Reminder: Announcing Nylink's Virtual Reference Conference 10/9/ 02

[Neale, Jane]

Dear Web4lib members,
It's your last chance to register for the Nylink Virtual Reference
Conference!  

Please join Nylink at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City
on October 9th, 2002, for a conference on virtual reference service
featuring a great series of well-known speakers:
Keeping Reference Relevant: Is Virtual Reality?
Fashion Institute of Technology
Seventh Avenue at 27th Street, New York, NY
October 9th, 2002
9:30 am - 4:30 pm
Are you ready for reference of the virtual variety? Virtual reference has
become an important innovation and decision for many libraries. With the
growth of electronic information and the World Wide Web instant reference
delivered remotely has become a user expectation and a library goal. This
raises many questions and issues for libraries: why do it? what are the
options? what is the decision-making process? what are the training and
other policy issues? Finally, now that you have it, what will you do with
it?
Please plan to join us on October 9th at the Fashion Institute of Technology
in New York City to hear our speakers address all of these issues and more
concerning the planning, implementation and maintenance of a virtual
reference service. 

We are pleased to have Anne Lipow, Library Solutions Institute and Press;
Susan McGlamery, Coordinator for Reference Services for the Metropolitan
Cooperative Library System (Greater Los Angeles Area); Tracy Strobel, Web
Site Coordinator, Cleveland Public Library; Maureen Morris and Virginia
Cole, Reference & Digital Services Librarians, Cornell University and Edana
Cichanowicz, Development Coordinator, Reference Services & New Technologies,
Suffolk Cooperative Library System, as our speakers. 

Anne and Susan will speak about "Why and How to Do Virtual Reference",
addressing what forces are driving the changes in reference, their impact on
libraries, how libraries and reference services are changing and the
nitty-gritty of launching a virtual reference service. They will also talk
about the need for a new mindset, new roles, and new skills necessary for
the transition. Finally, how does all this relate to you and your library?

In Tracy's talk, "Publicize or Perish" she'll address the impact of
marketing the service on service usage and success, whether you want to
begin with a slow start and gradual growth or with a bang!. The CPL &
CLEVNET Consortium's KnowItNow24x7 launched their service with an aggressive
marketing program.  Learn about their launch, continuing publicity, and how
it impacts service usage.
Virginia and Maureen will be talking about "Coast to Coast Collaboration:
Cornell University and University of Washington's Shared Chat Reference
Pilot". In this talk they'll address what it takes to provide effective
reference to users outside one's own institutions. They'll talk about users'
needs and expectations as well as the issues and challenges of chat
technologies.
Edana will talk about "Live Chat Reference from a Customer Service
Perspective", dealing with the evolution of  the Suffolk Cooperative Library
System's virtual reference program. She will address how they gradually
built, tested and tweaked the program into existence. She will also tell us
about the inevitability of digital collections evolving into digital service
via interactivity and the importance of an "incubator mentality" - always in
a testing mode. 

Please visit http://nylink.suny.edu/vref02.htm
<http://nylink.suny.edu/vref02.htm>  for more information and to register. 

We hope to see many of you there!

Jane



Jane C. Neale
Information Technology Coordinator
Nylink
State University Plaza
Albany, NY 12246
e-mail: nealej at nylink.suny.edu <mailto:nealej at libmail.sysadm.suny.edu> 
T (800) 342-3353
F (518) 432-4346