Big huge thanks to Michelle Boule for compiling the large stack of papers and cards into something that resembled an organized mass.

LITA Town Meeting

What does success look like for LITA and it’s members? Mark Beatty, LITA Vice President, gave a quick environmental scan. Then the LITA members at the Town Meeting engaged in small group brain storming and clustered their ideas into categories. Attending members were asked to generate their ideas as a reaction to Mark’s introductory scan, their own current thoughts on the state of libraries and LITA, the LITA strategic plan and a small set of questions about LITA. Details on the group activity are below along with the results.

One of the easiest and interestingly the most significant remarks that could be made about the town meeting is that people had fun. The quite full 80 plus member meeting consisted of the full range of LITA members in length of membership. All ideas were equal. All attendees jumped in and participated equally. All worked to contribute to LITA while exchanging ideas, information, knowledge, opinions and friendship in an open and welcoming social setting. As the results below show the Town Meeting, and it’s fun, in many ways embodied what the attendees said they want LITA to be.

A 25 minute podcast of an interview with Mark Beatty and Michelle Boule after the Town Meeting can be heard at:
http://litablog.org/2007/02/02/town-hall-commentary-from-mark-beatty-and-michelle-boule/

Setting the Environment

The initial theme was ‘Delivering Value to the Membership”

We wanted to gather ideas about LITA including:
What are the indicators of success
What defines value to the membership
What environments do we need to pay attention to
To define it another way. Let’s assume that we are mostly in the business of education of one sort or another and we want to deliver true value to our members. Then what does success look like for LITA and it’s members?
What value would members be getting?
What would motivate members to volunteer?
What would keep volunteers?
What would our menu of services look like?

We want to consider any new ideas in the light of the LITA Strategic Plan:
http://www.ala.org/ala/lita/aboutlita/org/plan.htm

The LITA Vision is:
As the center of expertise about information technology, the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) leads in exploring and enabling new technologies to empower libraries. LITA members use the promise of technology to deliver dynamic library collections and services.

The LITA Mission Statement is:
LITA educates, serves and reaches out to its members, other ALA members and divisions, and the entire library and information community through its publications, programs and other activities designed to promote, develop, and aid in the implementation of library and information technology.

Here are some of the current environment variables that are being talked about for communities and libraries.

Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, October 9, 2006
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html
Most communities and volunteer organizations experience user participation at the rate of what is called the 90-9-1 rule. That is:
90% lurkers
9% occasional contributors and
1% frequent contributors who account for most of the total contributions.

The point of the Nielsen article is that the primary way to shift those percentages to fewer lurkers and more active participants is to ask and implement how can we make it easy to participate? We need to make it easier to contribute. The lower the overhead, the more people will jump through the hoop. In Nielsen’s example, Netflix lets users rate movies by clicking a star rating, which is much easier than writing a natural-language review.

If we look at the current internet usage environment not just lita or only ala, but whole world, then we can glean valuable information from resources like the OCLC environment scan and Pew Internet and American Life studies. These are specifically aimed at youth studies and how can libraries appeal to youngsters as patrons. We can look at these for what librarians and LITA members and volunteers might expect. If we can’t deliver value to this group, as well as everyone else, we’re toast as libraries and as an association.

The OCLC reports identify 4 generations. Both librarians and patrons are fully represented in this wide range.
Traditionalists, pre 1945
Baby Boomers, 1946-1964
Gen X, 1965-1980
Millennials, 1981-1999
Are our previous plans and efforts aimed at older generations and what is known about younger patrons, younger librarians and younger LITA members?

For example according to a study done at Ohio State in the early 1940’s less than 1% of patrons start with the library when looking for information. The vast majority went to friends and family first. In 2003 OCLC found that the vast majority of patrons still start research by asking friends and family members first. Only 1% start with a librarian. In 60 years we’ve made almost no progress.

Note the importance even in the 1940’s of friends, colleagues, community in information seeking. This aligns well with findings from Pew Internet and American Life 2006 Studies specifically about teens. Among the key findings:
• 55% of online teens have created a personal profile online, and
• 55% have used social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook.
• 66% of teens who have created a profile limit access to their profiles.
• 48% of teens visit social networking websites daily or more often;
• 26% visit once a day
• 22% visit several times a day.
• Older girls ages 15-17 are more likely to have used social networking sites and created online profiles
• 70% of older girls have used an online social network compared with
• 54% of older boys, and
• 70% of older girls have created an online profile, while only
• 57% of older boys have done so.
MySpace dominates the social networking world
• 85% of teens who have created an online profile say the profile they use or update most often is on MySpace, while
• 7% update a profile on Facebook.
Teens and Friends on Social Networking Sites
• 91% Stay in touch with friends they see a lot
• 82% Stay in touch with friends they rarely see
• 72% Make plans with their friends

Adult librarians can follow the same patterns, just in older methods. If we are to believe anecdotal evidence and initial reports from ALA, then New Orleans Annual in 2006 was one of the most successful and satisfying conferences ever. Looking at some of the basic circumstances:
• 17,000 attendees in New Orleans v. 27,000 in Chicago the year previous
• Using the convention center for a greater number of meetings compacted the meetings sites
• How does size v. significance measure up
With lower numbers and less geographic spread the ALA population was able to form a closer and more communicative organization. They could accomplish more social networking in less time.

All these indicators start to point at the idea of 3rd Place. In his book “The Great, Good Place,” Ray Oldenburg states that third places are important for community, and establishing feelings of a sense of place. He suggested that we have 3 places to live. Home, work or school and a third place where we go to socialize. In modern North American society did we lose that 3rd space and are internet social software sites an effort to re-introduce social spaces? If parents are worried about the dangers of the world and won’t let kids out on the street on their own how do they maintain social contact with their friends. If library institutions won’t fund conference travel how do librarians establish and maintain colleague and friend relationships?

Group Activity results

With this background the Town Meeting launched into it’s Activity. Here’s what we did:
Snow card technique
• Each table had about 8-10 folks, with a wrangler
• They brain stormed as individuals, and then as a group
• 5+ ideas on above issues
• Then they grouped ideas into categories
The Snow Card technique is designed to generate a great deal of ideas and responses in a very short time. We tried to do some initial sorting into categories at the meeting but everyone was having so much fun coming up with ideas we ran out of time . Barely controlled chaos comes to mind. However Michelle and Mark applied categories and roughly looked for common ideas that were echoed in one way or another. Here’s a listing of those categories and the ideas within them. There was amazing agreement on the categories across groups.

Wifi
• Making it easy for LITA attendees to stay connected w/colleagues regardless of your or their location
Collaboration
• All part of a common theme for interaction, social working opportunities face to face and virtual
Education/Learning
• Better distribution of programs and meetings at conference
• Local regular events
• Online publications
• Timely information
• How can we build a 4 generation website
Emerging Technologies
• Leadership – for the “bleeding edge”
• Identify future trends and what to do about them
• Best practices for REALLY new technologies
Give Us Stuff Category
• t-shirts, t-shirts, t-shirts (they are proud to display LITA branding, set up Café Press and let them buy their own)
Leadership
• Provide opportunities to volunteer and contribute to the profession
• Leadership and development opportunities in LITA
LITA Member Integration
• An amazingly easy to use web interface w/LITA member contact info, committee info, etc and
• Social opportunities
Membership
• Indication of success: membership new and returning
• Never do a survey that requires a reply to the question “How long have you been a member?” — Exclusionary perhaps
• Funny story – didn’t ask length of LITA at meeting intro’s but people did it anyway, please note above 4 generations of members
• Non-intrusive tracking, easy rating stuff (Netflix) better response rate than full surveys
Networking – any venue, virtual or not
• Social networking
• Greet new members more personally
• Encourage the quiet participation
• Social opportunities at conferences
• Expand members numbers
• Social events for networking, loosely organized
Outreach
• LITA partners with state associations for programs
• LITA coordinates all other Division Tech committees
• Support divisions in technology related initiatives
• Better ways to communicate
Quality programming, online, offline, regional and national
• Regional events and online community
• Quality stimulating programming. What’s new? What’s great? What didn’t work?
Publications
• A nifty journal that shows up in my mailbox regularly, with all the latest newest ideas, electronic or print or both
Software development
• Develop open source software for libraries
• Awards for software development, like open source software
• Sponsor grants for development
• Poster sessions on what open source development they’ve done
Technology
• Technology in rooms – easy by default for everyone – full basic load of networking and display etc.
• Wikis on various themes, more collaborative opportunities, set edit levels at Committee and Interest Group members
• Virtual reality – Second Life (create IG?) can have our own LITA floor

