Live from Southborough

I've never done this before but, why not? I'm at a meeting of New England librarians interested in creating digital repositories, so in lieu of taking notes I'm just adding what I hear to the blog. They refer to this group as a "Mintz," or member interest zone. There were representatives from Harvard, Northeastern, and Brown among others. Most of the people here favor Dublin Core over marc because it is more intuitive in describing digital content, so that makes it easier to catalog.

One topic was the relationship between librarians who do technical projects and their IT departments. A few people had reported good relations, but the majority admitted to a certain tension between the two areas - a lot of that based on the perception that IT personnel don't truly understand what librarians are trying to do. At the other extreme, the librarian from Brown University wants to replace retiring reference librarians with IT-oriented librarians. He said that librarians are one branch of IT.

A librarian from Brooklyn was concerned about the durability of the information we are preserving electronically. We all know the stories about how NASA can't read tapes from the Lunar missions because they don't have equipment to play them anymore. The librarian from Brown was more optimistic (as am I) that things preserved in digital format are preserved, barring a catastrophic loss of technology on the planet due to war or asteroids. Some of the things they talked about were, frankly, over my head. I need to find out about Fedora, since it was referenced a number of times. Also MEPS.

The agenda had called for breakout sessions, but they filled the time nicely with an enthusiastic group who had a lot to say. We'll be together in the future in meetings, on a listserv, and if they take my advice, they'll create a wiki as well. By letting out early, they allowed me to get back to Hamden without dealing with rush hour traffic in Hartford. It was a day well spent.