We had an overflow crowd interested in the how and why of setting up library blogs come to the LITA sponsored program Next Stop Blogging.
Author: Rick Roche
Aaron the Librarian and Others at the Back of the Crowded Room
Overflow at Next Stop Blogging Program
LITA Bloggers Confer in the Blogging Room
LITA President's Program: Internet Culture: What Do We Know About User Behavior?
Sunday, June 25, 4-5 pm in the Sheraton New Orleans A good crowd appeared for the LITA President’s Program: Internet Culture: What Do We Know About User Behavior? despite some location confusion. The conference program guide correctly identified the location as the Sheraton New Orleans on page 34 but misdirected readers to the Marriott across the street on page 136. I discovered this by going to the Marriott first. LITA President Patrick J. Mullen introduced Cathy De Rosa from the OCLC Online Computer Library Center and John B. Horrigan of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Both discussed results from demographic research conducted by their organizations. De Rosa’s Powerpoint presentation was much like the good new/bad news routine on the old Hee Haw television program (LITA is going to Nashville this fall). De Rosa’s good news: People still value libraries. 55 per cent say they checked out a book…
Your Library's Intranet: The Hidden Tool, Not So Sexy, But Oh So Satisfying
Sunday, June 25, 1:30-3:30 pm The portions are too large. This can be said when your red beans and rice comes with two fried pork chops and a big pile of onion rings. It can also be said of the presentation Your Library’s Intranet: The Hidden Tool, Not So Sexy, But Oh So Satisfying. Everything was good, but there was too much of it. The three speakers covered a lot of the same ground. By the time I left I was thoroughly convinced of the usefulness of Intranets. I was also ready to flee. To their credit the speakers gave us views of different approaches to building Intranets. Alvaro Meythaler of the Phoenix Public Library showed a model that emphasizes supporting the library staff. Its objectives are 1) that it be easy to use, 2) that it function as a content management system, and 3) that it be account based….
Downloadable Books, Audio and Video: One Experience
Users of downloadable eBooks and audio books want many of the same titles as print readers, according to Michelle Jeske of the Denver Public Library. In her presentation Downloadable Books, Audio, and Video: One Experience, she reported that DPL is a large customer of downloadable materials and it foresees an increasing demand for them. Being one of the first customers of eBooks from netLibrary, starting in 2000, DPL has found that service both useful and frustrating. At this point DPL owns most of the netLibrary titles, but it will not be adding any more; the difficult user authentication process and the inability to customize the service to DPL’s needs has led the library to decide that there is little future in the contract. DPL has signed on with Overdrive, which has more bestselling materials and is more user friendly; users can enter their library card numbers and do NOT have…
The Michigan eLibrary: A Statewide Gateway to Library Materials
The references in this piece to Illinois are my comments. The speakers never mentioned Illinois. Anne Donohue and Debbi Schaubman of the Michigan Library Consortium spoke today on the new developments at the Michigan eLibrary, commonly known as MeL. Begun as a gopher at the University of Michigan in 1993, the web site has gone through many phases and now has several important services for the people of Michigan. The newest are MeLCat, a statewide library catalog, and MeLDelivery, a statewide delivery service. MeL also has a new user-friendly design. Though I reside in Illinois, I have been using the Reference Desk at MeL for years; as a reference librarian I have answered numerous reference questions with its links to free web sources. I always look on the MeL Databases with envy; the Michigan State Library provides many more databases for its residents than the Illinois State Library and makes…
Presidential End of Term Web Harvest: Lessons Learned by Mark Phillips
In a meeting room far, far away… Mark Phillips from the University of North Texas Libraries spoke to a small gathering of LITA librarians who found their way to the remote Convention Center Meeting Room C1+C4 about web harvesting government information. If you imagine that it is a simple thing to do, you are wrong! Why would you even consider harvesting data from government websites? 96 percent of federal government information is now digital and much of it is not archived; much of it is disappearing at the direction of bureaucrats who do not know or follow any archiving directives. The University of North Texas Libraries (UNT Libraries) was contracted by the Government Printing Office (GPO) in 1997 to begin harvesting the web pages of government commissions that were filing final reports and agencies whose functions were ending. The result is the CyberCemetery, which archives the websites of 42 defunct…
LITA Forum and the Art Connection
There is an art opportunity in San Jose.