As Michelle and Mark noted in the Podcast and general conclusions:

Here’s a story from the meeting. At one point the older hands started talking about a key moment in the history of LITA when members ran the first versions of the ALA conference internet room. From arranging with vendors to share high speed connections, to bringing in PC’s from local libraries, running schedules, creating training sessions for librarians who had never been on the internet before to showing up the day before the conference and running Cat5 cable and hubs to computers. The excitement generated by this story told and shared by many at the Town Meeting came from the shared experience. All LITA members of all sorts pitching in and working together for a common goal doing something they loved. Sharing stories, catching up with friends only seen a couple of times each year. Creating a LITA 3rd Space at conference. Capturing the imagination of new members to create their own stories.

LITA members are involved and ready to jump in and participate. They want community and as such the Happy Hour was mentioned over and over, as well as the Town Meeting breakfast. So if our associations like LITA are 3rd spaces can we deliver a LITA 365 days/year? Can we and should we extend social networking, for example creatie LITA IM chat rooms.

We had all 4 generations in the room as well as a huge range of length of participation in LITA. Fresh newbies to very old hands, all ideas were equal with instant participation, the barriers to participation were low, a flat hierarchy, we tried to make easy and fun to be involved. Modeling what the participants seemed to say they want their organization to be.

Submitted by Mark Beatty, VP/Prez Elect LITA, June 11, 2007.

The group reviewed the list of programs planned for Annual in DC

Evergreen, the Georgia PINES consortium’s open ILS program
Automating metadata creation with open source software. Patrick Yott from Brown.
The next-generation public library website with Drupal. John Blyberg from the Ann Arbor District Library.
Sakai collaboration and learning environment. Joseph Harden from the University of Michigan.
A preconference on using Dotproject for project management, rescheduled because of Katrina.

Jennifer Bowen from the University of Rochester reported on the status of the Extensible Catalog project (XC) and the grant associated with it.

The idea is to create an open source user interface for library catalogs which would work with the library’s ILS system rather than replacing it. The Mellon Foundation grant for 2006-2007 was designed to allow the group to create a project plan, determine requirements, plan the architecture, and explore currently available technologies. The group is developing partnerships with other libraries to create a community of support, with the idea of getting early adopters using each major ILS system–and there is lots of interest in this. There should be news about the renewal of the grant for the next phase by Annual.

There is a working prototype with a faceted browsing interface built on lucene, which the developers have begged her to stop demonstrating.

There was some discussion of creating a Linux distribution with a library focus, and how that might be done. One suggestion was rPath’s rBuilder, which allows you to select packages and create a customized operating system based on Linux. Simon Spero from UNC-Chapel Hill and iBiblio said that hosting, and possibly some processing power, would be available to do that.

Spero also discussed his Fred 2.0 (PDF description) project to harvest Library of Congress authority records, a little about his methods, and a good deal about the legalities involved. There was a collective groan of recognition when he described the difficulty of getting an Innovative catalog to export records in a form he could use. The data will be used for research, but also to provide an authority file to match social networking tags against. This prompted a lively discussion about how it might be useful to others as well.

One of the traditions of the IG is a trip around the room to discuss what kinds of open source attendees are using.

Michigan State is using Drupal as an intranet, as is Washington State; UNC-Chapel Hill is a LAMP shop for web services, using Joomla and other OS stuff, as well as running iBiblio, a major repository for Linux and open data of all types; the University of Washington is exploring the idea of open source for desktop computers; American University is using Dotproject, Greenstone, and an open source tech support referral system; Eastern Illinois University is using the Prospero document delivery system; the University of Hawaii is using Plone for an intranet; the State Library of Washington is using WordPress; the Private Academic Library Network of Indiana runs its help desk on Drupal.

–Chris Strauber, co-chair

Here’s Mark!

So, for the time-pressed, here is a summary of the Top Tech Trends discussion at ALA Midwinter, in the fabulous Spanish Ballroom of the Fairmont Olympic in Seattle.
Present were: Jennifer Ward (the committee chair), Maurice York, Clifford Lynch, Marshall Breeding, and Karen Schneider. Absent speakers were: Roy Tennant, Sarah Houghton-Jan, Eric Lease-Morgan, and Thomas Dowling.

There was much discussion of possible alternatives to the traditional OPAC.
Tennant and Houghton-Jan mentioned OCLC and some version of Worldcat as a potential OPAC for consortia. Schneider questioned the assumption that our primary finding aid should be a locally tweaked dataset, and Breeding commented that the trend is toward national or international aggregations of that data. Pace commented that OCLC’s Pica, in Europe at least, is an ILS for all intents and purposes.

Several panelists mentioned the Evergreen open source ILS project in Georgia, which has been the live ILS for a 250-library consortium since September 2006. That is, a large consortium of public libraries is using a software platform they designed themselves and intend to help other libraries install and support. Breeding commented that this changes the game: For the first time there is a viable non-commercial option if commercial ILS systems continue to stagnate. (Promotional note: come see the program on Evergreen at Annual in DC, sponsored by the Open Source Systems Interest Group–CS, co-chair)

Lynch also wondered whether we were clear enough about what we wanted from a new ILS to get a really good product from anyone; and Pace commented that some of our ILS vendors spent themselves into oblivion building the features we said we wanted. And on open source, Schneider reminded the audience that “free ILS” was like “free kittens” rather than like “free beer”, but she and Breeding agreed that part of the consideration was strategic — that is, what other kinds of things a “free” ILS would make possible.

A second trend was consolidation of ILS and publishing companies. Breeding commented that the new owners of traditional ILS vendors tend to be private equity companies, which may result in a more long-term view of things — and hopefully better products. Pace commented that the scale of media company mergers dwarfs that of ILS vendors, mentioning that Ovid had recently laid off a large number of people because of extremely expensive fluctuations in exchange rates.

What I’ll call online outreach was a third topic of discussion. Houghton-Jan mentioned social networking sites as being where our users are at the moment, and that reaching out to them there was not essentially different from the other kinds of outreach we do. Lynch was interested in the still unclear possibilities for Second Life, where there is a lot of experimentation in new media going on, as well as what may be the development of a standard platform for virtual worlds. This prompted a lively discussion about when libraries should jump on this kind of bandwagon, with references to courseware and Facebook. The consensus was that if most of our patrons are there we should probably be, too, but Lynch commented that lots of undergraduates spend lots of time in bars and there is probably no good reason to set up library kiosks there.

(Though Pace suggested moving the bar into the library….)

Several panelists mentioned portable devices for Internet access and other computing, like Apple’s newly announced iPhone. Schneider intoned that she had not “drunk the iKoolaid and was iBored,” but thought that the fanatical loyalty of users to the iPod held out some hope for getting users to love our quirky services. Lynch and Pace commented that the excitement about the iPhone partly spoke to how bad cellphone interfaces currently are. Lease-Morgan’s question about how 24/7 access to the Internet changes library services is probably the critical one here. (Sadly, it was a rhetorical question).

RDA, the move toward modernizing cataloging standards, was much discussed, and much skepticism was expressed. There were several references to Coyle and Hillman’s article in D-Lib, which suggests that the fundamental assumptions of RDA are flawed and inappropriate for the current information environment. Pace described RDA as on the rails and headed for the station, but starting from the wrong place–description rather than access.

Other random items:

Lynch saw the problem of large scale management of data, research and otherwise, to be a major looming concern and opportunity to build new relationships for libraries. He also thought that anyone who says we know what the interface for 5 million online books looks like is lying. (Pace commented that Google is pointedly not answering that question).

