by Nick Banitt
Quick Summary
Wondering what happened at the Public Library Node meeting this year? Check this out.
Minitex held its annual Public Library Node meeting on August 23, at the Hennepin County Brookdale Library. The program covered a wide variety of topics intended for public library interlibrary loan staff in Minnesota. We had a good crowd of almost 60 this year.
The attendees all use MNLINK so information about it featured prominently. The new MNLINK search launched a year ago has undergone several updates which were discussed in the meeting. The recent announcement of OCLC's plans to replace VDX with Relais D2D as the MNLINK resource sharing program was also reviewed.
Valerie Horton, Minitex director, and Ken Behringer, MELSA executive director, spoke about Ebooks Minnesota, MN Writes MN Reads, and Minnesota Libraries Publishing Project (MLPP). Joe Manion from State Library Services gave a presentation about their projects and the statistics they collect from Minnesota's library community. The Minitex Digital Initiatives & Metadata Education unit discussed their "Scan for Keeps" program and scanned photos that some of the attendees had brought from home.
A lightning round session of short conversations with Resource Sharing and Delivery staff on various topics featured: ebooks, an introduction to coding, delivery, genealogy, lost books, RFID, and, of course, MNLINK/VDX. This session encapsulated much of what I try to do when organizing each Public Library Node Meeting: encourage conversations about the issues facing our interlibrary loan community while giving people the opportunity to learn more about topics affecting libraries in Minnesota.
If you attended the meeting, I hope you enjoyed the day as much as I did.
