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Working Together - Working Across Boundaries
The noise level was high as was the enthusiasm at the NY3Rs Association's Envisioning an Information Infrastructure for New York - I2NY - Summit, September 24-25 in Saratoga Springs.
91 library leaders from academic and public research libraries, library systems and representatives of New York's library groups and the State Library all attended the two day conference whose goal was to answer the questions: What does library and archival community need to do to create a New York Information Infrastructure? What initiatives are appropriate for a statewide information strategy and can they effectively scale up to include greater participation?
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Keynote Speaker, Deanna Marcum
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Keynote speaker Deanna Markum, Ithaka S+R Managing Director, addressed the group Monday evening, providing examples of collaborations -- and the lessons learned from them. One key to success, she said, is that those involved must not "just attend, but participate".
I2NY attendees did just that the following day when all participated in idea gathering using the Open Space Technology method. 120 action recommendations emerged from the full-day brainstorming and from that, participants gave priority to nine, among them:
- Develop a framework for statewide negotiations, inclusive of goals, stakeholder involvement and boundaries for terms (common principles)
- Leaders continue conversation about achieving common goals/objectives. Stakeholders include NY3Rs, State Library, SLSA, NYSHEI, NYLA, CUNY, SUNY, IDS, PULISO
- Build a transactional model by which libraries can trade, barter, or sell services and staff time to each other
- NY3Rs take a leadership role in convening library, cultural heritage, economic positions in regions to develop an action plan that will lead to robust library/information delivery systems
Participants at I2NY are now in the process of reviewing a draft of all recommendations on Google Docs, and when completed, those recommendations will be shared with the larger library community.
The I2NY Summit was just the first step in the year-long process, sponsored by the NY3Rs Association, in developing a NY information infrastructure vision. Consultant Tom Clareson will be sending a survey to all academic and research libraries to ascertain their current state of services, and their vision of needs for future library services.
With all that data, and continued input from the library community, Tom will develop a Final Report in early 2013 that will provide results and recommendations for "next steps". Development of an Information Infrastructure for a state as diverse and complex and rich in resources as New York is a multi-year task. But those at the Summit displayed their commitment to improving access to information for all the people of New York and their strong desire to work together to achieve that.
For more information on the I2NY Summit as well as the presentations made at the Summit go to the NY3Rs website at: http://www.ny3rs.org/?page_id=413.
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