When asked what new technology would bring users into the library, Schneider responded “Meetware”. Meaning that personal interactions with staff, happy users, and word of mouth are the way to go. Pace said that his favorite form of marketing was “awesome services, collections, and technologies,”.

And with some reluctance I feel obligated to mention that Houghton-Jan did, in fact, get the committee chair to say “stinky-poo” twice, while reading her trends item on OPAC interfaces. And now I’ve fed it to a thousand RSS readers. Curse you, LiB!

It was a very long, detailed session and a spirited conversation. Very much worth your investment in the easily digestible series of podcasts.

First up: Bonnie Postlewaite, LITA President

The scene: Around 60-70 people attended this IG on the final day of the ’07 Midwinter conference. It was standing room only, which of course meant that several sat on the floor. The discussion was wide-ranging, with Joe Ford, of Joseph Ford & Associates, presiding as incoming chair.

The primary role of the Emerging Technologies IG at Midwinter is to program the summer session as close to the bleeding edge as possible, and to that end, nearly everyone attending had suggestions on what they would like to see this coming June in Washington D.C. With very little coaxing, the group took off on a free-wheeling discussion, talking about what emerging technologies most interest or concern them.

Several themes quickly emerged: the implications of widely available broadband, large amounts of personal storage capacity, the effects of widely social information consumption, as well as the legal and social implications of what it all may mean.

Following are nearly all of the ideas brought up by the group:

• Second Life, and other virtual communities, and to what extent should librarians be present within them. Avatars, etc.
• The next generation of discovery interfaces to library holdings: What are the implementation costs, return on investment? Is it worth it for libraries?
• The advent of WiMax (broadband wide-range wireless): It was noted that on the east side of the Seattle area, between the next 90-100 days, there will be 500-600 Kilobit transmissions with a range of 10 or more miles available to the community. This will provide competition with DSL and cable access to the Internet. What will this mean to the library community? What will this mean in terms of affordability, both for the individual as well as public institutions like libraries?
• What is the process for libraries attempting to make the jump by forecasting emerging technologies and understanding the coming dynamics better? Using the upcoming iPhone as an example, how can libraries understand the implications of this new personal device?
• The potential and implications of a migration to the online sphere in terms of operating systems, network drives, and desktop applications like Word and Excel which appears to be currently underway.
• A participant asked about what a job description would look like if libraries employed an “emerging technology librarian.” Oregon State University noted that they currently have an endowed chair that’s similar: an Innovative Digital Services Librarian.
• The current state of Widgets (single function applications) for such chores as searching the OPAC and/or databases in libraries.
• The coming effects and implications of advances in biotech, nanotech, etc.: While these don’t necessarily have an immediate impact libraries, they are bound to some time in the future.
• The rapid growth of personal computing storage space: When the personal terabyte of storage is finally available to the average consumer, what will it mean for libraries? What will the world look like when this is available as a portable device? How will it affect the digitization that libraries are currently doing, as well as personal digitization? What effect will this have on the profession of librarianship, or digital preservation?
• The wider availability of video chat reference, with the advent of meebo which allows the tracking of who’s on a library page and being able to talk to them.
• The coming convergence of technologies like RFID, personal devices, global positioning, and even financial credit ratings, which allow proximity based services so that you can get things when you need it: A group member mentioned the potential for a service that would ring your cell phone when you’re close to an item that you’ve been searching for: “It’s currently down on the lowest shelf to your left.” Of course, a natural discussion ensued on the privacy issues this raises. One member also noted that in the RFID Interest Group it was discussed that the Australians and Europeans don’t understand our compunctions for personal privacy. A group member joked about the potential for a “You touched it, you bought it” situation to general laughter.
• The IG also talked about our potential extension of service roles into personal information management: What influence do we have on how people access and store their personal information. Are we involved in this, or should we be?
• On Net Neutrality – is the issue really neutrality or is this simply a build-out period for the web? What are the implications for libraries?
• On Scholarly Communication and Zotero, is there potential for building a recommendation engine on top of these structures? Would it be subscription based and what would be the implications of that?
• Are there Health implications for wireless service? Will librarians be forced to resign from their jobs because of it?
• Examples of implementations combining geo-coordinates with OPACs.

One area that was greatly discussed during the two hour exchange was the ILS. Trendsters discussed open source, convergence of vendors and the fact that these are no longer boot strapped companies but ones that private investors think have value.

The top technology trend that are and will continue to have a great impact on library services are enterprise ILS services, outsourced services, green / sustainable building design including heat source pumps, RFID, gaming, and techno mobile vans .The recognition of “the library as place” and the need to recognize new sets of services is having the greatest impact on librarians. Librarians need to learn that their services are both virtual and place-centered. They need a forum with experts who can share trends that are changing services.

For example, there is a product called Goldfire. This is an innovation platform that indexes everything. As a matter of fact, this product was so good at indexing that a client had trouble stopping it from making a library out of every file on its global computing center. In another case, there is an E-Government initiative that used BEA’s middle ware technology. The entire county’s web platform is being run on this system where managers select a few templates and create content on the fly, but do not have information science experience or knowledge of subject headings so the entire system is being built and impacted from a lack of best practices. Ask Google about this – their building a book search module and they don’t even have a librarian or a library. Although subject heading are not new, it was the first time that a lack of library presence is being made up on the fly. Where were does Google get their subject headings? LC?

From a planning perspective, the top tech trend is the Wiki. It has the ability to capture project planning documents, support new training initiatives and expand staff’s vocabulary. During a facility planning exercise a public library technology director explained. Skeptical that the technology is useful for more then encyclopedic activities, he gave an example of how to use a Wiki. He said that they use it for creating agendas, allowing members to ask questions associated with the upcoming discussion, and enabling the team to capture post meeting notes. This was a eureka moment. The importance of the wiki and meta data still require some thoughts. This technology creates a natural opportunity for librarians to create readers advisory services, control outreach programs and capture strategic knowledge.

With more participation from new LITA members, the LITA Wiki will, over a few years, be a wonderful asset to learn and share from and more of a communication devise. It will be an asset that new librarians can browse and learn from in the years to come.

One last thing – top technology trends were – Wii (the impact of its playful interface will intersect with library user interfaces – hopefully soon), Wiki (new ways to capture and share knowledge), and Enterprise ILS systems vrs. Open Source – may the little guy win whenever possible and “The Long Tail” – Wired’s editor got it right – now start posting your knowledge even if one in a million can find it. When they do, there will be value. See you all in Washington…

Stay Tuned!

Friday, January 19, 2007 — Grand Hyatt Seattle, Eliza Anderson Amphitheater

This preconference is the first event of the 50th anniversary of ALCTS. Information will be made available via the ALCTS website after the conference. It is co-sponsored by Amazon.com.

There were four speakers plus a panel discussion. My notes below give the major points from the four speakers, but I have not reported on the panel discussion, which covered the questions discussed in the pre-conference blog:
Digiblog, the ALCTS Blog.

First Speaker

James Hilton, “Scholarship in the Digital Age: Opportunities and Challenges”
VP & CIO, U of Virginia

He began by listing and explaining some assumptions about scholarly publishing. Publishing is a basic need of scholarship because it is how collaboration takes place. The publishing environment is changing, and a current assumption is, if it is not online, it will not be read. You can view this as a new dawn or “the perfect storm.”

Disruptive Forces

Disruptive Force #1: The emergence of the “pure property” view of ideas

Next he spoke about patents, noting that they were originally conceived as a way to encourage and share new ideas, but that now large corporations will patent methods of doing business. The problem, he says, is not that we have insufficient property protection or insufficient respect for new ideas, but that we are deploying new protections; we will soon be paralyzed by the “plethora of IP fences thrown up around ever smaller pieces of property.” How do you get innovation?

Today in academia, “job one” for faculty, researchers, and students is protecting their personal property. He has even heard of cases where students are asking their professors to sign non-disclosure statements.

Scholarly publishing should be a large and countervailing force to this mentality.

Disruptive Force #2 – Technology and unbundling.

