«« Home
Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS);
|
|
"While the librarians talked about increasing access, the museums people talked about controlling access; I usually think of all of these institutions as having similar goals, but that's not always the case." |
SI students Phil Edwards and Kristin Hitchcock split their ASB week between the NEA library, an OCLC-sponsored pre-conference (Copyright in a Digital Age), and the annual IMLS-sponsored conference (Web-Wise 2003).
At the NEA library the students joined a current project to convert the physical card catalog to an online catalog for use on the NEA intranet. They searched for current NEA library materials in the Library of Congress (LC) online catalog and saved the LC records in MARC format. "Downloading MARC records was by no means glamorous, but it was enlightening to see the reality of working as a solo librarian in a library without a real budget."
On Wednesday Phil and Kristin provided logistical support to the OCLC Copyright in a Digital Age pre-conference event. In addition to greeting workshop attendees and "playing Donahue" with a microphone during the sessions, they both also got to sit in on some of the panels and talks and participate in the discussions.
The culminating event of their week was the IMLS Web-Wise 2003 Conference, which took place Thursday and Friday. Again, Phil and Kristin balanced registrations and information desk duties with attendance at many of the conference sessions. One student said of the experience, "I was familiar with many of the speakers' publications and projects, and being able to ask questions of these influential figures was valuable. I consider exposure to people, projects, and research in this field as vital components of my professional development."