The Catalog Use Committee hosted a Roundtable Discussion at ALA Annual in Anaheim. The group had planned out five distinct discussion topics for the meeting, with a moderator for each topic.
- Finding e-Resources: an idea sparked by this article in the September issue of the Journal of Academic Librarianship, “Usability Testing for E-Resource Discovery: How Students Find and Choose E-Resources Using Websites.” (p. 386 Fry, Amy).
- Catalog Accessibility: Access issues confronted by marginalized user groups such as the elderly, the disabled and children.
- Open Source Systems: Are they the future or a distraction?
- New Technology and the Mobile Landscape: How to make sense of new technology, platforms and devices.
- New Cataloging Standards and Resource Discovery: How will the new Sears subject headings and the RDA (Resource Description and Access) standards impact librarians and library users?
The Roundtable was scheduled for 4:00 PM on Saturday evening, and this may have impacted attendance. In the end, we had a dozen attendees and decided to meet together as one group. The smaller size of the group really helped draw in all of the participants. We had a very lively discussion, touching on each of the topic areas. We were able to devote more time to areas of particular interest to the group. The evaluations from the session were quite positive, with three-quarters rating the “overall experience” as “Very Good” and one quarter rating it as “Excellent.”
A focus for the Catalog Use Committee this coming year will be to look at the impact of Ebooks on the Library Catalog and best practices for displaying information about accessing and downloading on various devices, number of users, check out periods, along with other themes.
Peter Collins, Chair, 2011-2012
Colleen Seale, Chair, 2012-2013