Technology tends to unbundled activities that were formerly packaged together. For example, in banks you used to deal with tellers for many activities, but now internet banking has replaced them.

Education is a hugely bundled endeavor. The first unbundling will be that of content. We’re going to see unbundling of scholarship. We have a benign conspiracy that says the product of a thesis belongs to the lone author, but it takes a village to support authorship now. The current model will be reconfigured.

Universities bundle all costs by charging “tuition.” How do we think about unbundling monographs, articles? Should the cost be bundled with the distribution price?

Disruptive Force #3: Producer Push v. Demand Pull

Lectures are an example of “producer push.” But now it is more about “I want what I want, when I want it.” He contrasted university lectures with collaborative exploration.

He spoke about libraries and the “long tail,” and emphasized the need for broad, efficient access to public domain works. Universities and libraries see themselves as doing the “gate-ing” of resources, but this won’t work any longer.

Opportunities

We’re living in a world of abundance. It costs a lot to put in a large storage system, but the marginal cost of using it is zero. We are used to managing in scarcity, but we haven’t figured out how to manage the abundance. University presses are “code blue” and libraries should be at the center of solving the problems: we have an opportunity to drive a close alliance between the library & IT in support of teaching & research (scholarship). If what you’re doing doesn’t relate to teaching & research, you risk irrelevance. Libraries are at the center of this; they can help channel the expression of their communities. The library is at the geographic center of campus; the challenge is to remain at the virtual & active center.

Libraries have the opportunity to reduce costs and take control of scholarly publishing.

Second Speaker

Lorcan Dempsey, “Moving to the Network Level: Discovery and Disclosure”

The key points in this talk centered on how the network is re-writing user behavior, about workflow and attention, and the aggregation of supply and demand. The ways in which people use systems and services have changed; the URL is the currency, without which you cannot share.

A long time ago we thought about databases as the center of attention. Now it’s the workflow as the focus (CMS, IR, etc.) What we’re doing on our desktops is assembling resources and constructing a digital environment for ourselves.
Increasingly the focus of our relationship with the network is that of workflow. Tools and services are being rebundled in peoples lives in a variety of different ways, e.g. PictureAustralia uses Flickr to get into the flow of people who are managing their photos, so the chances of finding photos are higher. This site is now very popular and it is driving traffic back to PictureAustralia. We need to be where people are in the network.

For libraries the big issue is that it must build its services around user workflow. Libraries must disclose what they have in a variety of places. There is strong competition for the attention of network users.

Library resources are fragmented and have large delivery costs. There is small aggregation of supply, but large aggregation of demand. Libraries aggregate neither demand nor supply (though it is improving through metasearch and resolution). We have to think about how people discover things where they want them.

Increasingly people want to get directly into the article of interest through search engines, linkservers, and RSS readers & blogs. The burden on the publishers is to see how to make content available Users won’t come to your website, but will come in from their other workflow resources. We need to position resources so they are effectively used.

Common misperception is that people will use your website. This is fluff, it is in the way. People want to get in and get out (drive-in users) ; they are the majority, but these are not the people we pay attention to.

We need to make our data work harder; so much data lies unused. We need to integrate access to locally managed resources. He cited Endeca and North Carolina State University’s public catalog interface as an example of how this is being done.

He then demonstrated how OCLC’s Fiction Finder makes the data work harder. In addition, Libraries Australia also tries to increase discovery and availability.

He stressed that a focus on integrating discovery and delivery is becoming essential. By offering a syndicated discovery experience, you pass data off the another service to drive traffic back to your own, as for example in Google Book Search.

In summary:

• The library website is not the front door
• Connect multiple discovery environments to library fulfillment
• Put library resources in the user’s workflow
• Place library resources in places which aggregate demand

If you’re enjoying these podcasts, leave us a comment and let us know…we’d love to hear this is a valuable thing for our members. Plus, it will help us justify expanding our podcasting reach for Annual this summer.

Thanks again to Maurice York, whose work allowed us to provide these to the LITA members.

Some topics presented for future discussion:

• How is Web 2.0 being used?
• GIS Systems: metadata requirements
• Institutional Repositories: capturing data output from faculty
• Raw Data Storage: practices and procedures, storage of statistical data and field research
• National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIP)
• Digitization practices for cultural and heritage collections
• Partnering and sharing of resources for digitization projects

Discussion Topic: Education and Preparation of Digital Librarians.

Question: What is being taught in current library and information school programs?

Several students who are currently enrolled in a program responded to this question. Some reported they are taking metadata classes that cover topics such as crosswalks and standards. Other courses being taught include web design, archiving, and preservation.

Those involved in a practicum or internship are working on projects that include activities such as document scanning, working with cataloging, and creating metadata.

Question: What are employers looking for?

Those responding to the question are currently hiring or employ digital librarians. Attributes of a digital librarian include a diverse blend of skills, such as marketing and technical knowledge (especially database management). It was recommended that those interested should look at the ARL job description for a digital librarian.

Emory is currently training PhD students from other fields to do this work because of a librarian shortage.

Question: How are collections going to be used? How will they be found?

Some libraries are working with early digital libraries to standardize their metadata. Collections work with various interfaces. It was noted that it is important to make collections crawlable.

Question: What alternatives are there for learning about digital libraries, especially for those who already have a graduate degree in library science? How do we fill in our knowledge and make ourselves more marketable?

Suggestions:

• School for Scanning
• Project Management Institute
• Cornell University Library’s digitization services
• Tennessee currently offers in-state training, but will be available to others soon
• OCLC programs
• SirsiDynix
• Wikipedia
• Conferences: code4lib, Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (sponsored by ACM and IEEE)

The LITA Town Meeting yesterday was action packed even at 8am. I know there were a couple of other people taking actual notes. These are just my thoughts.

The activity that Mark Beatty had the packed room complete involved writing things we liked about LITA or things that LITA could do on pieces of paper. Groups then took their “tags” and made tag clouds out of them. It was fun, loud, and very productive.

I was again reminded why I love LITA. People like being here. We like each other and the “people” aspect of LITA got more tags then anything else. Education, training, and technology were close follow-ups. Some very hopeful member also requested a new Mac, but I am not sure that is in budget.

The picture here is one of the tags for the “Liki” as it has come to be known this conference.

Over the next couple of weeks, Mark Beatty and I are going to be taking all the tags, which I transcribed yesterday, and creating a report that we will eventually place here and on the Liki. A report filled with the ideas of our fabulous members. Thanks to everyone who participated. It was great fun.

To see more pictures of the LITA Town Meeting, feel free to browse here.

The first topic of discussion focussed on the very generous donor who funded the attendance of a librarian from Trinidad and Tobago at the LITA Forum in October – he was so impressed by the moving thank you he received from the winner (“a memory I will always treasure ..”) that he is funding two more awards. The announcement for this year’s award had been written, and accepted by the committee. Details of procedures will be ironed out by Claudia with the LITA liaison, Karen Starr.

There was general excitement about the possibility of more awards, particularly for international librarians from areas other than the Caribbean. Ideas for encouraging more donors were solicited, and some will be pursued.

Members of the committee were surprised by the fact that LITA charged a $500 overhead fee for handling the grant, almost 20% of the total!!! Karen will try to find out why. There are communication issues that have to be resolved.

Jim Agee gave a short presentation on activities of the IRRT, and their hope for an endowment to support the international receptions., which cost $7-13,000. Soliciting donations is tricky business.

David Nutty explained last year’s grant process, and summarized some of the glitches (including the fact that the grant check was delivered very late, bogged down by ALA bureaucracy.

Co-sponsorship of ALA Program
The deadlines have already passed for this year, even for poster sessions.
There is still a possibility that there will be a tour of portals (digitized international collections) at LC.

Call for involvement
There will be a call for volunteers to staff the international visitors’ center (2 hour blocks), and members are encouraged to sign up for the international reception. See you there??

There was more, but this is all I can remember at the moment …

There are seven segments in all for about an hour and forty-five minutes of trending goodness. For the sake of immediacy, this is pretty much the raw audio–not much editing or finessing. A more refined audio experience will be posted as we go.

