The Library and Information Technology Association (LITA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), held its Sixth National Forum in Norfolk, Virginia on October 11-14, 2001. The LITA National Forum is a three-day educational event that provides guidance and continuing education on current and future technologies for decision makers and practitioners in libraries and information organizations. The Forum theme this year was "Putting Technology into Practice." The Forum had over forty programs in six concurrent programs, three preconferences and three keynote sessions. The topics included:

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electronic books and journals;
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Web application design and databases;
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wireless technologies;
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open source software; and
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standards, markup and metadata.

The Forum report contains a few of the program highlights. A full listing of the programs including the papers and presentations are available on the LITA Web site at: www.lita.org/

The Forum opened with three preconferences. The following is a summary of two of the three preconferences.

How are library buildings changing and adapting to accommodate both the face-to-face and virtual services that are the hallmark of effective libraries today? This question was the cornerstone on which the LITA Preconference, "The Library as a Place in the Digital Age," was built. Four speakers addressed the topic from different perspectives.

Carol Ross Barney, Founder and President of Ross Barney+Jankowski, discussed several projects, with which her architectural firm was involved, focusing on their challenges. She described the Barrington Area Library addition and interior renovation; the Glenside Public Library expansion; the University of Florida, Gainesville, Library West addition and renovation; and the Champaign Public Library new facility. Ross Barney described the unique challenges presented by each project and the ways in which her firm helped the Libraries design spaces that met the challenges. She emphasized the need for those involved in the planning of new or renovated library spaces to be able to clearly articulate their needs and vision.

Andrea Michaels of Michaels Associates Design Consultants, Inc. discussed the need to plan for responsive and innovative spaces. In designing library spaces, Michaels stated that the planning process should include the use of imagination and evaluation in equal yet separate parts. She said librarians can take the lead by creating an atmosphere of respectful inquiry, by initiating creative thinking and facilitating communication as well as becoming informed clients, making decisions promptly and documenting all decisions. Michaels pointed out that all projects, whether large or small, have the same concerns: budget, time, scope, efficiency and effectiveness. With creative planning, even small projects can made a big difference in library spaces. She emphasized the need to create "morphable" spaces, which allow for changing needs in the future. She provided a checklist for success, which included a long-range, imaginative approach; planning for program or incremental change; accurate schematic design plans, complete design development plans; morphable spaces; and appropriate selections for longevity and adaptability.

Sue Stroyan, University Librarian at Illinois Wesleyan University, discussed reinventing the academic library as an active learning space. Before designing their new space, the Library conducted surveys of students and faculty as well as convening focus groups. According to the survey results, the faculty said the Library needed to be at the heart of the intellectual community; the students said it needed to be a high-tech marketplace for information retrieval. Based on the survey and focus group results, the Library developed a list of values, which informed the development of their vision statement as well as their plans for a new library. Stroyan said the focus of the campus is on collaborative pedagogy; this is reflected in the design of the Library. Stroyan shared photographs of the new Library space, which truly fulfills their vision of "Technology within tradition." The Library's new learning/study spaces ranged from carrels wired for electric and network access for solitary researchers to groups study rooms with a full complement technologic equipment.

Cate McNeely, Deputy Chief Librarian of the Richmond Public Library, described the design process for their "public library of the future today." She described five steps to creating a library of the future:

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develop an entrepreneurial spirit of innovation;
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create a highly effective Library of the Future Team;
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adopt relevant current retail trends;
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use automation and design to lower costs and improve services; and
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create new value-added services.

When describing the work of the Library of the Future Team, McNeely emphasized the importance of Team members questioning assumptions about the form and function of the library, of creatively analyzing and solving problems and of taking risks and accepting failures. She noted that we are competing with retailers for our customers' time, energy and support; it is essential that we find ways to creatively meet their needs. She concluded by saying that the future of our libraries is what we make it!

