It is ironic that I pushed blogging so hard at this year’s VRD and didn’t actually do any blogging during the conference…well, a few StoryStarter posts. I wanted to give some more information on my last post and the status of VRD 2006 (post to Dig_Ref soon).
The VRD conferences have been part of an ongoing contract with the U.S. Department of Education (the Education Digital Library Initiative). This contract ended in June 2005. This funding paid for program development and staff time. OCLC joined the contract in 2002 and has handled the logistics of the conference (they have always insisted they have nothing to do with the program to avoid any perception of bias, and have been the best partners anyone could ask for). While the conference has always been able to cover its own expenses, OCLC, and this year SU, donated a sizable chunk of staff time to make this happen. With the end of the contract, and a seven year run, we and OCLC have decided it is time to turn the conference over to the virtual reference community.
What does that mean? Well, it means that as a community we need to come up with resources to run VRD 8 if we (the virtual reference community) decide it is worthwhile. We need volunteers to put the program together, we need an organization to handle the logistics (registration, program printing, etc), and we need a place to host 300-400 folks. That could be a hotel, or a campus, or a conference center. Bottom line, we need to come up a with a community and point organization that wants to keep VRD going. This is, by the way, how VRD started. VRD 99 was co-hosted with Harvard and NELINET, 2000 with the University of Washington, and 2001 with Florida State.
Let me be clear, we’re not talking money (that would help), but time. You could volunteer to review papers, or staff the desk, or whatever. If you are in an organization that can provide space, or wants to expand a current virtual reference event to an international audience, that would be great.
In about a week or so OCLC and we are going to schedule a conference call to get together those interested in continuing the conference. If you are interested, please contact either George Needham or me, or watch out for the call information.
I think a VRD 2006 would be great, and I plan on being as involved as this community wants. However, it is time for that community to decide if they need VRD, and if they do, step up.