If you enjoy these, be on the lookout for more podcasts from the 2007 ALA Midwinter meeting from LITA. We’ll be podcasting more than just the Top Tech Trends in the upcoming days, including some video from the LITA officers, and reactions to the LITA Town Meeting.

If you’ve never subscribed to a podcast before and would like some tips on how to subscribe or applications to use, post a comment to this post and I’ll go more into depth….just trying to get this up quickly for now!

The Town Meeting started with a breakfast and introduction to the LITA leadership. We were shown the LITA Wiki, the LITA committee volunteer form, and were told that there is still time to apply to be on a committee. Appointments will be made over the next three months.

Then, even though it was a large meeting, everyone introduced themselves and revealed how long they had been LITA members. Reception was warm for new members, and the crowd was impressed with folks who had longer memberships.

Then, Mark Beatty, vice-president/president-elect, gave a presentation on his presidential theme. He gave an overview of the OCLC Perceptions report, the Pew report on Social Networking Sites, and talked about the value of ALA membership and 3rd places. He’s focusing his presidential theme on an updated environmental scan and improving on the values that LITA delivers to its membership. He used the town meeting as a way to learn about what people consider to be valuable about their LITA membership, as well as what they would like their LITA membership to provide.

Then, everyone in the room participated in a brainstorming process focusing on what people want from LITA. The ideas included (from most frequently cited to least frequently):

• Hands-on training/education
• Networking, meeting others, community, contacts, membership
• Mentoring
• Leadership (within ALA, the profession, with library technology)
• More technology at conferences, better wireless connections
• Standards, best practices, white papers, knowledge sharing
• LITA happy hour
• Evaluation of technology
• “Pure technology”
• Emerging Technologies
• Give members things (tee shirts, etc)
• Collaboration
• Software development
• Outreach in ALA and out of ALA
• Reference and Instruction
• Involvement
• Quality programing at all geographic levels
• Virtual Spaces
• Outreach
• Environmental Scans
• Financial Flexibility for LITA
• Name recognition for LITA
• Recommendations for free, new technologies
• The LITA Wiki (aka LIKI by some)

The next steps of the process are going to be:

• Take the recommendations and groupings to the membership at large.
• Get feedback
• Use Emerging Leaders as a focus group
• Finalized report for the membership
• Report used by the board to inform the next version of the strategic plan

It’ll be exciting to see what comes out of this process!!

In conversation with Clara Ruttenberg, Systems Librarian in D.C., she said that Happy Hour was where she could quickly see her colleagues before the conference was underway. Though not on a LITA committee yet, she planned to volunteer for one soon. Mike Sainsbury from Greater Victoria Public Library and an enthusiastic participant on the LITA Membership Committee has lots of ideas for increasing LITA membership including looking into drafting IT support staff in libraries to join LITA.

Speaking of membership, Diane Bison, who is running for LITA VP told me that she feels that “there are many librarians in IT who are just not yet members of LITA” and we need to bring them into the fold. Her competitor for the VP position, Andrew Pace said he wants to explore making LITA more of a “technology consultant to ALA,” drawing on the expertise of LITA members.

You couldn’t miss Board Members past and present, many sporting those blue-glowing neon LITA pins which stood out in the dimly lit, noisy pub. Bonnie Postlethwaite, President, told me that members should keep an eye out for the Assessment and Research Task Force report. The report will soon be posted on the LITA website and comments from LITA members are requested. Mary Taylor, Executive Director, encouraged other members to come to future Happy Hours as they are excellent networking venue.

I couldn’t possibly recount all the conversations I had with fellow LITA members – you had to have been there…kudos go to Richard Kim who organized the event. But, he didn’t want to take all the praise. Richard credited Tito Sierra with the selection of the venue. Tito said 6 Arms was where he used to hang out when he worked for Amazon.com Thanks guys…and have a good conference!

[NOTE: I'd promised to blog this session for the new ALCTS NRMIG Metadata Blog, but since one person at ALCTS must approve all potential bloggers and has no sense of urgency about it, I'm posting it on the LITA Blog. Maybe ALCTS will get their act together for Annual?]

The description for this session was pretty tempting:

“If RDA is attempting to be “all things for all,” is it accomplishing its goal with Dublin Core, LOM, and visual resources communities? We have heard from many perspectives, commentaries to RDA from “traditional cataloging” communities, but what is it to different metadata communities? We have very little direct information from those communities how they think this content standard will work for them. This discussion will address these issues.”

I was originally asked to participate in this panel, but declined because of a conflict with MARBI. Once the MARBI agenda came out and I realized that the issues I was interested in wouldn’t be discussed on Saturday, I decided to come to the presentation and see what came up at the discussion.

The first presenter was Barbara Tillett, from the Library of Congress. A little bird told me that she was not originally invited but asked to be on the panel (and who could turn down Barbara?) [NOTE: Barbara has asserted to me that this isn't so.] Her presentation was pretty standard RDA high-level marketing, which anyone who has been attending the regular RDA Forums has heard before. The problem is that like all of the RDA marketing materials, it is very well crafted and its points are extremely difficult to argue with at the level presented. It’s essentially “comfort food”—without sufficient nutritional content to address the questions that the IG intended to discuss, designed to make the masses feel better about what’s going on and have faith that it will all turn out well in the end. One would think, had one been living in a cave for the past six months, that there had been no sharp questions about the RDA effort asked on multiple discussion lists, listening to Barbara’s presentation. And it was far too long.

Among the last slides in Barbara’s talk was one that was very telling about the approach the RDA effort is taking. The statements on that slide:

“No significant changes to existing records will be required”
“Need for retrospective adjustments when integrating RDA and AACR2 records will be minimal”

This indicates fairly clearly that the more significant calls for change in approach to RDA are not being heard—very discouraging. Barbara’s reassurance that this change would be nothing like the upheavals associated with AACR2 over 25 years ago was very interesting. Could it be that the conservatism we’re still seeing in the RDA work harks back to that historic period?

Murtha Baca (from the Getty) spoke about trends in the art and cultural heritage communities. These communities have cobbled together a group of metadata standards (both “content” standards like Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO) and metadata schemas like CDWA Lite and VRA Core) to accommodate the wide variety of materials they must describe. It’s important to note that one reason that there are so many standards in this context is that AACR2, traditionally focused on books and printed works, has never met the needs of this community. As a result, they have done what many specialist communities have done—given up and moved on. That they’ve accomplished this task so effectively is both laudable and ultimately problematic, since they, too, are finding it necessary to emphasize efficiency and user focus, goals not so easy to accomplish without coordination with the larger community.

Murtha noted some differences with the library community in regard to FRBR definitions of works and the fact that this community is often dealing with unique items rather than published items available broadly. She also emphasized the life cycle aspects of metadata creation in cultural institutions, but this suggests that the issues of functional conflict when information acts as both “inventory” and “user access tool” are also inherent in their approaches. Murtha’s last slide was a winner, one she got from a colleague: “Standards are like toothbrushes, everyone agrees that they’re a good idea but nobody wants to use anyone else’s.”

Sarah Shreeves (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) spoke primarily about shareable metadata, and her work with others on guidelines to enhance the reusability of metadata. Her definition of shareable included:
* Is quality metadata (she references the metadata quality chapter written by me and Tom Bruce in “Metadata in Practice”—for which I thank her!)
* Promotes search interoperability
* Is human understandable outside it’s local context
* Is useful outside of its local context
* Is machine processable

These criteria are really important—and the ideas behind them are quite new to most catalogers, who tend to have an entirely different notion of quality based primarily on experience with MARC databases. These notions of quality have yet to penetrate the RDA effort, though I’m not sure how many people noticed that disparity, and Sarah didn’t flog the issue.

She shifted focus to the DLF effort, which now mandates MODS. I was puzzled by the fact that she said that the DLF effort decided to mandate use of MODS because of frustration with the use of OAI with Simple Dublin Core. Since I know that Sarah of all people understands that Dublin Core is far more than the Simple DC 15 elements which OAI mandates as a base, I found this statement disturbing, as it tends to proliferate the confusion about Dublin Core that has been problematic for those of us attempting to teach librarians about metadata standards.

