Sept. 9, 2009                                                                                                                 Vol. 1  Issue 2
NELLCO E-Newsletter
Bringing All The Parts Together
In This Issue
Best Practices conference held
NELLCO at AALL
NELLCO's USS
Update your profile
Affiliate Members and Interest Groups
Library Spotlight
Albany Law School
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Tracy L. Thompson
Director's Corner
 
NELLCO ON THE MOVE! 
Welcome back! This is the second issue of Slice, NELLCO's e-newsletter. With the waning of the summer months and the arrival of autumn there is a great deal of change in the air at NELLCO. First and foremost our offices are on the move again! At the end of 2009 NELLCO will be moving into office space at the Albany Law School in Albany, NY. We're very excited about the move back into an academic environment and into one of our founding members' libraries. We are grateful to Robert Begg, Director of the Law Library at Albany and a founding member of the NELLCO Board of Directors, and to Albany Law School Dean Thomas Guernsey for their vision and collaborative spirit in developing this new partnership! Beginning Jan. 1, 2010 NELLCO's mailing address will be 80 New Scotland Ave., Albany NY, 12208.
 
NELLCO's move to Albany is not unprecedented. As NELLCO has grown our needs have changed, and the NELLCO Board of Directors has been careful and thoughtful in their growth planning, strategic planning, and succession planning for the organization through the years. NELLCO's administrative home was incubated in the library at Harvard Law School from its genesis as a 501(c)(3) in 1983. The organization's offices were later moved out of the law school and into former Executive Director Diane Klaiber's home office. From there NELLCO moved to New Haven in 2001, following Diane's retirement and my assumption of NELLCO's leadership. In late 2002 NELLCO relocated again to Keene, NH, where it has been based until this latest move to Albany.
 
Albany provides a number of benefits as a home-base. NELLCO will have access to meeting space within the Law School, which is located directly across the street from the Hilton Garden Inn. As a capital city Albany is very accessible via car, rail and air. Public transportation within the city is readily available and well-supported. Albany is home to the New York State Library, New York State Archives, NYLINK, SUNY Albany's Department of Information Studies, and many other wonderful information resources. Albany area law librarians participate in the Association of Law Libraries of Upstate New York (ALLUNY). 
 
On a personal note, in preparation for the move of NELLCO at the end of 2009 my family made the move in Aug. so that our kids could begin the school year in their new schools. We're living in Delmar, NY, just south of Albany. During most of Aug. I was on vacation and focused on getting settled in our new home. If you tried to reach me and haven't had a reply please be in touch again. My nose is back to the grindstone and I'll respond as soon as possible!

Sincerely,

Tracy L. Thompson-Przylucki, Executive Director
Best Practices Exchange 2009 Held at SUNY
Last week I had the privilege of attending the Best Practices Exchange (BPE) 2009 meeting in my new backyard at SUNY Albany. BPE is a community for librarians, archivists, records managers and other information professionals dedicated to managing digital information in state government. I was unaware of BPE until Margie Maes, Executive Director of LIPA, clued me in. The two-and-a-half day conference was both relevant and energizing! An opening pesentation by New York State Chief Information Officer Melodie Mayberry-Stewart was riveting. Did you know that there will be more information produced in the coming year than in the last 5,000 years combined? Watch this video for more factoids on our current information age. Do you find it frightening or exhilirating or both?
 
The conference title was Tackling Technology Together and was organized along three tracks:Creative Collaboration; Educating Each Other; and Living Without Closure. There was a great deal of focus on the demands of web 2.0 and social networking technologies for information professionals and the unique challenges these pose for state agencies and institutions. Attendees adopted the term 'crisitunity,' coined by Homer Simpson, to describe the current state of affairs as it relates to this information era.
 
On day two, guest speaker Theresa Pardo, Director of the Center for Technology in Government, spoke to us about "Wicked and Tangled Problems." She advocated, as did most presenters, for collaborative solutions.
Tangled problems demand coordinated, collective or networked action to address poorly-structured cross-cutting, information- and knowledge-intensive challenges.

The final day's opening presentation brought Kathleen Roe, Director of Operations at the New York State Archives.Kathleen challenged us to make a commitment to advocacy through "A Year of Living Dangerously." Her message was for us to "just DO something!" in the advocacy arena. NELLCO will be heeding that call. Our first step is to encourage NELLCO members to become informed and involved in Preserving the American Historical Record (PAHR). Are you aware of other legislative activities, at the state or federal levels, that need the attention of librarians and other information professionals? Please let us know so that we can spread the word!

NELLCO Success at AALL in Washington, DC
Submitted by Cindy Adams NELLCO icon
 
We would like to say thank you, to all of those members who dropped by the NELLCO table at AALL in Washington. It was wonderful to meet our new members and catch up with our long time dedicated members as well!  Thank you also to all of those who dropped their card in our fishbowl for the new Founders Fund for Future Law Libraries. For each card we rceived we added $2.00 to the Fund. As a result, our fund will launch with more than $1,000 for the first award year. We look forward to getting this program up and running in the 2010-2011 year. Your positive feedback and support for this initiative was greatly appreciated! We look forward to seeing you all again in Denver next year!

NELLCO'S Universal Search Solution
 
Our IMLS National Leadership Grant-funded project, developing an open source discovery tool, is nearing the end of its two-year funding period. Many of you stopped by the NELLCO table at AALL and were able to view this brief demo. We've made great progress toward our original goals and will be continuing the work beyond the grant-funded period. The USS Committee and our participating libraries continue to work in the beta stage of the project, testing the tool and addressing the ongoing challenges related to harvesting vendor metadata. Harvesting of MARC records has been quite successful and may provide some unexpected opportunities for resource sharing and collection development. We are evaluating the project and developing a sustainability plan and will report out at the end of the funding period in Nov. Thanks to all of you who continue to support this important NELLCO initiative!
What's in your profile?
 
NELLCO members have you updated your online profile lately? Did you know that we use the information in your profile to send you information about renewals, trials and discounts?  We also use your library profile information to supply vendors with your current IP and contact information. So...if you have not heard from NELLCO in awhile it may mean that your profile information is incorrect or out of date!  Please take a moment to update your profile today so you don't miss out on any NELLCO member communications.
Affiliates Invited to Participate in Interest Groups
During NELLCO's most recent strategic planning process the Board of Directors worked very diligently to examine the current state of NELLCO. Part of that work resulted in the realization that our Interest Group meetings would benefit from the increased participation of our Affiliate Members. However, Interest Group participation has historically been an exclusive benefit of Full Members. The differential in annual dues paid by Full Members underwrites the expense of those meetings. So our goal was to include Affiliates without diluting the benefit to Full Members. To achieve that goal we are implementing a fee structure to cover the costs of meeting participation by Affiliates.
 
Affiliate members will be welcome to attend the meeting of any NELLCO Interest Group for a cost of $40.00 per person. This fee will cover the cost of food and materials. Those attending the meeting assume their costs of travel and accommodations.
 
Notices about upcoming meetings will be distributed via e-mail.
NELLCO