Posts Tagged ‘ALA’

ALA Mid-Winter Recap

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Nate Cothran, our head of Authority Control recently returned from the Mid-Winter session of ALA. This is what he had to report:

Backstage kicked off the year right by attending the ALA MidWinter conference held at Boston, MA.  Even the weather cooperated.

On Saturday, January 16 at 7:30am EST, the Authority Control dept hosted a Users Breakfast at the Seaport Hotel, which was just a hop, skip & a jump away from the new conference center itself.  The breakfast was quite good and we had many clients and Backstage personnel co-mingling.  It was also a great opportunity for me, Nate Cothran, to finally meet with a lot of you at last.  Though I have attended ALA in the past, this was my first chance to attend the breakfast.

John Merrill, our CEO out at Bethlehem, PA said a few words about our recent acquisition of the “PresRes” from OCLC, which handles Microfilm duplication, Storage and other Digitization services.

I was also able to give a brief introduction to a couple new services we have to offer immediately:

  • MAX – Mars Authority eXpress
  • Bowkers TOC – Table of Contents enrichment

MAX can return your processed Current Cataloging bibs typically in less than an hour (our system can process about 20,000 recs/hr).  This service costs a bit more, and it is especially useful for libraries that need their records processed & returned immediately.  The great thing about MAX is that there is no minimum fee or schedules that need to be fussed over; simply send in your records through our website any time of the day in whatever size file works for you and we will get the results back to you fast.

Backstage Authority Control has also incorporated the Bowkers/Syndetics TOC database.  What this means is that we now have a direct means of providing you with enriched (TOC, Summaries, Fiction profiles) content as part of your normal bib processing.  Since we maintain the database in-house, this reduces the cost on our end and we pass those savings onto you by also lowering the cost of what you may have been paying elsewhere.  We also thinks it makes sense to charge you only for the enrichments you actually receive.

Both MAX & Bowkers TOC are in place today.  If you’re not sure whether either of these makes sense to your library, please ask us to setup a sample run for your records.  At Backstage, we love to run samples for our customers as it helps us refine the process for them and also gives our clients the assurance they need for these exciting new services.  For more information on these services, please feel free to contact me, nate@bslw.com, or your Sales Representatives from Backstage.

You’ve made it this far in the blog post, only a little further!  I had the opportunity to attend some great presentations at ALA regarding cataloging and so I would like to pass the links to our forum that contain my notes:

Karen Anderson was scheduled to attend the all-day training session for RDA (Resource Description and Access) at ALA, but unfortunately slipped on a patch of ice at her house and broke her arm.  So Maritta Coppieters, our Bibliographic Services Product Manager, attended in her stead.  Maritta also had to catch a plane to England on Sunday, January 17, but I was lucky enough to glean some of her notes regarding the latest updates on RDA.

While we still plan on sending out regular updates on RDA (of which Backstage is one of the vendors training on it), I have posted my notes from Maritta in our forum:

There has been a lot of chatter (AUTOCAT) regarding the pricing for the RDA subscription and we will continue to follow this closely.

My thanks to all of you that I was able to meet at ALA!  I look forward to meeting many more of you in Washington, DC for Annual this June.

Nate Cothran,

Product Manager, Authority Control Services

Mid-Winter ALA 2010

Monday, January 4th, 2010

Hello and Welcome to the New Year! If 2010 is anything like 2009, it will be an exciting time to be a part of the authority control process. In the Automation Services Dept we are eagerly putting together some fantastic new services that will save you in time, convenience, and cost for this new year. We are anxious to let you all know about the exciting new services coming your way.

To whet your appetite, here is a brief taste of the two services we are ready to roll out:

· MAX – MARS Authority eXpress. A service with no minimum record requirements that also promises you your records within an hour of receipt?

· Bowker TOC Enrichment – Backstage has partnered back up with the Bowker service, which provides TOC & Summary enrichment at a reduced price.

To find out more information about this as well as the ongoing updates with RDA, we would like to invite you to our MARS Breakfast Meeting, to be held on Saturday, January 16th from 7:30 am to 8:30 am. This meeting will take place at the Seaport Hotel (directions inline), near the conference center and we will have an RSVP link up very soon on our website. We are hoping that this timeframe allows you to come meet with us, listen to a brief update on these services and the status of RDA and still give you enough time to make your way for the 9:00 am sessions at the conference.

Nate Cothran and Karen Anderson will be attending as well as a few others from Backstage. We can’t wait to see you all there!

ALA_Boston_Hotelmap_FINAL-1

ALA MARS Breakfast

Monday, August 10th, 2009

Every ALA Backstage Library Works holds a breakfast for users, and those interested in MARS Authority Control Service. This is a recap by the Product Manager, John Reese.

Authority Control Interest Group Users Breakfast

We had 22 clients or visitors in attendance at the meeting.  Visitors included Jim Kuhn from Folger Shakespeare Library, Janet Ahrberg from Oklahoma State University, Maggie Horn from SUNY System Administration, Sheila Bair and Miranda Howard from Western Michigan University.  Our long distant traveler had to have been Sally Crosby from the American University of Sharjah.  We appreciate all who were in attendance.  We started the meeting with an open breakfast bar then proceeded with a few words from, Maritta Coppieters, our new product manager for on-site services.  Maritta talked about Backstage’s on-site services. She heads up a team of employees who perform on-site services such as RFID tagging, reclassification and re-shelving. Many libraries find it impossible to make these physical moves within their library and service their public at the same time so they hire our on-site services group to help them.

Our Guest Speaker, Shirley Higgins from the University of California San Diego was our next speaker.  Shirley told the group about the Union Database for Authority Control the University of California Library system and UCSD are involved with.  Through the use of Backstage Automated Authority process they are able to provide Library of Congress authority records for a database that many of the University of California Libraries are able to utilize.

