Tuesday, March 6, 2007 9:00 a.m. “Science Wars: The Next Generation” James Boyle, William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law, Duke University, and co-founder of Center for the Study of Public Domain, is a member of the Creative Commons Board and one of the principal organizers of Science Commons. Theme is technology has multiplied materials from which scientific research is done, however, the retrieval, access, and use of materials has not kept up. We need to put same energy into facilitating scientific inquiry that we put into Myspace, etc. Who is responsible for this and how can it be done. Copyright basics are not amenable to the networked age – when you put something into mildly original form, it’s copyrighted, and all rights are reserved. This is problematic to open access now because all your material can be so widely available and known. Yet no one has permission to do anything…
Author: Pat Ensor
De Lange Conference on Emerging Libraries: Notes, Part 2
11:30 a.m. “Born Digital: Egypt’s New Bibliotheca Alexandrina†Noha Adly, Director of Information and Communication Technology Department and International School of Information Science, research center, at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Doing an incredible amount of creation of digital libraries, especially on Egyptian topics. Web site is http://www.bibalex.org/English/index.aspx. 2:00 p.m. “Transforming the National Library for 21st Century Service†Deanna B. Marcum, associate librarian for library services, Library of Congress Examining the myths versus the realities about the Library of Congress. Is it a library of last resort or first stop? What obligations does it have related to national bibliographic control? What is the role of the space and how much does it define the LoC? What is their preservation role? Do they focus on heavily used materials or more rare and specialized ones? Found that American Memory Project wasn’t reaching the audience they hoped for – i.e., K-12 sector. Too hard to…
De Lange Conference on Emerging Libraries: Notes, Part 1
This week, I (as well as other LITA members — it was like a reunion!) attended the De Lange Conference on Emerging Libraries at Rice University in Houston. It took place on March 5 – 7, but I only attended it through midday on Tuesday the 6th. The stated point of the conference was: Rice University’s 2007 De Lange Conference Aims to Describe How Knowledge Will Be Accessed, Discovered, and Disseminated in the Age of Digital Information. Monday, March 5, 2007 9:00 a.m. “Open Access Education – Building Communities and Sharing Knowledge” Richard Baraniuk is the Victor E. Cameron Professor of Engineering at Rice University and the founder of Connexions (cnx.org). Presentation on how open access movement is affecting education, especially libraries. Got frustrated with “curricular stovepiping†– lack of integration between disciplines and levels. Found difficulty in engaging students in interactive exploration. Difficult to build communities, collaboration between faculty…
Tool Kit for the Expert Web Searcher now a wiki
As some of you may have noticed, I have had trouble keeping the Tool Kit for the Expert Web Searcher current. In the process of preparing for my latest update, I found that the wiki function had become available, and the Tool Kit seemed ideal for that — um, once Bonnie Postlethwaite suggested it to me, anyway. So here it is: Tool Kit for the Expert Web Searcher. The Web page won’t be taken down, at least for quite a while, because the URL is pretty widespread, and I want people to be able to find the new version. Soon, a cross link should be on the old page. Because of the nature of wikis, this is really an experiment, and I’m kinda skeered about what’s going to happen. I want to open the Tool Kit to the expertise and contributions of others; at the same time, I want it…
LITA Membership Development Committee Meeting
Sunday, June 25th, 2006 8-10am Hilton New Orleans Riverside – Burgundy Introductions – Attending: Pat Ensor, Mike Bolam, Kate Montgomery, Richard Kim, James Longwell-Stevens, Jennifer Weintraub, Kari Swanson, Howard Spivak, Christina Biles, Bonnie Postlethwaite. Howard Spivak was the only member present who was outgoing, so pat gave him his certificate of recognition for his service to the committee and thanked him. Approval of minutes – see http://tinyurl.com/n3vpf; minutes were approved. Membership Report: 2006 membership is 4056, down 3.05% from 2005 (at Midwinter, it was down 7.21% year over year) Items of interest from ALA Membership Committee (pat attended part of their Saturday meeting) – They and BARC are going to be occupied with following a Council directive to project the resources that would be needed to do a study of changing to a graduated dues structure based on salary. Then there will be a decision on whether or not to…
Board of Directors Discussion on Membership Recruitment
The LITA Board of Directors usually devotes at least an hour of its Saturday meeting to discussion of an issue important to LITA. For this meeting, it was membership recruitment. Discussion was focused around these issues: Who do we want to recruit? How do we attract members of other ALA divisions? How do we target the different audiences we want? Andrew Pace raised the issue of library school students: ALA is interested in this as a potential focus, and LITA is definitely accepting of “non-l-word†people, something that library school students have expressed concerns about. Library schools are giving grants to attend conferences and join organizations. Mary Taylor reminded the group that LITA gives free membership to Spectrum Scholarship and LITA Scholarship winners. Another group LITA has talked about targeting is non-MLS IT people who work in library environments. Bonnie Postlethwaite and Susan Logue have been having conversations with EDUCAUSE…
Membership Development Committee meeting — y'all come!
