Walt at Random

If you’re a librarian in Washington or Oregon, especially an academic librarian, I encourage you to register for the 2013 OLA/WLA conference–and to sign up for the Wednesday (April 24) afternoon (2-5 p.m.) preconference on Open Access.

I can’t tell you just what I’ll cover, because I’ll probably be working on it through mid-April.

I can say that it won’t just be a rehash of Open Access: What You Need to Know Now, although I’ll certainly cover the basics of OA as set forth in that book. If I had to guess, I’d guess about an hour will be devoted to discussion of OA basics and controversies, two hours to other material (including lots of discussion).

Beyond that, I anticipate looking at recent events and what seems plausible or likely for the future, and on how you and your library can be involved. If you’re writing in the profession, a growing number of top journals are OA-friendly (and, best of all, no-fee Gold OA). If you’re not, you’re probably aware that the current situation with journal prices is not sustainable for libraries.

(Yes, we’ll probably spend a few minutes talking about various definitions of “sustainability.”)

I plan for it to be fresh, informative, lively–and with lots of room for discussion.

And while you’re there…

I’m doing two regular sessions during the conference as well, which may be more oriented to public librarians but, in at least one case, should also interest the rest of you:

• Thursday, April 25, 4-5:15: A session based on Give Us a Dollar and We’ll Give You Back Four (2012-2013) — but even more on the custom study I’ve done for the Oregon and Washington libraries, a 73-page 6×9 PDF that will be made available right around the time of the conference. Here’s the cover…
• Friday, April 26, 10:30-11:45 a.m.: A session based on The Librarian’s Guide to Micropublishing. I just finished preparing the draft version of that talk and PPT presentation. Again, I plan to leave plenty of time for discussion–noting that I’ll disappear as soon as the session’s done (to get back to Livermore on Friday). (If you heard me at Internet Librarian on this topic, the new talk covers considerably more ground.)

I’ll be around for most of the conference, and probably at one or two of the social events. I look forward to seeing some of you!

 

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