News from the Office of Programs and Research
RLG Programs European Partner Meeting, Paris, 5-6 November 2008
With the appointment last November of John MacColl as European Director for RLG Programs – part of the Division of Programs & Research – it was decided to hold a European Partner Meeting this year for the first time in several years. RLG Programs is a membership group (its members are known as 'Partners'), working with around 140 of the world's top libraries, archives and museums. In the UK, Partners are mainly drawn from the research libraries group of the UK (formerly known as CURL – now RLUK). RLG Programs also has a number of continental European Partners - national libraries, archives, and a few academic libraries. Europe provides some 27 Partners worldwide.
The European Partner Meeting will be held in the Radisson SAS Paris-Boulogne Hotel. With a few weeks to go, over 50 delegates have registered. Most are from Partner institutions, though a number of guests will also attend. The Vice Presidents from Programs & Research, Jim Michalko and Lorcan Dempsey, will be presenting. The topics being covered are:
- Supporting Research in a Web-scale World: US and European Perspectives (Lorcan Dempsey, Chief Strategist and Vice President)
- The Work of the RLG Programs Partnership: Themes, Programs and Projects (James Michalko, Vice President)
- Expectations of the Screenager Generation (Lynn Silipigni Connaway, Senior Research Scientist)
- Managing the Collective Collection (Constance Malpas, Program Officer); Partner Response (Richard Ovenden, University of Oxford)
- Library, Archive and Museum Integration (Günter Waibel, Program Officer); Partner Response: Doug Dodds, Victoria and Albert Museum
- Renovating Bibliographic Description (Lorcan Dempsey); Partner Response (Christian Lupovici, Bilbliothèque Nationale de France)
- Archives: Challenges and Responses (James Michalko)
- Workflows in Research Assessment (John MacColl); Partner Response (Sheila Cannell, University of Edinburgh)
The OCLC team will also meet with a number of representatives from European research library agencies and consortia (JISC, RLUK, DEFF, CENL, TEL, LIBER and the Research Information Network) to discuss engagement and partnership in the future.
Above the Fold
Programs & Research have also just launched "Above the Fold" – a weekly current awareness resource. This new serial publication seeks to bring attention to items of interest from beyond the normal reading sphere of library and information professionals. It consists of a compendium of articles that relate to the work of the RLG Partnership and the information context in which we operate – but which readers might not see in the course of their regular awareness routines. Each citation includes a short annotation explaining why Programs & Research staff think the article is of interest, and is attributed to the staff member whose thoughts on the issue and its relevance can be tapped.
The first few issues have already ranged widely, pointing to articles from (among others) Harvard Business Review, Knowledge@Wharton, Forbes, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal and The Independent.
Above the Fold is prepared by OCLC Programs & Research in partnership with IBIS Communications.