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National Library News |
by André Paul,
Acquisitions and Bibliographic Services
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The Association pour l’avancement des sciences et des techniques de la documentation (ASTED), together with the Association du personnel des services documentaires scolaires, held its annual conference in Montreal from November 4 to 7,1998. The theme of this year’s conference was "Contact", the aim being to establish connections and share knowledge. Several National Library staff participated and operated one of the 67 booths at the conference.
Professional association conferences offer excellent opportunities for networking with our direct clients and the intermediaries who offer services to users and researchers throughout the country. Our representatives at this conference were kept very busy explaining our services and answering questions posed by information professionals.
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Our participation began in the conference’s opening minutes. A concert given by the VocalPop Ensemble, ASTED launched the 21st edition of the Dewey Decimal Classification (french version). Gwynneth Evans, Director General of National and International Programs, thanked the main partners in the project and spoke of their close cooperation in bringing this important work to fruition. The Library provided considerable human resources required for the revision of the translation of a work that is extremely useful to documentation information professionals.
During the conference, a three-part technical workshop gave participants a good look at three National Library products and services. The first presented the all-new Canadiana: The National Bibliography on CD-ROM. Marie-Josée Tolszczuk of Reference and Information Services explained the content of the product, and the research and display methods available. The second part dealt with the harmonization of MARC formats between Canada and the United States. Nathalie Ebacher talked about the implementation of the new format (MARC 21) and the existence of a Web page dedicated to the MARC format. The last part dealt with the Directory of Special Collections of Research Value. Gwynneth Evans presented a general overview of this new directory, which will be accessible on the Library’s Web site in the spring of 1999. In addition, Céline Gendron, of Research and Information Services, conducted a workshop on the popular Read Up On It program; she introduced the 1998 kit, Experience the Adventure!, and the program’s Web site.
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Numerous current clients and potential users visited our kiosk, gathering information on one or another of our services or seeking demonstrations of one of the following services: Canadiana on CD-ROM, Access AMICUS, resAnet, our Web site and the Répertoire de vedettes-matière. The questions raised and the interest shown indicated that documentary as well as technical services are of continuing interest to library personnel. These meetings also give our clients the opportunity to comment on our services. We then pass on their observations to the appropriate members of staff in the Library.
As usual, we conducted the ever-popular draws for products and product-related articles, including T-shirts printed in honour of ASTED’s 25th anniversary. They depict La connaissance by Alfred Pellan on the front and a tribute to ASTED’s anniversary on the back. We also took the opportunity to present samples of these unique T-shirts to the permanent staff of ASTED: Louis Cabral, Marie Touchette and Suzanne Lapierre; and to the ASTED conference coordinator, Colette Rivet, in recognition and appreciation of their ongoing efforts on behalf of ASTED.