May 2010 Full Issue
Table of Contents
Rick Anderson
NASIG President
I write this column having just returned-much more recently than planned-from a wonderful UKSG meeting followed by a harrowing experience of travel chaos, one that I shared with our past president, Jill Emery, and our Merriman Award winner, Selden Lamoureux.
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First the happy memories: the UKSG meeting was
fantastic. Though it was sadly impossible to attend
every session, the ones I attended were almost
uniformly excellent. My notes contain particular praise
13 for plenary sessions featuring Richard Wallis of Talis
(“We all overestimate the impact of new technology in
19 three years and underestimate its impact in ten”),
19 Conrad Wolfram of Wolfram Research (“High-powered
19 computation changes everything, even the way we
21 think about what knowledge is and how it’s shared”)
and of course Carol Tenopir of the University of
45 Tennessee, who shared her brilliant recent work on
46 tracking and analyzing the research library’s return on
46 institutional investment. There were very stimulating
sessions on issues and controversies in bibliometrics,
47 and on social networking as an essential tool of
48 academic research. I attended excellent breakout
48 sessions too, from the likes of Paul Harwood (who
50 discussed emerging trends in library-delivered
etextbooks), Jill Taylor-Roe (who followed up on some of
her incisive research findings related to the
sustainability of Big Deals) and Ian Russell
(on the future
NASIG Newsletter May 2010
of society journal publishing)
, not to mention Jill
Emery’s very fine presentation on a
selection/deselection tool developed in cooperation at
the universities of Texas and Georgia and those
institutions’ move towards patron-driven selection.
The venue was as good as the program. The Edinburgh
International Conference Center is situated in the heart
of the city center, and is the most fully and graciously
staffed meeting space I’ve ever experienced; the
entrance was staffed by uniformed attendants, and at
the head and foot of every escalator there were stately
ladies in matching suits who charmingly kept all of us
heading the right directions. The meeting rooms were
comfortable, the food was delicious, and the UKSG’s
organizers did their usual logistical magic to make
everything feel smooth and well-organized.
Then the meeting ended, and all hell broke loose.
On Wednesday night following the close of the
conference, an Icelandic volcano whose name is actually
physically impossible to say erupted and began
blanketing northern Europe in a cloud of airplane-killing
ash. Jill, Selden and I found ourselves trapped. Since
England was initially unaffected and my flight had a
connection in London, I got rebooked for a later flight
out of Heathrow and took the train south; Jill and
Selden, who were both booked to fly directly out of
Edinburgh, remained there to wait it out. After a couple
of days it became clear that this situation might drag on
for a week or more. Some of our colleagues made plans
to escape via train through southern Europe, beyond
the cloud’s reach. Since flights were moving without
problem between Ireland and North America, I
rebooked again and hopped over to Dublin, but by the
time I got there Irish airspace had closed as well. Things
finally settled down after a very tense six days. Jill and
Selden took the ferry to Belfast and flew home from
there, and a day later I was able to fly out of Dublin. All
in all, we spent an extra eight days in the British Isles—
which may not sound terrible (and indeed there were
many, many people worse off than us, including some
Brits still stranded abroad as I write), but it was certainly
one of the more stressful travel experiences any of us
will ever have. Hopefully, in fact, it was the most
stressful travel experience any of us will ever have. All
of us are now safely home, though, and can laugh about
it. Ha.
Looking Forward: Palm Springs and our 25th
Anniversary
I’ve already promised a complete lack of snow for our
25th anniversary conference in Palm Springs next
month. I’m now prepared to make another promise:
there will be no volcano eruptions anywhere near our
event. And I can now also promise an excellent
program, as well as beautiful (and startlingly affordable)
accommodations, great meeting spaces, top-notch golf,
very good restaurants, and shopping that rivals what
you’ll find in Los Angeles. Vendors and publishers are
signing up in gratifying numbers to participate in our
newly-instituted Vendor Exposition, and there are great
special events lined up as well. But what will really
make this conference worth the investment will be the
opportunity to meet with, learn from, and forge new
connections with professionals from every link in the
serials information chain. Come help us celebrate our
past and prepare for our future!
I look forward greatly to seeing you there.
March 2010 Conference Call
Carol Ann Borchert, NASIG Secretary
Date: March 5, 2 (...truncated)