NeoArch

Knoxville's a nice place. I really do love the city. The people here nearly always seem hospitable. Last night ELUNA provided supper. They had barbecue. My library director is laughing as he reads this. He knows my opinions on barbecue. No, they did not have mustard sauce. They did, however, have ribs. I was kinda hoping they would cater in from Buddy's BBQ, my favorite Knoxville establishment, but this was good, and I appreciated the sacrifices that ELUNA, the UT staff, and especially the pigs made for our little get together.

To demonstrate Knoxville's hospitality, here is a photo I took with my phone from inside Neyland Stadium last night.

The gate was open and I wandered in. I think they were doing some cleaning. It was kinda nice being able to reminisce about USC beating the Vols there this past year. I almost–almost, mind you–began singing "Amazing Grace" again. I refrained. For those of you who are not familiar with South Carolina's oft ill-fated football history, 2005 was the first time that USC had beat the Vols since 1992. The band played "Amazing Grace" after the game. That's southern culture, folks.

Some of the people I met with during the second session today might have understood what I am talking about. I attended the Theological Librarians Special Interest Group. It was a nice group of folks. Andrew Keck from Duke chairs the group. There were four of us, plus a rep from EL named Chris Holly. We talked about several topics: whether anyone was using SDI (no one really is), some of the changes that will take place in MetaLib version 4, a free journal list we would like to see included in SFX, and the inventory process that is taking place at Union in Richmond.

One of the more interesting topics that came up in the group was the idea for an online script repository for Ex Libris customers. I said that I thought it would be nice if Ex Libris would put up a wiki that could contain all types of scripts that EL users create. We have a few in house scripts we could contribute, as do the other participants from these libraries. I think Chris mentioned that this might be a better project for ELUNA itself to undertake. I would love to see a wiki like this. I think useful scripts would get to EL users more quickly this way. It would especially benefit libraries with less resources like the ones in our small theological SIG. I would love to get my hands on scripts that guys at larger libraries at Michigan and MIT developed. Hey, there are general script libraries all over the web. Why not create an "ELUNA scriptorium." You could even call it El Scriptorium. That sounds rather festive–or deified.

I also attended the meeting of the X-services focus group. I was hoping to learn more about X-services. I actually learned more about the focus group. Ed Gomes from Duke did an excellent job of keeping the discussion flowing, and he seemed very open to tweaking the way the group works in order to make their planning and development more transparent to more members of ELUNA. I really did not learn that much about X-services, but hopefully I will have a chance to do that later. Well, lunch break is ending. Back to the sessions.