Want to be considered for future appointment to the LITA Membership Development Committee? Wonder why we don’t have the wisdom to do things your way? Come and tell us about it! You’re welcome to attend the meeting tomorrow morning. Yes, it’s at 8am — do you have the right stuff?! Sunday, June 25th, 2006 8-10am Hilton New Orleans Riverside – Burgundy (Street Level Floor, next to the Grand Ballroom) Partial agenda: Membership Report: 2006 membership is 4056, down 3.05% from 2005 (at Midwinter, it was down 7.21% year over year) Reports on Open House, Happy Hour, LITA Booth, Board discussion NMRT – pat attending NMRT’s student recruitment reception and has been appointed NMRT/LITA MDC liaison by NMRT. Another recruiting opportunity was the Spectrum Scholars Leadership Development Institute Professional Options Fair, attended by pat. Follow-up on other items from MW 2006 – Forum (Biles); EDUCAUSE (Hollar); public library IG (Postlethwaite) MDC…
Coming to you live from MCC 274!
Well, we’ve got a bloggers’ room at Annual Conference! It has separate tables and chairs that I’m sure we’ll end up pushing together when more than one person shows up. And it has power cords. All is right with the world. I’ve only done one “conference” thing so far, but I want to share my excitement about it. Right before every Annual Conference, there is a Spectrum Scholars’ Leadership Institute. I was fortunate enough to be involved in planning it a couple of years ago, so I was glad to participate in their Professional Options Fair last evening. I got to represent LITA as well as discuss academic librarianship, with the eager, new Spectrum Scholarship recipients. Talking with them excited me anew about the thrilling world of librarianship we are moving into. Several of the scholars are interested in LITA and hope to be able to make it to the…
The LITA Town Meeting
Well, first of all, if you were at the conference and not at the Town Meeting, you missed a great food spread. There was real food, folks — breakfast tacos, yogurt, fruit, bagels, pastries, AND a variety of juices. While we ate, we got to view a photo montage of past involved LITA members who hadn’t ponied up when the LITA Office offered to destroy all negatives. Pat Mullin, LITA President, addressed a filled room (we know the value of free food) to note the launch of the LITA 40th Anniversary Celebration and to present a plaque to Pat Harris in recognition of her long stint of excellent service at NISO. She’s retiring after 20 years, and those of us who have worked with her can hardly imagine information standards work without her. I bet she has no trouble imagining it at all. Bonnie Postlethwaite, President-Elect, took over to provide…
LITA Membership Development Committee Meeting
This was my first meeting as a member of the LITA Membership Development Committee; I’ll be chairing it after Annual Conference, so I have a lot of interest in getting the word out about what we do, as well as seeking input about how to get more members and better retain the ones we have. See the end of the post for the attendees list — maybe you know someone on the committee you can give direct input to. Maybe you’ve got some ideas and you’d like to be on this committee — if so, contact me, Pat Ensor (ensorp@uhd.edu), or Bonnie Postlethwaite. Meeting notes: ALA Membership Committee did support a resolution in recognition of Gerald Hodges upon his death. It also voted in favor of the ALA dues raise. From August 2005 to November 2005, LITA membership is down 1.55%. ALA overall is up, as are PLA and the…