LITA BlogWeiling Liu, University of Louisville (Kentucky) Session summary: An excellent demonstration of the modular and flexible nature of Drupal, an open-source web content management system. Drupal has featured prominently in library conferences recently; however, one of the strengths of Liu’s presentation was in the two project examples she used: managing news and events web content [...]
“Library 2.0 PDQ: Meeting the Challenges of the Rapid Growth of Distance Learning and Off-site Courses at a University Regional Campus†was presented by John J. Burke and Beth E. Tumbleson from Miami University Middletown in Miami, OH. Miami U’s regional campuses are at the forefront of its distance learning push. During 2007 and 2008, [...]
LITA National Forum 2008 Presenter: Nina McHale, Auraria Library, University of Colorado Denver. The speaker started her presentation by sharing her experience navigating a website with a user with visual disability. She pointed out that even though the information structure on a website makes sense for us (the visual users), it does not necessarily make [...]
Presented by Nicholas Schiller, Washington State University and Carole L. Svensson, University of Washington Session description from the conference program: “If they are not already, video games are becoming as ubiquitous a media as television. Librarians will be better equipped to engage students in the practice of scholarly research if we understand the culture of [...]
This past Spring, our library ‘completed’ what was a fairly significant reorganization. The library formalized relationships with several strategic partners which had been residing in our building. One of the outcomes included bringing together three independent IT departments, which I have been responsible for pulling together. Needless to say, the 2008 LITA Forum session entitled [...]
User-Centered Design for Humanities Collections within a Digital Library – LITA Forum 2008 Mark Phillips and Kathleen Murray, University of North Texas presented jointly on the challenges, goals and outcomes of user-centered design for humanities collections within a digital library. A link to their presentation is here. Mark is the Head of the Digital Projects [...]
The 2008 LITA National Forum opened Friday afternoon with a general opening session remarks by Tim Spalding, founder and developer, of LibraryThing.com. Tim presented What is Social Cataloging and Why Should You Care? (Blogging relatively ‘Live’ thanks to spotty ’free’ wireless, a wired connection in my room, and a charged battery.) I have to admit that I [...]
P. Toby Graham presented an overview of the structure and holdings of the Civil Rights Digital Library, the most comprehensive effort so far to provide digitized material on the civil rights movement. There is a video archive, a learning objects component that provides curricular support, and the portal. The library is based in the University [...]
LibX – Enhancing User Access to Library Resources Annette Bailey, Virginia Tech LibX – A Browser Plugin for Libraries Annette reviewed the history of LibX and the initial motivation behind creating this tool: users were increasingly bypassing the library and using search engines and other online search tools. LibX, as a browser plugin, puts the [...]
Tim Daniels (Evergreen), Diana Weaver (Koha), and Andrew Nagy (VuFind) offered in their respective presentations timelines of various ILS opensource software and the challenges of choosing one and implementing it locally or regionally (consortia). All three pointed out the financial benefits of using open source software as well as the ability of institutions who use [...]