Friday, April 16, 2010

Call for proposals: MARS LSS ALA forum on discovery systems, June 27, 2010

Call for proposals: MARS LSS ALA forum on discovery systems, June 27, 2010

The MARS Local Systems & Services committee is seeking panelists for its discussion forum at the 2010 ALA Annual meeting in Washington, DC on Sunday, June 27, 2010, 1:30-3:30pm. The discussion forum topic is "Discovery Systems: Solutions a User Could Love?" and will continue the conversation that began at our very successful Midwinter forum by the same name. You can view a listing of the Midwinter panelists and the discovery tools they implemented by visiting this public ALA Connect page: http://connect.ala.org/node/92049

Panelists are asked to describe their experiences implementing "next generation discovery tools" that attempt to provide access to disparate library collections from a single search box. Examples include Summon, Primo, WorldCat Local, and Encore; the system should be in production, and should have the ability to include resources beyond the catalog. We are interested in knowing why you made your choice, your implementation experience, what was gained, what surprises and challenges you may have encountered, and how your users have responded to the change.

Each panelist should plan to speak for no more than 20 minutes and participate in a general Q&A at the end of the session.

Please e-mail proposals to: Matt Lee (Reference Librarian, Minitex, Minneapolis, MN) at leems001@umn.edu

Proposals should include a title (including name of discovery system) and brief summary of the talk, as well as the names, positions and e-mail addresses of the presenters.

Deadline for proposals: April 30, 2010.