John Reese gave an overview of MARS 2.0 progress for the first half of 2009.  He mentioned the first half enhancements: Heading Tracker, Bibliographic Update Services, Juvenile Heading enhancement and Insignificant Change Report enhancements.  John plugged the following Backstage Library Works innovations including the authority control community site http://ac.bslw.com/community/ , the Retrospective TOC promotion and Backstage being one of three vendors chosen by US National Libraries RDA Test Steering Committee http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/rda/ for RDA testing.

John introduced MAX (MArs Express) the upcoming authority control product due out by end of the year and explained how clients using MAX will be able to fully automate their authority control process.  It will provide processed records within an hour or two of delivery for your typical current cataloging process (up to 20,000 records).  A notification will be sent when processing is complete and records are ready for pickup.

As always there is a questions and answers portion of the MARS 2.0 User meeting.  The topic that generated the most discussion this year was, “How does your ILS system utilize untraced authority records?”  Maggie Horn from the SYNY System explained that untraced authority records are a hold over from pre automation days.  For most libraries today, if the authority record is untraced it is not needed.  No decision was made on weather Backstage should continue to deliver these authority records or not.  We would be interested in hearing from other clients.  If you are using the untraced authority records let your fellow Backstage AC users know how you are using them by either posting on the BSLW forum, http://ac.bslw.com/community/forum/ or by posting on the BSLW listserv. bslwac@mailman.xmission.com

You can discuss this in our forum.

ALA Recap

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

Authority Control Interest Group Users Breakfast

We had 22 clients or visitors in attendance at the meeting.  Visitors included Jim Kuhn from Folger Shakespeare Library, Janet Ahrberg from Oklahoma State University, Maggie Horn from SUNY System Administration, Sheila Bair and Miranda Howard from Western Michigan University.  Our long distant traveler had to have been Sally Crosby from the American University of Sharjah.  We appreciate all who were in attendance.  We started the meeting with an open breakfast bar then proceeded with a few words from, Maritta Coppieters, our new product manager for on-site services.  Maritta talked about Backstage’s on-site services. She heads up a team of employees who perform on-site services such as RFID tagging, reclassification and re-shelving. Many libraries find it impossible to make these physical moves within their library and service their public at the same time so they hire our on-site services group to help them.

Our Guest Speaker, Shirley Higgins from the University of California San Diego was our next speaker.  Shirley told the group about the Union Database for Authority Control the University of California Library system and UCSD are involved with.  Through the use of Backstage Automated Authority process they are able to provide Library of Congress authority records for a database that many of the University of California Libraries are able to utilize.

John Reese gave an overview of MARS 2.0 progress for the first half of 2009.  He mentioned the first half enhancements: Heading Tracker, Bibliographic Update Services, Juvenile Heading enhancement and Insignificant Change Report enhancements.  John plugged the following Backstage Library Works innovations including the authority control community site http://ac.bslw.com/community/ , the Retrospective TOC promotion and Backstage being one of three vendors chosen by US National Libraries RDA Test Steering Committee http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/rda/ for RDA testing.

John introduced MAX (MArs Express) the upcoming authority control product due out by end of the year and explained how clients using MAX will be able to fully automate their authority control process.  It will provide processed records within an hour or two of delivery for your typical current cataloging process (up to 20,000 records).  A notification will be sent when processing is complete and records are ready for pickup.

As always there is a questions and answers portion of the MARS 2.0 User meeting.  The topic that generated the most discussion this year was, “How does your ILS system utilize untraced authority records?”  Maggie Horn from the SYNY System explained that untraced authority records are a hold over from pre automation days.  For most libraries today, if the authority record is untraced it is not needed.  No decision was made on weather Backstage should continue to deliver these authority records or not.  We would be interested in hearing from other clients.  If you are using the untraced authority records let your fellow Backstage AC users know how you are using them by either posting on the BSLW forum, http://ac.bslw.com/community/forum/ or by posting on the BSLW listserv. bslwac@mailman.xmission.com

Summer ALA Breakfast

Monday, June 22nd, 2009
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Backstage at Houlihan's

Coming to Chicago for ALA?

Leave the stale doughnuts in the hotel lobby
for someone else, and join us for
the MARS Authority Control Breakfast Meeting at

Houlihan's

Houlihan’s
111 East Wacker Drive • Chicago
(Just west of the Hyatt-Regency Chicago)
Saturday, July 11, 2009
7:30 to 9:00 a.m.

Get the scoop on the latest features and upcoming enhancements.

Network with other MARS users and touch base with your Backstage crew.

The MARS team will lead a discussion with the user group from 8:00 to 8:30.
Drop in for a few minutes or stay the whole time.

Seating is limited, so please reserve your space online at:

www.bslw.com/RSVP

Registration closes Friday, July 3.

Can’t make the meeting? Want to invite a friend?
Feel free to pass this invitation along.

Backstage Library Works
AUTHORITY CONTROL • CATALOGING • DIGITIZATION • ON-SITE SERVICES

See you in Chicago!

Our mailing address is:

Backstage Library Works

533 East 1860 South

Provo, Utah 84606

Our telephone:

(801) 356-1852

Add us to your address book

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Heading to ALA

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009
ALA Midwinter

ALA Midwinter

Coming to Denver for ALA Midwinter meeting held in Denver? We’ll be there too!

Drop in and see us at booth 2244. We’d love to talk about our Digitization services, Cataloging, Retrospective conversion, or of course our Automated Authority Control, including a big new announcement about a new product we’ll be offering to help make your authority control even easier.