Mary Woodley (Cal State Northridge) had the unenviable task of wrapping up the presentations prior to the promised discussion. She approached her task from the point of view of the traditional SWOT model (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) and another model suggested by Joseph Busch: ROT (Redundancy Obsolete Trivial). Mary spoke from the viewpoint of a cataloger who also spends a lot of time training students in research methods and helping them at the reference desk. She described the information seeking behavior of her clientele and suggested that if we don’t take a more drastic approach to change we will become irrelevant—a concern that has been expressed frequently. As part of her focus on user needs, she suggested that the RDA effort would benefit from attention to research studies on user expectations and behavior. Barbara tried to argue that standards don’t develop from user studies, but, on the other hand, the FRBR model talks about user needs but not in enough detail to provide much guidance for RDA development (a point I would have made, if I’d had the chance).

But at the end, the discussion never happened—there was no time, given that an extra presentation had been added at the last moment. There were a few comments and questions asked in the remaining 10 minutes or so, but during the last few minutes, a disgruntled public librarian took the floor and ranted about changes she didn’t like, and the rest of us packed our bags and left.
**********************************
Addendum: The following was received from Allene Hayes, the coordinator of the session:

I want to correct the misinformation about Barbara Tillett. As the Chair of the ALA ALCTS ERIG, I personally invited Barbara to be on the panel. Barbara accepted, even though to do so added to her already full Midwinter schedule.

I think all panel members did a great job and I’ll take this opportunity to thank Barbara Tillett, Murtha Baca, Sarah Shreeves, and Mary Woodley for a job well done!

I would also like to thank you and everyone else who attended this info packed session.

For those interested, all presentation slides will be posted on the ALCTS ERIG Web page at:

http://www.ala.org/ala/alcts/divisiongroups/ig/er/eresources.htm

Present at the meeting: Bonnie Postlethwaite, Mary Taylor, Mark Beatty, Jonathan Rothman, Andrew Pace, Karen Starr, Barbara Higginbotham, David Bretthauer, Valerie Edmonds, Melissa Prentice, Debra Shapiro, Michelle Frisque, Amira Aaron, and Maribeth Manhoff

Consent Agenda –Motion to accept the Consent Agenda is passed.

Budget Report is Accepted.

LITA Assessment and Research Task Force is here to report of their findings.

Assessment is not something that LITA has been very good at doing in the past. The task force used the strategic plan to inform the report and decided that future assessments should be done consistently throughout the program. It should also be given a home so that the assessment can be carried out and continued over time; it should be a formal process and done on a regular schedule.

The Board had many questions and concerns for the Task Force. To keep this post at a reasonable length, I will summarize.

The kind of data that the Task Force envisioned LITA collecting were program assessments, members’ needs, demographics of membership, membership growth, and finding ways to collect data and encourage people who are not normally members of LITA. The Task Force also wants to identifying what LITA already collects and finding ways to use that data over time. The last member-wide assessment was done at least five years ago. Assessing people who are not currently LITA members was a topic that the Board and the Task Force strongly felt was imperative to understanding directions that LITA should take in the future.

It was reiterated by many that the instruments we used should be simple and that we should not over survey our members. The Task Force proposes using a combination of many different tools, like focus groups. The Board was adamant that there be a variety of tools employed in the assessment.

There was some discussion on who should head this endeavor, someone on the board or a committee. The Board wants to be sure that this project does not get disconnected from the work of LITA as a whole. It was decided that this could be worked out at a later date. Part of this discussion revolved around the need to have this project have good succession planning. There could be some large overlap between assessment leaders so that there would not be a gap in assessment over the years.

The task force recommended that an outside group be hired to do some initial assessment for LITA.

Motion to approve the recommendation is passed.

Mary Taylor reported on Forum which was successful. There was better attendance in Nashville then in previous years. Program evaluations were good overall. Andrew Pace’s program was one of the most popular.

Report from ALA ITTS: Rob Carlson, Sherry Vanyek, and Jenny Levine
Part of the LITA’s strategic plan is to work with ALA ITTS. Their presence at this meeting is to open up the dialog and begin a good relationship and conversation with ITTS.

Update of ITTS: They are currently in the middle of a new CMS implementation for the web site; American Libraries went first and LITA is next. They have new blogging software, b2evolution, and Media WIki software. Unofficially, there are about 30-40 blogs and wikis currently on the ALA server. You can view a list of all the different collaborative web stuff going on at ALA on the Read/Write/Connect Wiki.

They are currently working on some best practices so that people will make good decisions about technology use and creation. ALA ITTS recently finished usability testing on the website and had a web planning retreat in December. They are currently working on a web redesign based on the usability assessment results. They should have some prototypes available at Annual for us to look at.

Jenny: Online communities –The current software we have does not allow for true social networking so they have been focusing on trying to make it a viable working tool for ALA committees. All content will be migrated from the old system to the new. The hope is that we can enhance the tool we already have to be better and more usable.

Mark Beaty brought up the fact that committees want some interoperability between tools because many people have different prefences to tools and thus use different things. Chairs want to be able to write a message once and then replicate it elsewhere. Jenny responded that there are RSS and aggregation tools that can accomplish this.

There will not be a limit on the number of blogs and wikis a group, like LITA, could have.

What educational online resources are available? Like instructional design etc.?
ALA has WebCT but no instructional design support. They are currently testing Moodle to consider instead of WebCT.

Report from Education Working Group

Primary recommendation of the committee is the merger of the Regional Institutes Committee and the Education Committee and includes a charge for the new committee. The draft is accepted in principle – the merger is approved but refinements are needed on the charge and the number of people needed for the new committee will have to be defined.

The other part of the discussion centered around the impact Forum and online learning opportunities are having on the Regional Institutes. Online learning is very worthwhile, but there was some concern among the people assembled about what people are willing to pay for online learning. The Board believes that people are willing to pay a larger sum of money for online learning if there is a certificate or credit hours attached to the class. It is also possible that we could charge per broadcast, like a library could pay X amount and they could have their whole staff watch a webcast at the same time.

The board did recognize that LITA is competing with many other groups in the kinds of online training that we offer. They want to be able to identify unique things that LITA can offer its members.

There was more of the meeting but I had to leave about 30 minutes early.

Some of the sessions I’ve attended so far include:

• “Podcast U” pre-conference
• LITA Technology for Public Libraries interest group
• LIRT discussion about services to millennials.

One observation I’ve made in general is that my presence as a public librarian at most sessions is greatly appreciated. Apparently, librarians from public libraries are not frequent visitors to some committees/interest groups/round tables at the national level. In fact, the LITA Technology of Public Libraries group was started specifically because LITA members felt there was a need to more effectively recruit public librarians to LITA events. That being said, remember, I am new to this whole scene, so my observations may not be espoused by all.

I plan to submit an additional post on the “Podcast U” pre-conference workshop, so stay tuned. There was a lot to take in.

Paul Keith and Irmgarde Brown (co-chairs) welcomed everyone, gave a brief introduction to our new interest group and encouraged public librarians to join LITA.

Our Discussion Topic
Our guest speaker was Brian Auger from Howard County Public Library in Maryland. Brian shared a few facts about his system: 3rd wealthiest county in the country, second smallest population at 260,000 people, and yet they circulate over 2M items a year out of only 6 branches.

Howard County started re-thinking their commitment to “traditional” computer software as Web-based technologies began emerging. It appeared to them that such a basic system should be cheaper and easier to secure. With the support of only 2 I.T. staff back then, the library began a slow evolution into Linux (first by implementing the Linux Firewalls and then moving into replacing servers as they aged or failed). Once this transformation was complete, they began looking at the desktop and determined that an Open Source solution would be much cheaper to maintain. Ultimately, they purchased Groovix which is a very inexpensive software that supports the Linux environment and secures it. This solution also includes the complete Open Office Suite that works seamlessly with Microsoft products. In the end, Howard County is using Groovix with both public AND staff computers.

