VALA2018 Roundtable 2: Connecting

Wednesday 14 February 2018

Gale Cengage200Roundtable Session 2 sponsored by GALE, A Cengage Company

1345 – 1440 Room: Plenary Hall 3

Topic: Connecting – How can we make data talk with data?

Sponsor representative: Matt Drury, Sales Director Middle East, Africa, Australia and New Zealand

Facilitator: Melissa Parent

Guest Panellists:

  • Neil Block, VP Global Open Source Innovation, EBSCO
  • Marshall Breeding, Library Technology Guides
  • Rosalia da Garcia, Managing Director, SAGE Publishing Asia-Pacific
  • Marti Heyman, Executive Director of Metadata Strategy and Operations, OCLC
  • Matt Miller, Pratt Institute’s School of Information, New York
  • Tamar Sadeh, VP Teaching and Learning Solutions, Ex Libris

Please tag your comments, tweets, and blog posts about this session: #vala2018 #rt2

View the video of the presentation on the VALA2018 GigTV channel here:

The Big Questions:

  • What are we doing to enable the metadata connections outside of the library ecosystem?
  • How are we making web scale discovery happen?

Questions:

As a profession we give very thorough discussion to various aspects of how we connect end users with our data, be that traditional bibliographic data, additional data related to our resources, research data, or other. Similarly we have robust discussions about how we can connect machine users with our data, with machine users being the systems both inside and outside of libraries and other cultural institutions.

  • What do you see as the key elements of making data connective, and why? Key elements could be such things as metadata standards, technical standards, workforce capabilities, but also much more.
  • Discussion and debate within our ranks is extremely important, but action needs to follow. Are we doing enough to move beyond discussion and into action? If we are, what learnings can we take forward into a more connected future? If we aren’t doing quite enough yet, what do you see as the obstacles to overcome?
  • As practitioners, in metadata roles or not, what should we be doing now for a more connected future?
About the Sponsor Representative and Guest Panellists:

Sponsor Representative:

  • Matt Drury, Sales Director Middle East, Africa, Australia and New ZealandMatt Drury has been active in the soft and digital publishing arena for over twenty years. He has held senior positions with primary publishers covering North and South America, academic software providers covering the international market and aggregated publishers throughout EMEA. He is currently the sales director for Gale, responsible for the Middle East, Africa and Australasia.

Guest Panellists:

  • Neil Block, VP Global Open Source Innovation, EBSCONeil Block is Vice President, Global Open Source Innovation for EBSCO, and works with libraries to build community support for the FOLIO open source library platform. Neil has 20+ years experience in the ILS marketplace with Innovative Interfaces, serving as President and in other senior executive roles, and has a MLIS from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
  • Marshall Breeding, Library Technology GuidesMarshall Breeding is an independent consultant, speaker, and author. He is the creator and editor of Library Technology Guides and the libraries.org online directory of libraries on the Web. His monthly column Systems Librarian appears in Computers in Libraries; he is the Editor for Smart Libraries Newsletter published by the American Library Association, and has authored the annual Library Systems Report published by American Libraries since 2014. American Library Association, Library Journal from 2002-2013 and by He has authored nine issues of ALA’s Library Technology Reports, and has written many other articles and book chapters. Marshall has edited or authored eight books, including Cloud Computing for Libraries published by in 2012 by Neal-Schuman, now part of ALA TechSource . He regularly teaches workshops and gives presentations at library conferences on a wide range of topics. He has been an invited speaker for many library conferences and workshops throughout the United States and internationally. Marshall Breeding held a variety of positions for the Vanderbilt University Libraries in Nashville, TN from 1985 through May 2012, including as Director for Innovative Technologies and Research as the Executive Director the Vanderbilt Television News Archive. Breeding was the 2010 recipient of the LITA LITA/Library Hi Tech Award for Outstanding Communication for Continuing Education in Library and Information Science.
  • Rosalia da Garcia, Managing Director, SAGE Publishing Asia-PacificAs the Managing Director and Head of Sales & Marketing, SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd, Rosalia is responsible for the strategic direction of textbook and library sales, as well as development and marketing within the Asia Pacific region. Her role also involves cooperating with our partners and about the future of big data and publishing including Open Access. Rosalia also sits on the board of directors of SAGE Asia-Pacific. She is passionate about publishing and which she sees as a means of educating the future leaders and researchers of the world.
    Rosalia has previously worked for McGraw Hill, Pearson Education, Wiley and Elsevier and has experience in various aspects of publishing; from customer service and acquiring journals, books and journals/library sales to marketing and foreign rights management.
  • Marti Heyman, Executive Director of Metadata Strategy and Operations, OCLCMarti Heyman has extensive and diverse experience utilizing information science techniques and methodologies to develop effective, sustainable solutions to meet the information, content, and knowledge management needs of a broad range of organizations, including manufacturing, e-business, professional services, enterprise software, publishing, and library data & services. She earned her MLIS and MBA degrees from Drexel University in Philadelphia, where she has been an adjunct professor teaching courses on content representation and management of information organizations. She is currently Executive Director Metadata Strategy & Operations at OCLC in Dublin Ohio.
  • Matt Miller, Pratt Institute’s School of Information, New YorkMatt Miller is a librarian and technologist working in the field of cultural heritage. His effort focuses on facilitating access to culture, history and knowledge through the utilization of emerging technologies and tools. His work combines software development, linked open data and information visualization with library domain knowledge to enable access and discovery. Matt was part of NYPL Labs at the New York Public Library as Head of Semantic Applications and Data Research. He was a 2017 Research Fellow at Harvard University’s Library Innovation Lab and is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Pratt Institute’s School of Information in New York.
  • Tamar Sadeh, VP Teaching and Learning Solutions, Ex LibrisWith a degree in computer science and mathematics, Tamar Sadeh began her career developing search engines for structured and unstructured data. At Ex Libris, a ProQuest company, Tamar has taken an active role in the definition and marketing of the company’s various technologies since she joined in 1999. Tamar holds a doctorate from City University London’s School of Informatics and is the author of various publications in the area of library information systems.
    In parallel to her work at Ex Libris, Tamar is a narrator for audiobooks at the Central Library for the Blind.