LITA Blog

LITA President-Elect Michelle Frisque invites LITA members to the LITA Town Meeting, Monday, January 26, 2009, 8:00 am - 10:00 am, Colorado Convention Center, Korbel Ballroom 2C.

Meet your fellow LITA members, and participate in a conversation about what role LITA plays in the larger information, association, community-building, and technology- related landscape. What makes LITA unique? Special guests from other organizations that are involved in the technology related landscape will also attend and participate in the discussion.

Rick Lugg and associates from R2 have graciously offered their services and will be facilitating the discussion.

Other participating organizations include:
American Society for Information Sciences & Technology (ASIS&T) http://www.asis.org/
Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alcts/alcts.cfm
Digital Library Federation http://www.diglib.org/
OCLC http://www.oclc.org
Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/rusa/index.cfm
TAIGA http://www.taigaforum.org/

Friday, January 23, 2009, 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm

Please join the LITA Membership Development Committee and members from around the country for networking, good cheer, and great fun! Expect lively conversation and excellent drinks.

Lodo’s Bar & Grill
1946 Market Street
Denver, CO, 80202
303.293.8555

LITA is offering User Centered Design for Digital Projects prior to ALA’s Midwinter meeting in Denver on Friday, January 23, 2009, 9:00 am - 5:00 pm.

Learn about design process for managing digital projects in libraries, usability theory and methodology. Receive practical steps to implement a design process in your own library plus a copy of presenter Brenda Reeb’s latest book, Design Talk: Understanding the roles of usability practitioners, web designers, and web developers in user centered web design.

You do not need to attend the Midwinter Meeting to register for the workshop. Visit the ALA Conference Services Web site to register: http://www.ala.org/ala/conferencesevents/upcoming/midwinter/2009/registration.cfm

To add a workshop to your existing Midwinter registration:
Call ALA Registration at 1-800-974-3084
OR use your log in and password to access your existing Midwinter registration using the online registration form: http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=Events&Template=/CFApps/Experient/Redirect.cfm
Add events in the “Your Events” section; check out and pay for the events you’ve added.

Seven of the 17 LITA Interest Groups responded to repeated requests for their plans at the 2009 ALA Midwinter Meeting.

You’ll find those plans here, on the LITA Wiki.

One of the other ten IGs has since noted that it’s not meeting at all during Midwinter.

That leaves nine unaccounted for–nine IGs for which one of the following must be true:

• The IG doesn’t actually exist, or has no chair, or the chair never reported an email address to LITA.
• The chair won’t deal with email or lists because, you know, they’re so 20th century.
• The (repeated) request to provide a one-paragraph email response required an unconscionable amount of effort and was ignored.
• The IG has no plans.
• The IG has no interest in attracting new members.

Which of those is true for each of the nine remaining non-responding IGs? Your guess is as good as mine.

NOTE: Don’t send me more plans. Update the wiki directly. It’s not that hard.

LITABlog is now running the most current version of Wordpress, version 2.7 (codename Coltrane). The backend look and feel of the blog is a little different in this version, so if anyone needs any help navigating, don’t hesitate to let us know in the comments.

Thanks!

Is there a resource or person that you turn to time and again to learn about or brush up on your tech skills? Is there a librarian or professor that you learn from who deserves to have her or his work recognized? Please consider nominating this person for the 2009 LITA/Library Hi-Tech Award. Use this web form or send nomination materials via email to cindi dot trainor at eku dot edu.

The deadline for nominations has been extended to December 15, 2008. The award will be given at the 2009 ALA Annual Conference in Chicago. Read the official award press release, including a list of past winners, on LITA’s website.

This is still a while off but I thought I’d put out an initial request before the holidays officially begin. It’s a request for ideas and suggestions for the meeting of the LITA Drupal4Lib Interest Group at ALA in Chicago.

LAST JUNE/JULY IN ANAHEIM

This year, we had a pretty nice BoF with librarians discussing Drupal projects they were working on. We also had a round-robin Q&A with librarians new to Drupal who were thinking about maybe using it but wanting more information.

Here’s my write-up of the event: “Drupal4Lib BoF at ALA Anaheim”

ALA 2009 IN CHICAGO

So next year, happily enough, we’ll be meeting in Chicago (my hometown) and I wanted to poll people to see what they thought.

A BoF is pretty nice but we could just as easily have a speaker or two, or investigate an interesting theme or topic.

Time-wise, I don’t think we’d get more than an hour and a half — two hours max. Fun things might include specific modules for library application, using Drupal in a library environment — anything really.

So if you have any ideas or suggestions, if you’d like to speak or would like to see someone else speak, if there’s a theme or topic you’d like to investigate, please leave a comment here.

With just a little work, I’m sure we can arrange something that our fellow Drupal4Lib’ers would look forward to.

Thanks for any help,

LEO

(2008-09 Chair of the LITA Drupal4Lib IG)

This is the third in a series of messages regarding voting pools for NISO standards reviews, transmitted from Cindy Hepfer, ALA Voting representative to NISO.

