Emerging Technologies and Services Committee Annual Report 2019

submitted by Jonathan Manton

Current Roster

  • Amy Jackson (2017-2024 – incoming chair)
  • Jonathan Manton (2016-2020)
  • Beth Thompson (2019-2023)
  • Michelle Urberg (2017-2021)
  • Melanie Zeck (2017-2021)

List of Previous Goals and Progress Made

  1. Wikipedia Edit-a-thon
    1. ETSC successfully led the organization of, and fund-raising efforts for, a Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon, held at St. Louis Public Library, MO on February 24, 2019, following the 2019 MLA Annual Meeting. This event focused on training mostly first-time editors, on editing and creating Wikipedia and Wikidata entries for performers and composers from traditionally un(der) represented groups, born in or connected with St. Louis. The event brought together 28 editors, who edited 47 articles, created 6 new articles, made 260 edits to existing articles and contributed over 10000 words to relevant articles. Part of the organization for this event included applying for and successfully obtaining a Rapid Grant from the Wikimedia Foundation to cover overhead costs for the event, which included free childcare for attendees.
  1. Blogs
    1. ETSC agreed at their 2018 Business Meeting in Portland, OR that each member of the committee would contribute at least one blog post to the MLA Blog over the coming year. These blogs will be focused on emerging technology developments that might be of interest to the MLA membership, including Project Management tools, captioning for streaming video, Optical Music Recognition, and the pros and cons of cloud vs network storage options. Unfortunately, the committee has not been able to find the bandwidth to create these posts yet, but hope to start publishing them soon.
  1. Handover documentation from new chairs
    1. An administrative goal for ETSC in the coming year (carried over from the previous year) will be to create detailed handover documentation for future chairs of the committee, to get them up to speed as quickly as possible on the committee’s current work and structure.

List of Future Goals

  1. TechHub 2020
    • The committee is currently working on its accepted session for the 2020 Annual Meeting – TechHub. This drop-in session will incorporate a variety of bar height tables at which MLA members can get quick informal tutorials on various digital tools or on the spot consultancy about Digital Scholarship / Humanities projects or ideas. Participants can come and go and all tutorials will be offered on demand.The session will be led by a mix of librarians as well as students and emerging professionals, who will lead discussions at the tables. The workshop instructions will incorporate the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education to legitimize the application of learning and content goals across the subdisciplines in the musical academy. Attendees will gain knowledge of digital tools and receive one-on-one consultation and tutorials with tools they may have not yet experienced, or may have questions about. Facilitators will familiarize themselves with strategies that can be employed as they pursue vocational trajectories associated with music. TechHub is jointly sponsored by ETSC and the Music Library Students & Emerging Professionals Interest Group (MLSEP)
    • This events supports MLA’s efforts to Expand Membership Opportunities at All Levels of the Association through engagement with MLSTEP
  2. MLA Emerging Technologies and Services Committee Survey
    • The committee is also working on a survey to send to the general membership soliciting feedback on future continuing education programming. The survey will collect information about the membership’s current expertise with emerging technologies and services, as well as general topics and specific software packages that members are interested in receiving additional training.