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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 46 | August 2000
Chicago hosts colossal conference
Jasmine Cameron represented the National Library of Australia at the American Library Association Conference in Chicago in early July. The worlds largest library conference, it was attended by 22,000 librarians and library administrators. Jasmine went to a variety of meetings to cover the Librarys specific interests. Many were related to new developments with electronic publications and services and it was a great opportunity to meet people face to face in one location.
Among the many activities she attended was an OCLC lunch for about a thousand librarians, where the video The Wizard of the Web about OCLCs new CORC (Cooperative Online Resource Catalogue) service was shown. OCLC President, Jay Jordan spoke about plans to provide extra user services via OCLC.
The Library has contributed a number of Australian catalogue records to CORC as it promotes international resource sharing. At a CORC Users Meeting, Gary Houk, Vice-President, OCLC Services outlined future directions including an expansion of the CORC service. The aim of the CORC project is to provide easier access to electronic resources by providing both cataloguing records and the ability to generate automated webliographies.
Another point of interest was the RLG Preserve Meeting. The Library is a member of this group because of its focus on digital preservation. Jasmine heard Robyn Dale discuss the Cultural Materials Initiative. The project is to provide integrated web-based access to electronic representations of primary, rare and unique library materials. Jasmine reported that RLG has published a series of six practical guides relating to digitisation. These guides are now available gratis on the RLG web site.
Her final conclusion is that this colossus of a library conference should be attended at least once in every librarians career!
Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: gateways@nla.gov.au