Key Benefits: HCL is able to extend the life of a PC up into the 5, 6 and even 7 year range. Since HCL doesn’t filter with software (only social pressure by having PCs in highly trafficked public areas), any type of website can be viewed including MySpace, music sites, and other interactive sites. (Bandwidth issues were handled by moving all public activity to cable access and an 8 MB drop for each branch. They have had no rebooting or freezing issues. All PCs can do all the same things.

HCL is now adding “pods” which are made up of 10 computers that actually use/share one larger “box.” This has been very successful.

HCL only has 5.5 FTE in the I.T. department and successfully maintain all the 350 PC’s.

One downside is staff acceptance of the Open Source software… but it keeps getting better. HCL has not experienced any complaints from the public.

During Question & Answer period…
How is the Service Contract with Groovix
Excellent… runs about $2000/year.
How would you evolve to Open Source if you were starting now?Maybe consider looking at a “turnkey” system like Userful.
Do you see Open Source and/or Linux becoming non-compatible?Don’t think so… recent involvement with the European Standards Agency that accepted Office Open Standard in Europe…that’s a good thing.

There was some side conversations that discussed other concerns or emerging technologies or assistance such as Wimax (wide area wifi), Tech Soup (offers low-cost software to 501c3 compliant organizations).

Business Meeting
During the “business” portion of our meeting, we discussed possible topics are areas of interest to the group that was there.

• What are other people doing, how much do these technologies cost, and what is the real ROI?

What’s the “dirty underside” of some of the technologies or ILS migrations?

• What expertise is really needed to implement some of the newer technologies?

What about specific training on how to implement some of the social technologies or customizations?

• What about re-investigating security and wifi? How do the “bad guys” get access to that wireless data? What about getting a hacker to tell all?
• Is it time to investigate again the disconnect between I.T. staff and frontline staff communications?
• Technology planning comes in lots of shapes… what are some best practices? How do we include emerging technologies … but not just for their own sake, but because they meet an identified need. Consider partnering with LAMA.

General comments:

Follow-up Report
Paul and Irmgarde attended the joint PLA Technology Committee and PLA Practical Applications of Technology Committee meetings. We were encouraged by these groups to continue to meet and we’ll continue to communicate, but our group is not quite ready to “co-sponsor” events with either of these committees.

Paul and Irmgarde are focusing now on PLTIG (Pil-tig) to a forum/discussion group with key “speakers” at our discussion sessions at both Midwinter and Annual. If you have comments, please send an email to either Paul (pkeith@chipublib.org) or Irmgarde (brown@hcplonline.info).

—–

Michelle Boule, U of Houston, Co-Chari

Diane Hillman, Cornell, Standards Coordinator for LITA

Erin McCaffrey, Regis U in Denver,

Mark Beatty, VP, President-Elect

Tiffeny McCall, UTKnoxville, new LITA person

Jason Griffey, UT Chattanooga, Chair-Elect

Karen Coombs, Co-Chair, U Houston

Beth Hoffman, Newbie,

Not Present but Important

Kevin Clark, Tech Coordinator for Blog

Jonathon Blackburn, volunteer wrangler for Blog

–

Program for ALA Annual

Not quite sure what to do yet – social software something or other…. We need a name and brief blurb soon to get into the official ALA material – but viral marketing worked really well last year….

So, what might we want to do? Should be basic stuff. Blogs last year. Social bookmarking? Something about how to approach social software projects, and get buy-in? If social bookmarking – get the PennTags folks? How to set up projects so that you can get outside assistance with tagging. What do you want to get involved in? How to integrate with more tradational metadata practices. Someone at U Ontario working on this. This approach might be a good way to bring people in – not just an isolated presentation on cool tech. This can be tricky though, ’cause you’ll get to a lot of detail soon. Is this too advanced for lots of people – maybe Wikis would be the better thing to do this time around?

Wikis might be good, getting lots of questions about them. Semantic wikis? Good library stuff – metadata. There’s also the thing with ALA having a lot of wikis – middle ground. Then there’s the beginner stuff – anybody can set up a PBWiki. We could probably get Meredith Farkas to talk…. And there’s lots of “cool stuff” too.

Wikis, huh, what are they good for?

What to call this?

It’s a wiki wiki world?
wiki tiki tavi?
something slightly less silly?

Who else to get to talk – somebody from wikipedia? Or maybe not

Somebody who’s using them in libraries?

—

Policies for LITA Wiki

We don’t have any yet, we’re waiting to see what ALA does – might want to just use theirs – would that be cool? Might want to modify with best practices….

No objections to this idea, but one question:

Currently kind of ad hoc – time to get organized? Maybe better to just let it grow organically. Mandating structure doesn’t really work – gets undone. But we can see if there’s something to be done. We can let the structure sit on the LITA web page and let the wiki go wherever – just link to the wiki from the website.

Is that the new name – the LITA wiki is the liki? Conversation degenerated rapidly from here….

One problem – site, blog, wiki need to be better intertwined… So let’s start using stuff like RSS to do this.

–

???s for LITA Elections Podcasts

Karen thinks we should podcast candidate interviews. Good way to know who to vote for. So, we’re going to get David Free to do it via Skype, but we need questions.

2 Open-Ended Questions – we’re shooting for 10-minute podcasts.

How do you think LITA can operate within ALA divisions to smooth the way with technology?

*How do you envision LITA to be a technology leader within ALA?

*What do you think you bring to this position?

What do you want to accomplish?

–

Mark Wants to Talk

Speaking of podcasts – should appoint another wrangler. At Midwinter town meeting usually some kind of exercise where the LITA board gathers ideas from folks about topic of interest to LITA. Then we’ll aggregate the info and post it to the LITA blog.

Also, Michelle’s LITA’s official emerging leader and we’ve got two more people – and we’ve got a bunch of other really good new LITA folks we don’t want to lose, so we’re going to use them as an instant focus group to help with strategic planning.

Also, for folks who can’t come to the conference, how about 15 minute post-session interviews to podcast? We’re starting with a post-town-meeting interview. If it works, we can expand it to all the programs at annual – so we need a wrangler. And equipment. And space. Several spaces – nearby where the sessions are. We can get some mics and write up some instructions.

This sounds cool, so let’s do it!

–

Other business:

LITA presence in Second Life – a proposal is coming. Cool!

Bonnie Postlethwaite
Use the wiki. There are spaces for the committee’s to contribute and help the wiki to grow. Currently the standards watch is upon the wiki. The town meeting, which will be run by Mark Beatty, will offer an opportunity for member to raise their concerns.

Gail Clement
Podcasting preconference yesterday was a success with good attendance. The speakers were wonderful and were a combination of both library and other types. She is currently working on a better way of document management so that our forms and other information we gather from our sessions can be kept in one place. It allows us to upload PDFs and similar things. Gail is currently creating a document management system in the PPC (Project Planning Committee) space for us. She asks the group if they want to use this method of keeping our stuff. Enough people want to try the document system, so Gail decides to create accounts for us. This topic will be revisited at Annual.

Question from the group: Are we supposed to be meting with the PPC? Answer: It is not required but individual chairs can use the PPC as a way to discuss new ideas. PPC acts as a check and balance system for chairs, so if you have not met with the PPC recently, in the past year, then you should plan to meet with them soon.

Mark Beatty
IGs (Interest Groups) need to think about doing programs. Sharing what you are doing is what makes LITA special to other people. After Midwinter, Mark will be assigning committee members. He will need Chair input and will be emailing us for suggestions on who should be continued. Please get back to him and tell him what your committee needs. The link for volunteering is hard to find on the LITA Website but make sure that you point out that link to other people on your committee and tell others interested in LITA. Mark is going to try to get that link moved to make it more obvious.

David Altenhof
The new CMS is almost ready, so the web group has been gearing up for that. The switch is official on the 25th of January. Training for everyone else will be sometime in February.

The very last thing is Tom Wilson talking about OITP, but I miss most of thanks to a sneezing fit. Luckily for me, and you, he is giving a report for the LITA Board, which I am blogging next.

