Seeing Jenica’s post on networking reminded me that I’d yet to write up the SIGALO meeting from Friday. We were hosted this time around by the Tulsa Community College’s Learning Resources Center, although the meeting itself took place in the student union on the downtown campus. TCC has a separate wifi network especially for guests, which was nice, and the snacks provided were quite yummy. We had a lovely welcome from the dean of the library and then two quick business meetings (I volunteered to be on SIGALO’s programming committee) before we got to the presentations.
The presentations — on OCLC’s experiment with letting anyone with full permissions edit records and on the back end of the Open Journal System — were good and the discussions around them enlightening. I was particularly interested when one person pointed out that OCLC had started as a cooperative, that “none of us were very good when we started,” and that letting more people edit records was simply a move back toward an earlier iteration of the organization.
However, the best parts of the day were lunch and the social time immediately afterwards. Getting to talk with other serials folk was just so comforting. It’s easy for me to feel like I’m the only one going through some of these headaches, despite the evidence otherwise on various listservs. Actually having a conversation about our daily existence — and an extended one at that — was hugely needed on my part. So a big Thank You! to all the folks from OSU, Southeastern, Northeastern, Oklahoma Christian, and elsewhere for all the wonderful conversations!
