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October 2007 Volume 9 Number 4 Page 1 |
LiSUG 2007 - The Hottest |
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Cover Story Features
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Friday, Oct. 5th turned out to be an unseasonably warm day for the first annual SUNYLA Library Software Users Group (LiSUG) Conference. Well, actually it was incredibly HOT, reaching 80+ degrees. But that did not dampen the enthusiasm of the 112 participants who converged on the SUNY Cobleskill campus for a day that sizzled with camaraderie and learning.
The restructuring of the SUNY ALEPH Users Group (SUNYAUG) into LiSUG proved to be a great success. Not only did the reorganization as a SUNYLA Committee improve management issues, the re-focus on software beyond ALEPH made for dynamic conference programming. It also encouraged attendance by library staff members who aren’t “super users” of ALEPH modules. One motivation for the restructuring was the desire to include other types of software that are interoperable with ALEPH. Federated search engines, ILLiad, WorldCat and openURL resolvers are examples of such software. Although LiSUG now embraces all kinds of library software, this first conference reaffirmed our initial hunch that ALEPH interoperability would be a key interest to LiSUG attendees. While I could not attend all the sessions I greatly appreciated the diversity of programming and had difficulty picking which session to attend. It was gratifying to see that ALEPH continues to be a driving force for the Users Group. I particularly appreciated the ALEPH sessions that gave a preview of life after the v.18 upgrade. Conference presenters should be applauded for their willingness to step
up to the plate, and for a job well done. Many thanks to the
coordinators of the ILLiad pre-conference and LiSUG conference for all
their hard work, and thanks to the library staff at Cobleskill for being
such gracious hosts.
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