Sunday afternoon - This morning I continued with exhibits. (pcl)

3M displayed an e-Branch Library. Here is a link to more information. http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/library/home/products/eBranch/. Keyboard and screen for searching the library's resources but it doesn't permit surfing the internet - it's exclusively for library related work. It also includes a telephone handset for speaking with a librarian. I'd suggest exploring one of these units for the Marillac Food court, the dormitories or even the new field house.

Gale has announced the appearance of their Decades volumes as an electronic resource. This will be a great addition to our e-resources.

Cambridge University Press now has a 5 volume compilation - Historical Statistics of the United States. http://www.cambridge.org/us/americanhistory/hsus/ It is available in both print and electronic versions. It is a one time purchase.

Endnotes is avaiable online and is included in a subscription to the Web of Science at no additional cost.

Abingdon Press has announced The New Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible. Volume 1 is expected in January of 2007. Volume 5 (the last in the set) is expected for April 2008.

No visit to New Orleans would be complete without mentioning the restaurants. Friday night we ate at Irene's which is an excellent Italian restaurant. Last night we stopped at a local pub and had an oyster po boy. Tonight we're eating at Brennans which re-opened June 8. It was 40 years ago I first ate at Brennens and had my first eggs benedict - returning tonight will be a real joy.

See you all on Tuesday. (pcl)

Saturday evening - 9:40pm - Google made a spectacular appearance at Google. Huge booth in the center of the floor. One of their new services/opportunities is participation in their parsing of information. For example: if I knew/thought STJ students would likely search on a particular topic such as using style guides I could sign up for participation in the parsing service and suggest terms that would appear in the - CONSIDER NARROWING ON THESE TERMS -- APA - MLA - CHICAGO STYLE - TURABIAN ... (and upon clicking on APA) I could then suggest narrowing on such terms as: BOOK -- PERIODICAL -- WEBPAGE (etc).

More information on how this works and how one can participate is available by emailing Google at librarianscoop@google.com (pcl)

I am frequently impressed with the new gadgetry that is introduced.

One new gadget allows the use of any whiteboard surface to be turned into an interactive "white board". One piece of equipment is attached to the white board. A projector attached to a computer is used to project the computer image to the white board. Another piece of equipment, an "electronic pen" is used to run the computer from the image on the white board. Cost: about $500 dollars for the two pieces of equipment. Another piece of equipment from the same company is a remote keypad which allow the same type of control. For more information http://www.mimio.com ($300).

Another piece of equipment ($6,000 ??) permits the viewing of microfilm over the internet to anyone, anywhere in the world. Students in Rome could view any of our microfilm. Person at STJ would place the roll of microfilm on the machine at the appoinment time and "invite" the person in Rome to view the film. The person in Rome would be given access to a virtual control panel and control the movement of the film - forward - backward - zoom in - zoom out - as if on campus. Copyright warnings appear and must be clicked before the process continues. For more information http://www.stimaging.com (pcl)

Saturday Afternoon - 2:15pm - Just finished visiting the poster session area.

One of the sessions dealt with collaboration between writing center and library. The presenter indicates there is reliatively little collaboration. A few of the folk in the writing center regularly used the services of a librarian but most didn't. Person at the poster session indicated that this was one of the weak points in the service. Another weak point was the different work schedules. Writing center people worked a 9-5 M-F session and were reluctant to work outside those parameters.

One handout the presenter made available was a Lib Workshop worksheet. It was a form available in the writing center for making an appointment with a librarian for a library session. (pcl)

Another session was conducted by some folks from San Jose State. They had created some gaming tutorials for introducing library science students to some of the basic concepts and language of library science. They have created this material in open source. I'll share this material with DLIS when I get back. One of their most popular modules has to do with plagiarism - I'll see if we can adapt that more widely for use with the University. (pcl)

My first stop this morning was 3M to pick-up the crab cracker - I'm now ready for New Orleans.

more importantly I had a demonstration of their self-checkout/checkin systems. I'm in a meeting at the moment about RFID tags for automating the process. An immediate concern about RFID tags is that they cost about 50 cents each. Assume we have 1,000,000 items to mark - the cost for the tags alone is $500,000. And that's a cost even before we buy equipment for checking in/out the items.

Using the barcodes we have already simply involves buying the checkout equipment - Approximately $15,000 to $20,000 per checkout machine.

What advantage does RFID offer.

1. Effective inventory control. One University does a complete inventory of their collection 8 times a year.

2. Statistics of in-library use simple.

3. Several items can be checked out at a time. A stack of 3 items was placed on the sensing pad and with no further action each item was charged.

4. A wand ($6,000) can be used to scan the shelf to find items out of order (the wand beeped when it passed an item out of order), items that have not been properly checked-in, inventory the collection.

To scan a shelf takes seconds.

One item that raises the cost of tags is the lack of standards. There is a standards committee that is trying to change this situation. Another possible way to reduce the cost of tags is the inclusion of less information on the tag.

It was recognized that the use of rfid for the patron card present privacy issues. As such a card can be "read" by systems other than the library system - the inclusion of personal information is not desirable at this point

(Charles Livermore - 12:27pm June 24)

Second stop was Lexis/Nexis. One of the sales reps indicated that durable links would be added to items this August. The new interface is expected early next year. Libraries would have an opportunity to check the new interface and deciding when the new interface would be made available to the public.(Livermore 12:32pm June 24)

Hi Ricky - Stopped by the booth and left your name. Someone will get in touch with you to make sure your concerns are addressed. (Charles Livermore 11:04am Sat Jun 24 2006)

James Benson's Reports. I have added brief reports on selected meetings. More will come. To access the report click on show all pages, then clic on Planned Attendance. There you will see a list of selected meetings and brief reports.