user group. Although last year their were a few Aleph sessions, this was really the first meeting that fully embraced the merger. Hopefully as more Aleph sites become aware of EMA, the attendance will continue to increase.
There were 14 breakout sessions, one plenary, lightning talks, round-tables, and two sessions by Ex Libris. All of the sessions I went to were well done and I felt I either learned something or got some ideas from them. For example, I saw a demo from one library that showed which of their iPods were checked out and when they were do. While we don’t circulate iPods, we do circulate laptop computers and I think a Web page that lists this information may be a great idea.
I enjoyed seeing the plenary talk, User Research at the University of Rochester’s River Campus Libraries: Using an Anthropological Approach to Build a Better Catalog by Nora Dimmock of the University of Rochester River Campus Libraries. I think more libraries ought to invest in this kind of research. I really like the idea of having an Anthropologist on staff. While only larger academic libraries could probably afford to have a full time anthropologist, I do think libraries could do more of this. Maybe this is an opportunity to work with the Anthropology department on campus? Maybe when hiring a subject librarian in this area, you look for one that has an advanced anthropology degree and make 1/2 of their responsibilities to do this type of research?
The lightning talks were new to EMA and were well received, but I think they probably should not have been the last thing on the schedule. Maybe a second plenary talk would have fit the bill so everyone would hang around. Also new to EMA was general library sessions. These were also extremely popular and people suggested that we continue to do this and maybe even expand them. I agree with that, except we do have to be careful that we remember we are the Ex Libris Mid-Atlantic conference and still have to keep Ex Libris products as the core of the conference. This is were it would have been nice to have a few more sessions for the non-ILS products. While we did have a Metalib and two SFX sessions, we didn’t have any sessions on any of the other non-ILS products. Hopefully EMA can attract more presentations in the non-ILS arena next year.
As I mentioned, putting on the conference itself was a learning experience. Unfortunately Binghamton University does not offer “one-stop shopping” for on-campus people who want to put on a conference. This meant searching for and trying to figure out who was responsible for what. While this proved to be a challenge, I must say that once I figured out who was the correct person for a particular thing, they all were extremely helpful and a pleasure to work with. And, now that I know who to deal with, if I ever host another conference I’ll be in good shape.
The conference presentations will be posted to ELUNA’s documents repository in the next few days, so look for them there.
Also, kudos to Dillinger’s for hosting the Thursday-night reception. Everyone who showed up had a great time.