Another Forum preconference was "Handhelds for Library Programs: Providing new levels of service." Joe M. Willliams, Education Services Librarian at the Medical Sciences Library, Texas A&M University, and Laura M. Osegueda, Head of the Veterinary Medical Library, North Carolina State University, presented a thought-provoking workshop on delivering library programs and services via personal digital assistants (PDAs). Williams and Osegueda presented seven case studies of PDA projects currently underway at Texas A&M and North Carolina State, and provided an overview of issues related to PDA applications and library services. Workshop participants were given time for small and large group discussion on their experiences and the challenges involved in developing PDA services in libraries, including such topics as: technical support for hardware and software; strategies for distribution and circulation of PDAs; security, privacy, and confidentiality issues; user instruction and training; and providing core content and resources in a format accessible via PDAs. The workshop gave the participants a broad awareness of current PDA projects is libraries, ideas for new initiatives in library services, and the opportunity to network with colleagues who, though they vary widely in their expertise and experience with PDAs, share an interest in exploring library applications of this increasingly popular technology.

There were three keynote sessions during the Forum. The following is a summary of the keynote sessions.

The opening keynote was presented by David Lankes, from the Information Institute of Syracuse, titled, "Digital Reference: The First Mature Digital Library Service." David began his presentation with a brief summary of the history and current state of digital reference service. He described the various types of software institutions use to provide this service from email to instant messaging and chat, to fully developed commercial products like LSSI and 24/7, and the "grow your own" solutions.

Lankes next moved into the discussion of local software development by stating that the decision to buy or locally build a technology solution for a library service such as digital reference is not solely a decision of the service providers but "a library-wide decision with far reaching implications." He stated that perhaps it might be beneficial for libraries to move from a traditional software acquisition concentration to explore the development of software solutions in-house. Lankes illustrated the "build vs buy" comparison using several charts. These charts reinforced Lankes claim that it is cheaper for a library to build a new software application at the early adoption stage of a technology rather than purchasing the developed software application at the mature adoption of the technology. He summarized the development of open standards and the open source "revolution" to illustrate the change in the software development products. These "open" technologies cost less and are less programmer resource intensive which could make the creation of local software much more feasible than in the past for libraries. He concluded libraries need to be on the technology "cutting edge" to not only better our service to our patrons but to be truly included in the development of the digital libraries of the future. For more information on this presentation see: www.David Lankes.com

Liz Bishoff, Executive Director, Colorado Digitization Program was the speaker for Saturday's Keynote Session. Her presentation was entitled "Digital Dreaming, Digital Promise – Getting Ready, Getting There, Doing it Together". The main focus of her presentation was on the importance of and difficulties related to collaboration, especially on projects involving diverse communities. Bishoff used examples from her work on the Colorado Digitization Project to showcase the benefits and challenges of working on a project that encompasses members from libraries, archives, and museums or "cultural heritage institutions". Some of the benefits she outlined included: establishing links and relationships between related but physically separate resources, drawing in new users to related resources by making the relationships visible, and expanding awareness of its cultural heritage within a community and thereby building support and increasing funding opportunities.

The challenges of collaboration she outlined included the difficulty in creating a level playing field for institutions of widely diverse sizes within one project. Additionally, she noted that libraries, archives and museums within the USA come from very different and separate institutional cultures, unlike in Europe where these institutions are grouped together under the umbrella terminology of "memory institutions" and have more similarities in their institutional perspectives. She noted that museums in particular are just beginning to come to the concept of collaboration, unlike libraries, which have collaboration as an integral part of their institutional culture. Museums, archives and libraries have very different terminology and vocabulary, use different types of metadata and/or taxonomies, and have different organizational structures and approaches to interoperability between diverse technical systems.

Bishoff stressed that even with commonly agreed upon goals, which should be developed by all the diverse participants at the beginning of the project, that this may not be enough for the success of the project. She noted that the project needs the support of the senior management of all the organizations involved, there needs to be strong leadership able to continue to maintain that commitment and there is a need for flexibility on the part of the participants.

