Notes from Robert:

I attended the following sessions at the SELA conference: Building Libraries for the 21st Century: Virtual Libraries: - Presenters: Judy Kelley & Nan McMurray, University of Georgia, Building Libraries for the 21st Century: Bricks and Mortar: Presenters - George Gaumond, Valdosta State; Charlene Hurt, Georgia State University; Bill Richards, Georgia College and State University; Bill Potter, University of Georgia, Collaborating With Faculty Through Technology: Faculty as Users and Partners - Presenters:  Beatrice O. Agingu and Cathi Cooper, South Carolina State University. There were good ideas to be had from all of the presenters; especially, from Kelley and McMurray of UGA. Their talk centered on digital projects at UGA. The following are some of their suggested links concerning digital projects.

Digital Object Identifier
http://www.doi.org/
From the site: " DOI is an identification system for intellectual in the digital environment. Developed by the International DOI Foundation on behalf of the publishing industry, its goals are to provide a framework for managing intellectual content, link customers with publishers, facilitate electronic commerce, and enable automated copyright management."

First Workshop on Linkage from Citations to Electronic Journal Literature (2/11/99)
http://www.niso.org/linkge.html#resources
 

I, along with JoAnn Sears and Bill Prince of Univ. of Tennessee - Chattanooga,  developed the program (view program) and content of the following presentation: Proactive Library Services in Today’s High Tech Environment: What are the Options? - Presenters: Ali Abdulla, East Carolina University; Julie Walker, Athens Clarke County Library. During this session the SELA IT Award Committtee, which consisted of myself, JoAnn Sears, Bill Prince, and Jeff Heck of Augusta State University, presented the SELA IT Award to Carol Tenopir of the School of Information Sciences at the University of Tennessee - Knoxville for her latest two book efforts. Also during this program I was selected to serve as Chair-elect for SELA's Information Technology Round Table for the next 2 year cycle.

An interesting product that was on display at SELA  was called a smartboard. This product is an interactive whiteboard that can be plugged into a computer's mouseport and then be used as an interactive computer screen which will translate writing into computer text. For more on the smartboard see the following link: http://www.smarttech.com/smartboard/

And last but not least, I attended the SELA Executive Board Meeting.
 

Notes from JoAnn:

Robert and I assisted with the preparation of a program, "Proactive Library Services in Today's High Tech Environment:  What are the Options?"  This was the Information Technology Round Table's program; I was also elected to the position of Secretary/Treasurer of this Round Table.

I attended a session on "Collaborating With Faculty Through Technology:  Faculty as Users and Partners" that was interesting.  The presenters described a situation where they were part of their entire university's training and development program.

I also attended an interesting session on Building Libraries for the 21st Century.  Presenters talked about making use of space in the library environment, most of the talk revolved around projects where renovation or expansion was occurring.  I couldn't help but notice some of our own space limitations, for example: we have no secure 24-hour study area. 

Notes from Joan:

Access to Electronic Journals: Guiding Patrons Through the Web of Resources
The best part of this presentation was from the folks at the University of Georgia Libraries.  They have created a web page call Electronic Journal Locator which is quite similar to our Electronic Journals page.  The coolest feature is how they assist users in crafting a search for a journal article after  they link to a full-text database or publisher page .  Seeing is believing!

Go to:
http://www.libs.uga.edu/ejournals/menu.html
Click on the letter G
Click on the link for Gait & Posture

Web Tutorials to the Rescue
Camille McCutcheon from University of South Carolina Spartanburg Library
has collaborated with faculty on her campus to create assignments for learning important library resources which are graded by the professor for credit.  The following link is to her in-depth tutorial for a Children's Literature class which typically has 75 students enrolled each semester.

Library Field Trip Tutorial Children's Literature 
 

Free Tools for Organizing Online Learning
In this presentation, we learned about using NiceNet, a free web tool for creating an online course that includes conferencing, link sharing, document sharing, etc.  I have a password to the sample course used if anyone is interested in seeing how it works.  This is a low-end version of WebCT, a program available here at AU.  Other interesting free stuff included:

Free Internet Access 
http://www.free-isp-internet-access.net/isp.shtml
In exchange for the free service, the user is required to visit one of the sponsors periodically in order to continue surfing. 

NETDRIVE (Internet hard drive) 
http://www.netdrive.com/
Your own personal Internet Hard Disk! Up to 100MB free Internet storage.
 
 

The theme for the conference was "Building Partnerships for the Milennium."