Emerging Technologies and Services Committee Annual Report 2018

submitted by Jonathan Manton, Chair

Current Roster

  • Elizabeth Berndt-Morris
  • Katie Buehner, Ex-officio
  • Joy Doan
  • Amy Jackson
  • Jonathan Manton, Chair
  • Michelle Urberg
  • Melanie Zeck

List of Previous Goals and Progress Made

N/A

List of Future Goals

  • The ETSC’s main focus over the next 6 months will be the successful planning of the Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon following the MLA Annual Meeting in St. Louis.

  • 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.

  • 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.

    • The ETSC continues to align with the current MLA Strategic Plan through the goals of value to the profession, education, and advocacy. The committee’s work includes disseminating information on the latest trends, tools, services, and developments relating to solutions and systems used by libraries and librarians, with special attention to their handling of music materials, incorporating a balance of public services and technical services aspects. The committee also acts as an expert body to help educate members on use or adoption of these various emerging tools or services. Finally, the committee works to advocate for standards and best practices related to these emerging tools and services.