Chair: Paula Hardin
Members present: Judy Silverman, Sheryl Whilhite Garcia, Lorna Corbetta-Noyes
(substituting for Carole Goldsmith, the new Executive Board Liaison)
Members absent: Ann Lindell, Amy Lucker (outgoing), Marilyn Czerniejewski,
Judy Dyki, Liz Ginno (incoming)
Additional attendees: Claudia Hill, Margaret Webster, Lucia Chen, Sheila
Fox
The Technology Committee began with and a general recap about where we were on the various activities we decided to implement at last year's meeting. The "arlistech" web site was online for the first time the week previous to the conference. Other communication methods including the initiation of a technology interested listserv through eGroups was implemented but had not gotten much use. It is thought that the use will increase with the fuller implementation of the web site. An ARLIS art libraries web ring was also started but the implementation for other libraries has to be developed with simple instructions as to how to do so. Committee members will be taking on some specific responsibilities for adding content to the web site.
The change of the Board Liaison was announced. Lorna Corbetta-Noyes has been a wonderful liaison and will be missed. We look forward to working with Carole Goldsmith, the new liaison. She told us that every 3 years a new plan is established and this is the year we should do it. The Board wants to know what things we want to do.
Paula Hardin read the mission statement for the Committee in preface to the discussion about the strategic plan goals and objectives. The four themes of the strategic plans were read and discussion took place about our goals and objectives for the next year or two. The four themes are:
This year we will be seeking to establish more relationships with other technology groups as appropriate, such as ALA's LITA. It was stated that ALA has a workstation subcommittee through LITA. Claudia Hill volunteered to pursue this at the upcoming ALA conference.
One area that will be developed for the arlistech web site is some "peer reviewed" technology-oriented sites, similar to annotated bibliographies, or editorial reviewed journals. Other venues for communicating tech information will be pursued as well. Judy Dyki wants to do an update to the data previously collected on major vendors for collection management and integrated library software using the web site. Judy Silverman suggested a technical survey of what technology was in use on catalogers' workstations. Margaret Webster made the point that updating should be done on a regular basis and that this is time sensitive information with the speed of technological change. It was also stated that this information was very useful for accreditation. Technology staffing, maintenance of equipment, software being used were other areas data could be gathered. Material must be date stamped and contain contact information. It was suggested that the criteria for populating the data with starter information could be the equipment people had purchased in the current calendar year. It would also be useful to describe how the equipment is going to be used, such as for "imaging" or other activities.
Lorna mentioned that we can contribute by guest writing an Update column, or possibly do links from the online version. Margaret Webster suggested something like Michael Ester did in terms of imaging. The point was made that the Update is for news, not articles, so instead we could possibly guest edit an issue of Art Documentation where it is more likely to get a writer to submit something. Sheryl Garcia agreed to investigate this possibility.
Discussion about what the Committee could do for the next conference that would foster professional development seemed to point towards a workshop as the best venue. Judy Dyki suggested web design as a topic. Judy Silverman suggested an XML workshop and many people agreed that it would be a good topic, especially if it could be done for a small fee instead of the high price of last year's cancelled session related to it (and EAD). One of the problems was that space must be rented if an institution doesn't donate the space with 20 computers or so. However, since the conference will be in Los Angeles it is more likely that space and computers would be available. She agreed to take the lead to pull something together for a proposal. It was suggested that perhaps RLG could help facilitate and possibly defray some costs.
The meeting concluded with very positive feelings about what we can
do to help
ARLIS members access technology information in a "one-stop shopping"
approach to vendor information that we all need from time to time without
always having to post a query on the listserv.