Vice President/Program Chair's Annual Report 2007/2008

Program Committee The members of this year’s program committee have worked hard to produce two exceptional programs. Thanks to committee members:

The ENY/ACRL Program Committee planned three Brown Bag Lunches, two held during October and one held during November 2007. Organizers of the lunches were Glynis Asu at Hamilton College, Kathryn Johns-Masten at Siena College, and Elin O’Hara at SUNY-Plattsburgh. Christine Rudecoff from Hamilton College created the Bibliography on Wikis & Blogs that was posted on the ENY/ACRL web site. The host libraries generously provided water and dessert. The purpose of the gatherings was to designate a time when librarians in the same part of the state could leave their library for a few hours to get together to informally discuss a specific topic as well as just talk with each other while eating lunch. The Brown Bag Lunch, “Wikis and Blogs,” grew out of our Spring 2007 Conference, “Who’s Driving the Technology Bus?” Approximately 40 librarians participated in the Brown Bag Lunches. Interest was high and conversation was lively!

Spring Conference May 19, 2008: OPAC: Dead, Alive, or Revived?

The Program Committee met on July 26, 2007 and on November 12, 2007 at Skidmore College to plan both the Brown Bag Lunches and the Spring Conference. After the November meeting, conference issues and planning were discussed on email among the committee members. Planning was a cooperative, team effort. We talked. We brainstormed. We investigated possible speakers. The time and effort was worthwhile!

We developed an exciting program that would interest librarians in both public and technical services. R. David Lankes, Director of the Information Institute of Syracuse and Associate Professor in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University, agreed to give the keynote address, “Participatory Librarianship and Radical Change Agents.” The other presenters were: Laurie Allen, Social Sciences Data Services Librarian at the University of Pennsylvania,“Penn Tags: Applications for Social Bookmarking in an Academic Library;” Katharine Bouman, Reference Librarian/Bibliographer and Alesia McManus, Head of Research, Information & Instructional Services, at Binghamton University, “Encore & Grokker: Library Tools for Enhanced Searching;” Lauren Pinsley, OCLC Services Manager at Nylink, “ Introducing WorldCat Local;” and Judi Briden, Digital Librarian for Public Services, and Jeff Suszczynski, Senior Web Developer in the Digital Initiatives Unit, at the University of Rochester, “ eXtensible Catalog Project at the University of Rochester.”

Uma Sharma graciously served as the Conference Local Arrangements Chair and was ably assisted by Tasha Cooper, Suzanne Predate, and Rose Johnston and her volunteers. The
Program Committee members whose ideas and effort are responsible for these successful events are: Glynis Asu (Hamilton); Dung-Lan Chen (Skidmore); Yu-hui Chen (U-Albany); Tasha Cooper (Syracuse); Jackie Coughlan (SUNY IT); Barbara Grimes (SUNY IT); Linda Hofmann (Skidmore); Kathryn Johns-Masten (Siena); Francesca Livermore (Colgate); Pat Markley (Siena); Suzanne Preate (Syracuse); Elizabeth Putnam (Skidmore); Joyce Rambo (Nylink); Connie Roberts (Hamilton); Christine Rudecoff (Morrisville); Uma Sharma (Syracuse); and Kari Zhe-Heimerman (Le Moyne). What a pleasure for me to work with such talented and dedicated people!

Respectfully Submitted,
Susan Zappen
Skidmore College
Program Chair / Vice President