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June issue of Information Technology and Libraries now available

The June issue of Information Technology and Libraries, available at: http://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/ital/issue/current Issue contents are listed below. To receive automatic notifications of future issues, please subscribe to ITAL here: https://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/ital/notification/subscribeMailList. Suggestions and feedback are always welcome: please send to Bob Gerrity, ITAL Editor, at gerrityr (at) gmail.com.   Information Technology and Libraries Volume 31, Number 2 (June 2012) CONTENTS Editorials Colleen Cuddy President’s Message: Year in Review–Open Everything http://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/ital/article/view/2230 Mark Cyzyk Editorial Board Thoughts: Doesn’t Work http://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/ital/article/view/2161 Articles Tudor Groza, AAstrand Grimnes, Siegfried Handschuh Reference Information Extraction and Processing Using Conditional Random Fields http://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/ital/article/view/2163 Fostering both the creation and the linking of data with the scope of supporting the growth of the Linked Data Web requires us to improve the acquisition and extraction mechanisms of the underlying semantic metadata. This is particularly important for the scientific publishing domain, where currently most of the datasets are being created in an author-driven, manual…

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Jobs in Library Technology: April 26

New vacancy listings are posted weekly on Wednesday at approximately 11:00 a.m. Central Time. They appear under New This Week and under the appropriate regional listing. Postings remain on the LITA Job Site for a minimum of four weeks. New This Week Digital Resources Curator ,Ohio State University, Columbus, OH Digital Services & Institutional Repository Librarian, Boston College Law Library,  Newton Centre, MA Head, Information Technology Services , Linda Hall Library, Kansas City,  MO Visit the LITA Job Site for more available jobs and for information on submitting a  job posting.

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LITA Executive Committee Meeting: Update

The LITA Executive Committee spring meeting, held Monday, March 19, 2012 from 1:00 to 5:00 and Tuesday, March 20 from 1:00 to 4:00 CDT, was intended to be an online meeting, open to the public. Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties with web conferencing software, the meeting is instead being conducted as a conference call. We appreciate the LITA membership’s patience as we work to find a solution for future LITA governance meetings that will allow for member participation. The meeting agenda and documents are posted in the LITA Executive Committee Connect Group in the 2012 LITA-Executive-Committee-Spring-Meeting folder; look for Minutes from the meeting to posted publicly in the LITA Executive Committee Connect Group within the coming weeks. Please leave a comment or contact the LITA office, lita (at) ala.org, with any questions you may have.

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LITA Board of Directors candidates: Brett Bonfield

With the help of some great LITA member input, I’ve put together a list of interview questions for the LITA President candidates in the upcoming ALA Election, March 19-April 27. I’ve asked the Director candidates to respond to these same questions. I hope this helps you make an informed decision among these outstanding candidates. What is LITA? LITA is the technology division of “the oldest, largest, and most influential library association in the world.” Structurally, this is what sets LITA apart from all of the other organizations, communities, and conferences that serve those of us who are committed to libraries and to efficient and innovative uses of technology. LITA’s status within ALA means we are in a unique position, and have a unique responsibility, to encourage libraries and ALA to make wise decisions about technology and to use technology wisely when making non-technical decisions. LITA is also an impressive assembly…

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LITA Board of Directors candidates: Cody Hanson

With the help of some great LITA member input, I’ve put together a list of interview questions for the LITA President candidates in the upcoming ALA Election, March 19-April 27. I’ve asked the Director candidates to respond to these same questions. I hope this helps you make an informed decision among these outstanding candidates. What is LITA? LITA is a community of library and information professionals of all stripes working together to explore the ways technology can enhance the services we provide. LITA has the best members anywhere, but it’s struggled with retention. How will you make the members feel supported by, and connected to, LITA? This is a tough question. LITA is an organization both for and by its members. You get out of LITA what you put into it, and each member ought to be as responsible as the next for communication, and for embodying the supportive, welcoming,…

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LITA Board of Directors candidates: Rachel Vacek

With the help of some great LITA member input, I’ve put together a list of interview questions for the LITA President candidates in the upcoming ALA Election, March 19-April 27. I’ve asked the Director candidates to respond to these same questions. I hope this helps you make an informed decision among these outstanding candidates. What is LITA? To me, LITA is a community of innovators, leaders, technologists and liaisons to one another and those outside of the community. LITA is also an association, which means that people voluntarily come together with similar purposes to share an interest or activity. I believe that people join LITA because they want to learn something, help their colleagues and improve the library profession as a whole. They know that together they can make a difference and have greater impact than if they worked alone. LITA has the best members anywhere, but it’s struggled with…

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LITA Presidential Candidate Interviews: Aaron Dobbs

With the help of some great LITA member input, I’ve put together a list of interview questions for the LITA President candidates in the upcoming ALA Election, March 19-April 27. Here are Aaron Dobbs’ answers; please see also Cindi Trainor’s. I hope this helps you make an informed decision between these outstanding candidates. 1) What is LITA? LITA is my Tribe. We are Librarians Innovating Technology Awesomesauce. Well, so much for glib answers 🙂 More seriously, LITA is LITA members. We are all doing nifty things with technology. As an Association, our IGs put on a boatload of conference programming, including: “here’s cool stuff to try” “attend this pre-conference and walk out with something implemented for your library” “here’s the direction we see technology in libraries is heading” Our committees manage the programs and focus efforts to produce worthwhile educational events and content. We coordinate or co-present a bunch of…

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LITA Presidential Candidate Interviews: Cindi Trainor

With the help of some great LITA member input, I’ve put together a list of interview questions for the LITA President candidates in the upcoming ALA Election, March 19-April 27. Here are Cindi Trainor’s answers; please see also Aaron Dobbs’. I hope this helps you make an informed decision between these outstanding candidates. 1) What is LITA? This question seems like it should have an obvious answer, but it can be elusive. LITA is a professional organization. LITA is a home for anyone who considers herself an advocate of technology in libraries. LITA is … what? At its heart, LITA is its members–all its members: people who are linked by an interest in or passion for technology in libraries, however they define it. This array of definitions is exactly what makes LITA hard to define. The bottom line is: as reflected in our long and shifting list of Interest Groupss,…

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2012 LITA National Forum Proposals Due February 17

The 2012 LITA National Forum Committee seeks proposals for high quality pre-conferences, concurrent sessions and poster sessions for the 15th annual LITA National Forum to be held in Columbus, Ohio, October 4-7, 2012. The 2012 theme is: New World of Data: Discover. Connect. Remix. Due Date for proposals: February 17, 2012. The committee is especially interested in presentations highlighting projects that are experimental or involve risk-taking. Find additional information and submit a proposal at: http://connect.ala.org/node/164487.

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What is LITA?

At our meeting on Friday, the LITA board (your board!) conducted an exercise to craft an updated vision statement for our organization. We started out by thinking of organizations that inspire us and listing the attrubites that we admire about that organization. Some people talked about non-profits, some about online businesses or communities and some about their current or former places of work. Again and again, we came back to the idea that the people make the organization. To that end, we tried to come up with a short statement to describe our vision for LITA. Give it a test-drive and let us know what you think. Is this your LITA? We welcome comments and suggestions! LITA: Libraries. Innovation. Technology. Awesomeness: Choose your own adventure!* We probably knew this on the day of the meeting, but “Choose Your Own Adventure” is a registered trademark, so this is probably a good…