—

• E-Rate Task Force reports/issues
• Copyright SubCommittee reports/issues
  * Reports from annual
  — L. Ray Patterson Award to Prue Adler
  — Copyright Advisory Network exponential growth (500K+ hits in 2006)
  * Section 108 Study Group from LC
  — Position papers available
• Telecommunications SubCommittee reports/issues
  * Meeting on Sunday 1/21/07 – details will be in the summary post on that

ALA Office
6th Floor of the Convention Center
far left back of the room
Look for the Ninjas

1. New Catalog Possibilities – Starting with NCSU’s Endeca-powered catalog, there has been a definite trend of moving to systems not marketed by the typical (and now smaller) set of library vendors. Another option that large libraries and consortia in particular are exploring is using some form of WorldCat from OCLC as their catalog. Still more options can be found in the open source world, with Koha and now Evergreen. In fact, I believe that Sept. 5, 2006 will long be remembered as the day when the ILS world irrevocably changed. This is the day over 250 Georgia libraries began using an open source ILS they wrote themselves from scratch. The potential significance of this is hard to overstate.
2. Open source goes mainstream – See #1 above. The fact that a large library consortium could bet the farm on an open source solution (and win) is a dramatic event that will serve to highlight for others that open source does not mean unsupported or unsupportable. In fact, the Evergreen team has launched their own support vendor (Equinox Software) to support others who wish to replace their ILS with Evergreen.
3. Massive digitization means massive opportunities and massive challenges – The massive digitization projects of Google and OCA are pouring thousands (and soon millions) of digitized books onto the Internet. What does this mean for libraries and the users we serve? Sorry, this is Top Tech Trends, not Top Tech Solutions. I don’t know all of the implications of this yet, but I do know that we need to be thinking about this issue long and hard.

Sorry I can’t be at Midwinter, but I’ll be at Annual, so I’ll see you all there!

* Full-text data/information is increasingly available. Now this presents real opportunities (as well as challenges) for libraries. To what degree is surrogate description necessary when full-text indexing an option.

* Increasingly libraries are thinking about repurposing existing staff. “I know things are changing. What can I do to remain relevant?” Just asking the question says you are going in the right direction.

* iPhones & friends are coming in a bigger way, and user’s expectations will change accordingly. As a profession we enjoy words, and I wonder how we will provide services to such devices when we are unable to be verbose.

* Library catalogs are a hot topic. Even though I have been a bit more outspoken about catalogs than most people, I wonder whether or not this is something our patrons/users really care about. Hmmm…

* There is an increasing amount of vendor consolidation going on. It is too bad the library community is so small, otherwise the government would get involved. I think there needs to be greater amount of choice. The same thing goes for scholarly publishers. There is some value in competition.

* Ubiquitous networking. While the ‘Net is not everywhere all the time, it is getting closer. How will 100% all-the-time access to the Internet change the way we do business?

* XML is not a hot topic, but trend-wise I think increasing numbers of people will begin to see the advantages of it. It is so much more flexible than that “other” data structure.

* Yes, AJAX is all the rage, but how accessible are those interfaces to people with various physical disabilities? It is very difficult to serve two masters.

–
Eric Lease Morgan
January 16, 2007

Truly portable net access – for real, this time. Being connected everywhere via a device you can carry around in your pocket has been a staple of tech predictions for years. But with a single demo this month, Apple’s new telephone has rewritten the expectations of what such devices should be. Whatever its eventual name, the device currently called iPhone has enough Cool Factor, and will generate enough copycats, to get a lot more people online via handheld devices. And just by the way, if those devices know where the nearest Starbucks is, they should know where the nearest library is, and be able to connect users to that library’s content and reference services.

Open source. Hey, this is Top Tech Trends, not Newest Tech Trends, right? Going with open source tools is no longer a matter of evangelism, but an increasingly mainstream strategic decision for libraries looking for the flexibility to build their own tools.

DRM follies. I don’t know the details, I don’t want to know the details, and I’ve got other things to do with my time than sort out mutually exclusive DRM regimes. But we’re getting more and more situations where our users’ most common media player is an iPod and the content we’re paying for works on everything but iPods.

Commercial digital content vendors want to stop making shiny discs and move to media-less files that can’t be shared – or collected, lent, and borrowed.

The one trend of mine I would underscore is the fledgling emergence of the open-source ILS, which is part of an interesting emergent trend of OSS for libraries–at last.

Most of us are aware that open source software is more like “free kittens” than “free beer.” It still needs to be maintained and updated, and I grit my teeth whenever a substandard, time-sink OSS product is explained away by someone saying, “But it’s free.” My time isn’t free, and my users’ time isn’t free, either.

But an open-source ILS has the potential of being the Apache of library software: the common-sense choice, maintained by a vast community.

In fact, thinking about Sarah’s post, I can see a world where the remaining ILS products are OCLC (for libraries that do not have the resources or need to maintain software) and an open-source ILS for nearly everyone else.

My predictions are few this year. The only constant is change (but that’s not new, is it?).

RSS goes mainstream
With all the subtle introductions of RSS into internet users lives (My Yahoo!, Firefox & now IE RSS-friendly features, etc.), more and more people are being introduced to the wonders of RSS. Despite my unheard plea with the world to stop calling it RSS and call it textcasting instead, RSS is still RSS. But even with its name working against it, more library users, family, and friends seem to be asking about RSS and then using it happily once they discover it. I also predict that more and more libraries will use RSS to display current information on their websites, from new books in the collection to new headlines from the teen blog.

An OPAC from OCLC
I predicted this last June as well, and I believe it now more strongly than ever. I believe that OCLC is angling to produce a fully-functional ILS. OCLC is a membership organization of libraries, and what are all libraries having problems with more than anything else right now (not including funding)? That’s right–a stinky-poo ILS (yes, whoever is reading this out loud has to say stinky-poo — hee hee, I made you say it twice!). OCLC’s progress toward an ILS may be full of baby steps–a web interface here, an integrated ILL system there, ending with the full-fledged patron database, cataloging, acquisitions, plus infinity monster program that is the ILS. Let’s see what they can do and cross our fingers that the result is cheap, easily installed, and intuitive for patrons and staff alike.

Reaching out online
We have our own little fiefdoms online, our own library websites that branch out into subscription databases, reference and tutor chat services, and other paid content. What we still need to do is reach out online to where our users are, which sure as heck isn’t our library websites. Libraries are starting to do this piecemeal—listing podcasts in iTunes, posting video content to YouTube, posting on local blogs and forums, listing ourselves in free wi-fi directories, and so on. I predict a mass awakening in the library world, though, to the need for online outreach. This is important because just as we do physical outreach in our communities, we need to match those efforts virtually. Our communities spend a lot of time online—we just need to figure out where, and meet them there.

The move to web-based everything
No, you only thought the whole world was web-based. Now you’ll really see it happen. With services like Craythur.com offering a virtual web-based operating system with applications and storage space online, and Google moving slowly like the beast toward Bethlehem toward a complete web-based OS with its school of web-based office applications (calendar, word processing, spreadsheets), long-held predictions of people like Steve Wozniak seem to be coming true—everything n our computing worlds will be web-based. Say goodbye to the individual PC with software loaded onto it and files stored in its inner depths. Say hello a sci-fi world where everyone’s end-user devices are basically dumb terminals that are used to access your web-stored information—files, software licenses, everything—from anywhere, anytime. No more being tied to one computer to access “your” stuff. You will simply have web-based profiles with the web mega-giant of your choice, probably one for work and one for school. Along with this, say hello to a desperate race to develop adequate file security for this environment that will satisfy the gadflies among us.

If you plan on attending and would like to do a short “write up” on one of the sessions for the LITA Blog, please contact me, Jonathan Blackburn, with your name and the sessions you would like to cover. I assure you this is a painless process and one that is sure to reap untold rewards for those of us (like myself) who will not able to attend this year.

Also, if you have any suggestions for what sessions you would like to see covered, please do not be shy to point these out, as well. You can find the still-evolving Blog schedule for Midwinter here.

I am available for questions, suggestions, or “free pie” anytime. My e-mail again is jblackbu@mailer.fsu.edu. (Just kidding about the “free pie”!)