Bishoff closed by discussing the opportunities and challenges that could arise from some pending legislation commonly referred to as the "Digital Opportunities Investment Trust" www.digitalpromise.org. She cautioned the audience that should this legislation be passed it would provide expansive opportunities but the community of cultural heritage institutions was not prepared to take advantage of this opportunity.

In the closing keynote presentation "From Isolation to Integration: Major Trends in Digital Libraries" by David Seaman, director of the Digital Library Federation, enumerated several current trends in digital libraries:

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Trend 1. Courseware systems and the library. Commercial and free courseware applications are being more and more widely used; however, there is still a poor interface between library content management systems and courseware systems. Great potential for improvement is present.
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Trend 2. Authentication as an enabling technology. Shibboleth, for example, is an Internet 2 project that offers alternatives to IP authentication, and many major library vendors are interested in or already implementing Shibboleth.
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Trend 3. Digital preservation and archiving. Institutional repository systems such as DSpace, and projects such as the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), are examples of this trend.
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Trend 4. Digital production. Digital production is becoming regularized, transitioning from ad hoc to a continuous process. Examples: Regional digital production centers.
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Trend 5. Service Layers/Deep Sharing. Initiatives such as Open URL, CrossRef, and the Open Archives Initiative are addressing the need for integration of content, especially licensed journals.

In looking beyond isolation to integration, Seaman articulated the need to have content that encourages local re-organization and creation of services, and that permits "beyond browsing and searching" engagement by individual users. Content models at present seem to imagine that users are highly specialized, needing access only to one or two isolated content "silos"; that they have abundant leisure time to search in and out of innumerable Web sites; and that they are passive, wanting only to look at content, but not to gather, re-shape, or analyze the content they find. The present isolation of data resources breeds user frustration, shallow engagement, and passivity. Seaman asserted that users are in fact innovative, and need innovative data, which they can download, morph, annotate, cross-search, and re-purpose – the "music mix" model.

To move forward towards integration, Seaman suggested that content needs to be malleable, available in a multiplicity of formats (e.g. PDA, wireless, ebook, text-to-speech, print-on-demand), and re-shapeable by the consumer. In Seaman's view, the transformation from isolation to integration is the central challenge and opportunity facing us as provider of library services and content, with some enormous payoffs when we get it right.

Concurrent sessions

Metasearching

One of "top tech trends" apparent, through the number of sessions given on the topic, at the Forum was Metasearching and its cousin OpenURL.

Amy Brand, CrossRef, Miriam Blake, Los Alamos National Library, and Jenny Walker, ExLibris gave a presentation entitled "CrossRef: connecting the dots". They reviewed the CrossRef DOI-based system for reference linking, including updates on usage and implementation issues. They covered how DOI and CrossRef relate to the OpenURL standard and how non-standard applications of DOI can cause problems. They noted that the previous fee charged to library affiliates to utilize CrossRef has been eliminated in order further to encourage use of this reference linking mechanism (www.crossref.org/).

Lillian Woon, Naval Postgraduate School and Catherine B. Soehner's, University of California, Santa Cruz presentation was entitled, "In search of … metasearch tools" and "Evaluating cross-database search tools" respectively. Lillian described how metasearch tools work, or should work, went through the inconsistent jargon used in this area, did a market overview of what's available and highlighted some of the issues surrounding metasearching. Catherine discussed the functional areas libraries need to cover when investigating which metasearch product to chose. The handouts included some helpful metasearching tool feature summaries, a selected resource list and a list of selected metasearch tools available in the present market that had been reviewed by the presenters.

"Enhancing access to databases: multiSearch and database relevancy; the integration of two collaborative projects", was the presentation given by Shirley Rodgers and James Jackson Sanborn of North Carolina State University. The two presenters discussed how their two separate projects designed to improve users' access to electronic index and databases were effectively merged into one service designed to help users choose the appropriate resources and do multiple database searching from a single search point. The presentation covered the development of the software tools needed, the decision-making process, the structure of the metadata, user interface design process and outcomes after rollout to production (www.lib.ncsu.edu/eresources/dbfinder.html).

