At the moment in the UK we have an ‘Aleph’ Usergroup and a ‘SFX/MetaLib’ Usergroup. The former is quite formal, and the latter more informal.
With the new arrangements internationally, I do wonder how long this will continue to be practical. It looks like the next AUG and SMUG meetings will be held back-to-back in the UK, with hopefully some overlap discussion.
I’m really in favour of one annual meeting – more conference like really – for all Ex Libris users in the UK – more like the ELUNA conference in the USA, and with the large number of Ex Libris customer’s in the UK, I do think this is a viable suggestion. However, there are practical problems in organising a single large conference, whereas the small AUG-UKI meetings three times a year can be managed more easily perhaps (although finding volunteer sites with big enough venues for this is also a problem sometimes).
I agree that the current arrangements aren’t practical. We need to be careful to ensure that the AUG-UKI and SMUG-UKI groups (future combined group?) cater for all the kinds and levels of staff involved in the process – now much wider than Systems staff e.g. Acquisitions librarians for SFX. This is necessary in order to be inclusive. This would inevitably mean the need for differentiated programmes and the day-long business meeting approach of say AUG-UKI would have to be adapted. That’s why I’d agree it would need to be more like a conference. We’d need to address the funding issue too so we could ensure appropriate venues. Cheers for blogging Owen
[Nick-stuck-at-work-on-final-week-of-RFID-installation-Lewis].