Liminality Rules

Yesterday, our Content Management Implementation Team sponsored a "CMS Premier"
complete with popcorn and beverages. They did a great job and it looked like over 100 people attended at University Park with another 30 tuned into Dolores Fidishun at our Great Valley campus's breeze session. After two long years, it looks like the CMS will become a reality.

Many thanks to all the people who are making this happen...from our Phase 1 and 2 project managers Lynn Garrison and Lynda Klimczyk to the folks who installed and configured it, to the DLT/I-Tech team members Janis, Binky and Andrew who are great collaborators to the CMET and the Web Steering Team and everyone else who has played, or will play a part.. We have a long ways to go, but you all have done a great job so far. I heard comments like, "gosh, this looks like it will be easy to use." to "this is exciting."

Great job everyone. We look forward to the future ahead and thank you for your work both so far, and in the future.

It can be difficult moving from a process that is governed by one person to one that is governed by committee. The Collection Development Council, or CDC, is coming together very nicely this year. Each person on it tries very hard to look at the University Libraries rather than their own parochial interests. This group is responsible for allocating the collections budget and recommending policies and procedures related to content selection for University Libraries.

This week we spent time looking at possible budget allocations and coming up with a set of recommendations to present to the Dean this week. This is going to be a year in which we are going to have to set some priorities and make some choices. We intend to have several forums, communicate widely, and continue moving towards the notion of "one collection, geographically dispersed."

One thing I did this week was to send a message back to the publishers of the journal Science and tell them that we were not going to pay three or four times that of any of our CIC counterparts for their journal. Penn State is not a consortia and we won't pay like we are. It's unfortunate because it is a wonderful journal, but unfortunately, not for the price we were quoted.

I'll blog about collections, as I blog about technology and management as the academic year progresses. Welcome back, students!

After washing my car and ironing a bunch of stuff, I sat down to watch Friends and read Time magazine. Yes,I, like my father before me, find it wonderful to sit down and read Time once a week, in paper format. One of the articles this week is titled, "Why Facebook is the Future." Facebook is the future because its mission is to connect people with one another via a social network and it creates a little corner of the Web for friends to connect with each other. I felt oddly comforted by their diagram which showed that 39% of Facebook visitors are 35 or older.

I confess, I am grateful for Facebook. I like reading about what my friends are doing, thinking, and looking at their pictures. I like that my nephews will send me thank you notes by either messaging me or writing on my wall. I love looking at Heather Ann's pictures and Michael's musings. I enjoy seeing Dan and Gary's vacation pictures, or watching Kyle's and Ashley's relationship evolve. I like keeping tabs on Winn while she's in California or seeing what cool things Lisa or Jeff or Jenny are doing in their libraries or at their jobs. In short, it helps me stay connected with the world. So thanks Harvard guys for creating this corner for me and my friends.