Adam Chandler and Marty Kurth of Cornell University gave a presentation entitled "Using XML and XSLT to transform access to networked electronic resources". They began by giving an overview of Cornell's development of an electronic reference collection, including access to electronic journals and databases, utilizing Endeavor's ENCompass product. The migration of the existing gateway structure to the ENCompass based environment was undertaken to provide enhanced functionality such as searching at the article level, simultaneous searching across multiple databases, reference linking and searching for all e-journal titles. The presenters covered pros and cons of Cornell's decision to "break out of the box" or customize Endeavor's software for local use. They also discussed some of the problems in general with reference linking and OpenURLs and concluded with the results from some transaction log analyses on system performance (http://encompass.library.cornell.edu/home.htm).

Open Archives Initiative (OAI)

Kat Hegdorn, University of Michigan, presented "OAIster: a 'no dead ends' service provider project". She outlined the process used in this grant-funded project to collect and organize metadata harvested through the Open Archives Initiative – Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) from the approximately 200 OIA-PMH providers. She described some of the issues that were discovered: variation in metadata which needed to be normalized for indexing and display purposes, metadata which linked to metadata rather than the digital object and metadata which linked to restricted objects, and duplicate records which are not easily "de-dupped". Future work to be done included more user assessment and encouraging more providers of digital data to become OAI compliant (www.oaister.org/).

Personal Digital Assistants (PDA)

Pam Ryan from the University of Alberta Libraries presented, "Just another format: providing library services to PDA users". She described the University of Alberta Libraries PDA project including the PDA services offered, the collection issues encountered and the needs assessment evaluation that was conducted.

The PDA project at the University is an evolving program. Although there are no formal campus IT department PDA initiatives or support programs the program has been able to offer many services to the patrons. Some of the PDA services include:

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A Web site www.library.ualberta.ca/pdazone/index.cfm
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Training sessions which provide an overview of how to use the device beyond the basic applications to manage information and documents and subject-based sessions.
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Infrared beaming stations which beam the results of database searches directly to their device from a computer terminal.
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Consultations by appointment.
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PDA listserv created for University of Alberta faculty, staff, and students who have an interest in or are using personal digital assistants and is a medium for sharing ideas and expertise, discussing uses and announcing events.
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AvantGo Library News channel which provides current library news.
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Access to e-books, PubMed searching and PDA Books on Expansion/ Multimedia Cards.

Ryan described the needs assessment and service evaluation project for the PDA services. The Libraries used various methods for gathering data including instruction session questionnaires, focus groups, interviews with stakeholders, beaming station and ebook comment cards and web surveys. She summarized the results of the assessment revealing that the PDA users want:

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Ability to download database search results directly to their PDAs.
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Licensed resources they can keep on their PDA.
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Want the library to maintain a web site of current resources, provide training sessions and consultations.
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University-wide support and wireless access.

The next LITA Forum will be held October 7-10, 2004 at the Sheraton Westport Hotel in St. Louis, Missouri. The theme is "10 Years of Connectivity: Libraries, the World Wide Web and the Next Decade." For more information see: www.lita.org

Collette C. Ford (ccford@lib. uci.edu) is the Multimedia Resources Librarian at the University of California, Irvine, California.Heidi Hanson (hh41@umail. umd.edu) is a Systems Librarian, at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland and is a contributing editor to LHTN.Colby Riggs (cmriggs@lib.uci.edu) is a Systems Librarian at the University of California, Irvine, California and is co-editor of LHTN.Elizabeth Stewart Marshall (es254@cornell.edu) is the Assistant Database Quality & Authorities Librarian in the Database Quality & Enrichment Unit at Cornell University, New York, NY and is a contributing editor to LHTN.

LITA National Forum

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