Nine vendors garnered a spot in the Technology Showcase, which ran concurrently in two theaters during the Boston Midwinter meeting.
Aptly named One If By Land and Two If By Sea, the theaters featured demonstrations by Infor Global Solutions, Emerald Group Publishing, 3M, Credo Reference, Thomson Reuters, ebrary, Innovative Interfaces, Springer, and IGI Global.
Jeff Dougherty of Thomson Reuters led the first of three sessions I caught, talking about journal collection development and how the company provides research analytics to help research libraries measure the value of journals to their institutions. During the course of his presentation, Dougherty, a librarian, said, "Indexes are as important as ever, given that anyone can publish anything on the web." After his talk, I asked him if he had thought about writing about that theory in more detail, since every periodical publisher has probably grappled with the question of why they should index when keyword searching might make it redundant.
Bruce Barrett of ebrary announced the release of DASH! which will enable Academic Complete subscribers to upload, integrate, and share an unlimited number of their own PDF documents right from their computers. He called it "the beginning of a wonderful, dynamic tool" that will enable librarians to share collections with other institutions.
Rice Majors of Innovative Interfaces observed a mandate for raising patron awareness of digital resources, speaking on "Local Tagging for Local Collections." He stressed the trend toward library user participation in tagging content, noting that additions user generated changes—"hip hop jewelry" to "bling bling," "all terrain vehicles" to "mountain bikes"—can add value to searching.