LITA Blog

LITABlog was just updated to the newest version of Wordpress, 2.6. For those that poke around behind the scenes, if you are interested in the newest features, here’s a video overview:

If We Don’t Call it Distance Learning, Does it Exist?
Saturday, 8 am-noon, Paradise Pier Hotel in Anaheim, CA (Disneyland)
Presenters:
Kim Duckett, Librarian for Digital Technologies and Learning, North Carolina State University Libraries, Chad Haefele, Reference Librarian, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Samantha Hines, Assistant Professor, Distance Education Coordinator and Social Sciences Librarian, University of Montana, [...]

President’s Program: Isn’t it great to be in the library… wherever that is?
Sunday June 29th, 2008, 4:00pm - 5:30pm
(I apologize in advance for the level of detail here. I wasn’t able to get online and post right away and so I’m working from my handwritten notes - which are difficult to read at times [...]

This is going to have to be more of an experiential post than a factual one, I’m afraid… I attended the Top Tech Trends session and it held my attention throughout the whole thing - everything did. From the larger than life images of Karen Coombs and Sarah Houghton-Jan on one screen that flanked the [...]

In the one of the last session slots of the ALA Conference was a gem of a program geared toward smallish public libraries who have either no IT Department or a very small one. Diane Neal, North Carolina Central University, Brenda Hough, MaintainIT Project and Jennifer Lee Peterson, WebJunction were the panelists for the [...]

Cindy Gibbon, Access Services Coordinator of Multnomah County Library (MCL), Oregon, opened the discussion about privacy and intellectual freedom in a web 2.0 world by sharing the results of a study of MCL’s users. Some things MCL users said they want:
Notification when requested items are added to the catalog
Public comments and recommendations of books read
Blogs, [...]

Joe Ford convened the Emerging Technology Interest group managed discussion on “Open Source, Open Services”
Darrell Gunter began by discussing Collexis research projects and applications for libraries. Fascinating work is being undertaken on computationally derived ontology, what Collexis refers to as Fingerprinting. [Bibliographic ontology (like FRBR or FRAD not getting any play in the semantic portion [...]

Just reminding any who are interested in getting involved in BIGWIG that we are having our business meeting on Monday morning from 8 - 10 in the LITA Blogger’s Room.
This is located in Hilton Hotel in the Carmel room.
Just go up 2 escalators from the lobby and take a left down a narrow hallway. [...]

Cindi Trainor, in a fit of Twitter-induced brilliance, started putting together a Google Map for ALA Annual 2008 in Anaheim. Included thus far are hotels and restaurants, but people are still adding to it, so it’s value should increase as we get closer and closer to the conference. Take a look!
View Larger Map

The ALA Task Force on Electronic Membership Participation (TFOEMP) has been charged with evaluating ALA policy as it relates to members’ ability to engage with and interact with the work of the association through committees and other working groups. A survey of members’ practice and attitudes toward serving on Association committees, task forces, and interests [...]