The text of this new ballot sent to NISO voting members is as follows:

“This is the third group of standards due for five-year reviews for which NISO will be issuing ballots. In accordance with NISO procedures, we are offering you the option of joining the voting pool for two of those standards that are under the responsibility of the Content and Collection Management (CCM) Topic Committee.”

[Full disclosure: I'm a member of the NISO Content and Collection Management Topic Committee.]

Joining the voting pool allows ALA to vote on the standard and provide comments. Once the voting pools have been formed, separate ballots for each standard will be issued only to those who have joined the pool. NISO needs at least 15% of the voting membership to join the pool. If less than 15% express interest in the standard, it may be considered by the Board for administrative withdrawal.

The two standards in this voting pool ballot are:

ANSI/NISO Z39.2 - 1994 (R2001), Information Interchange Format
http://www.niso.org/standards/z39-2-1994R2001/

ANSI/NISO Z39.47 - 1993 (R2003), Extended Latin Alphabet Coded Character Set for Bibliographic Use (ANSEL)
http://www.niso.org/standards/z39-47-1993r2003/

Since these are both important seminal standards for libraries, ALA will opt in to the pools unless a compelling case is presented to Cindy by Dec. 18, 2008 (the ballot closes Christmas week).

Diane I. Hillmann
LITA Standards Coordinator

Ha, I knew that headline would get your attention! But before you panic, let me reassure you, DC is not going away, or anything of the sort. This latest of notifications from Cindy Hepfer, ALA Voting representative to NISO, has to do with ISO/FDIS 15836, The Dublin Core metadata element set. To clarify, this is the Simple DC set, the original 15 elements only, recently revised and available in a new NISO version. The balloting by ISO is the last stage in making the standard versions consistent with one another.

The introduction in the standard reads as follows:

“In 2006, the DCMI Usage Board undertook an editorial review of terms in the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (DCMES) in order to clarify intended semantics and bring the wording of their definitions and usage comments into line with the language of the DCMI Abstract Model [DCAM]. A set of proposed changes was posted for public comment from August 28 to September 25, 2006. A face-to-face Usage Board meeting in Manzanillo, Mexico, on September 30, 2006, resulted in the publication on December 18, 2006, of a decision text, a response to comments, and revised terms documentation. This revision of the original ANSI/NISO Z39.85 standard that was issued in 2001 corresponds to version 1.1 of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative website that resulted from the editorial review and public comment period described above. All changes made to terms of the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set since 2001 have been reviewed by a DCMI Usage Board in the context of the DCMI Namespace Policy. The namespace policy describes how DCMI terms are assigned Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) and sets limits on the range of editorial changes that may be made to the labels, definitions and usage comments associated with existing DCMI terms.”

The announcement indicates:

“At the TC46/SC4 Stockholm meeting, it was resolved that a revision to ISO 15386, The Dublin Core metadata element set, would be released for a fast track revision, to ensure consistency with ANSI/NISO Z39.85:2007. Accordingly, this revision is being balloted immediately at the Final Draft International Standard stage. This is the first and most likely only ballot we will receive on this standard’s revision.”

[Full disclosure, I was a member of the DC Usage Board through DC-2008 in Sept. and participated in the revisions noted above.]

Cindy reminds us that feedback to NISO can include ballot options of Yes, No or Abstain, but that anything but Yes requires comment. ALA is, as usual, not voting on the standard itself but rather is providing feedback to NISO as to whether to approve or disapprove the standard.

In this case, though the usual drill is to contact Cindy directly for a copy of the standard, all the changes are reflected on the DCMI website (http://dublincore.org/documents/dces). If you want access to the revision document provided by ISO, you can apply directly at HSLcindy@buffalo.edu (I’d appreciate it if you would copy me at metadata.maven@gmail.com on your request so I can track responses to these announcements).

The deadline for input to Cindy is no later than: Friday, Dec. 12, 2008.

Diane I. Hillmann
LITA Standards Coordinator

Our busy ALA Voting representative to NISO, Cindy Hepfer, has notified us of a systematic review ballot of the published standard, ISO 6630:1986, Bibliographic control characters.

According to the scope note in the standard:

“This International Standard contains a set of 15 bibliographic control characters for use in cataloguing rules, filing rules and indexing rules of the countries and language groups of the bibliographic community. The bibliographic control character set is an extension of the basic control character set defined by IS0 646 (IS0 escape sequence ESC 2/l 4/O). This International Standard consists of a code table and a legend specifying each bibliographic control character and indicating its code position. In addition, it includes explanatory notes, in which the functional characteristics of the individual control characters are described in detail. This bibliographic control character set is primarily intended for the interchange of bibliographic information.”

This is another of those situations where ALA advises NISO, and NISO votes. Those wishing to review this standard with an eye to providing feedback to Cindy should apply to her directly at HSLcindy@buffalo.edu (I’d appreciate it if you would copy me at metadata.maven@gmail.com on your request so I can track responses to these announcements).

Cindy also reminds us that in the absence of other recommendations, ALA will recommend that NISO vote to confirm ‘ISO 6630:1986, Bibliographic control characters’ (with comments, if any).

The deadline for input to Cindy is no later than: Monday, Feb. 23, 2009.

Diane I. Hillmann
LITA Standards Coordinator