Tuesday, June 24, 2008

And the Beat Goes On

This past spring has flown by with work devoted to our library system migration: training classes, weeding projects, testing, and data analysis. We are now ready to move from the test database to our "live" database.
One project management tool that has worked very well is our wiki. The Medaille Library Support Sevices wiki now contains information specific to our decisions made regarding best practices and procedures. We have even kept a running to-do list for projects we would like to tackle in the future.
Liz Evans and myself attended the Innovative Users Group meeting in Washington, D.C. in April 2008. Many of the sessions I attended dealt with acquisitions functions. I learned how other libraries have set up their workflows for ordering and receiving materials and I came away with some good ideas to use at Medaille. The conference was a wonderful opportunity to meet other librarians who have been working with Innovative for a long time.
Another venture I have undertaken is to work with a group of librarians here in Western New York in the creation and publication of a new online journal: The Journal of Library Innovation. We have set January 2010 as the date for publication of the premier issue. We too have set up a wiki to manage the work we are undertaking. It is all very interesting and exciting work!