NISO has forwarded the following about this draft standard:

“This is a ballot for the draft standard, ISO/DIS 26162, Systems to manage terminology, knowledge and content – Design, implementation and maintenance of terminology management systems. This ballot is from TC37 / SC3 (Terminology and other language and content resources / Systems to manage terminology, knowledge and content).“

“ISO/DIS 26162 is one of a family of standards to facilitate the exchange of terminological data. This standard gives guidance on choosing the relevant data categories, designing and implementing a data model and a user interface of a terminology management system (TMS) with a view to the intended user group. The phases described here are indispensable for the successful development of a TMS and for avoiding costly errors. The standard may be used for choosing the appropriate TMS for a certain purpose. This standard is intended for terminologists, software developers and others who are involved in the process of developing or acquiring a TMS.”

As Cindy reminds us, ALA is a voting member of NISO, and NISO is the official U.S. voting member for the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Technical Committee 46 on Information and Documentation. This is not a NISO standard, but is being balloted by ISO’s TC46. ALA is providing feedback to NISO as to whether to approve or disapprove the standard. NISO will review and consider this feedback prior to submitting the U.S. vote.

If you have an interest in commenting on this work and recommending a vote, please let Cindy know by May 15, 2009. Your vote options are: Yes (approve the new project), No (do not approve the project), and Abstain (from the vote). Comments are required for No and Abstain votes.

The draft standard is available to ALA members by applying directly to Cindy (HSLcindy@buffalo.edu) and confirming your ALA membership. If you can, please copy me (metadata.maven@gmail.com) on your request.

Diane Hillmann
LITA Standards Coordinator

Speakers: Dale Poulter and Jody Combs, Vanderbilt University

Saturday 10:50am; about 50 in audience

NOTES:

Explanation of link between strategic plan & partnership was used to develop a good support base

Environment:
- Users were searching for articles in opac – i.e. looking in the wrong place – documented by log files
- Vanderbilt library also manages blackboard system for campus
- In terms of staff – you can work with the “constructively skeptical” but not the “terminally skeptical”

Project:
- Amazon data was used for enhancement metadata
- Had an integrated comment feature in their preview version
- Created a test pilot web site, put links on opac and other library web page
- Combining all the holdings records into a single MARC record for processing – one of the most difficult things to do.

Alpha Search Jean & Alexander Heard Library – Demo:
- Sign-in is also remote access authentication.
- Can save search sets, send to Endnote, tag, output to del.icio.us
- E-shelf (my book shelf feature)
- Spell check like google – suggestions “do you mean” – but only recommends if there is something that matches in their database
- “Facets” = new jargon for search limit
- Suggested new searches functionality (“more like this”)
- When entering comments have to click on an agreement to make comment public and to be used by Vanderbilt

Speaker comments:
* Goal: once user is at the item can get it as quickly as possible, or provide them with alternatives to request item
* “took a great deal of work” to get the authority checking/collapsing function into the product
* Can define what group can access what – like circ groups – called “scope”
* Primo has multiple access level account functionality
* “total cost of ownership is very low”
* Can change rank to control what the default search is.
* Per tab and per view default view settings can be modified
* Don’t have universal one-login works everywhere system yet.
* Version 4 is faster than 3.3 – federated searching will always be slower than single interface search

Questions from audience:

* What’s the role for native interfaces after Primo is rolled out?
No. They plan to go with Primo as *the* interface
Then later said, yes we would link out to the native interface and they would stay available to link out to.

* Will librarians be teaching native interfaces and well as Primo?
Yes.

* Have you thought about pipes going directly to databases instead of Metalib?
Depends on the vendor, might be in future development
Vendor might create a Primo-compatible index at the database side to incorporate into the Primo federated search. Very complex option.
But the vendor would keep control of their data. Might be better to always have a separate tab for separate searching.

* Do you need to have an OPAC underneath it?
Yes. The ILS data or digital repository data needs to be maintained in the background.
To clarify: you wouldn’t NEED to run the local opac, but they will do that because some people still prefer it.

* Primo is built on Lucene – why use Primo instead of Lucene, which is “free”?
Partnering with very large institutions which have the resources to create a working product in a short period of time.
Wanted to ultimately achieve a very user-oriented product.

* Have you done much customization of Ex Libris products, Primo ramifications?
They haven’t made a lot of changes and have not yet broken anything.

* Scenarios where user has to bounce out to the native OPAC? Does it confuse users?
Demo of Primo search, use “get it” button – brings up their opac record – right now then click on ILL and have to link again – but they are working on making it all seamless, one login and all processes in Primo.
If a given function can be offered in all data sources, it would make sense to push that to the Primo interface.
They haven’t had any confused user feedback.

* Why did they choose default search as combo OPAC and TV News?
They wanted to demonstrate that you can search all local data sources at once.

NOTES:
Technology easy, it’s the social conditions and psychology of the institution
By the 2nd semester of ETD grad school was sold and wanted to make ETD required
Were able to start with “legacy materials”
Pre and post prints very difficult to get from faculty
Self submission never happened – library went to departments to get their stuff
Efforts to get self submissions had the effect of marketing the service to the campus
Alumni association “mines” the student yearbook They got their alumni association to do the scanning and PDF production
Student newspaper gives them their online issues in e-format
Download stats come from the “bitstream view” count.
Need to educate users to use the item handle not the download link
“We never asked people to catalog the books themselves that they requested” – so needed to develop a service layer for IR

Services:
Aiding depts in capturing things that now disappear – lectures, presentation of thesis equivalent performances
Offering server space as a library service to the CAMPUS.
Taking grant files when the agency requires that the product must be kept forever (sustainability). NSF grant applicants at Georgia Tech asked for letter from library stating they can make their research available forever.
Publish articles using open journal system software OJS from Public Knowledge Systems

OUTREACH:
Inserting themselves into departmental communication flow – like announcement systems, etc.
Research funded reports that are marked “final” the Office of Sponsored Programs will transmit the report & metadata (in the “coming soon we hope” category)
Presentations may have already gotten permissions for public access, or you can try and get it after the fact, or make it restricted to campus only
Do innovative things like taping students as they install an exhibit to go with exhibit photos or other materials

QUESTIONS FROM AUDIENCE:
How do users respond to the epageTech service offering?
They don’t know what the library is taking about. Faculty are concerned about getting tenure credit for depositing with IR or creating an open source journal.
They like it when they understand it after they’ve had enough of their time to explain it.

Staffing levels?
I person worked with Systems, Archives, etc. IR architect joined 6 monhths, then a web designer, every 6 months got a new person, as of July 1st – Digital Initiatives is 6 people but not organized that way. Library has been reorganized.

What about loading scientific data?
Not yet.

Statistics on self submission vs. library submisstion?
Low self-sub, library input is growing

Multimedia materials – does metatdata describe the whole thing or the parts?
Links can be created among different parts, but most described as a whole.

Is multimedia streaming – is it fully encapsulated or coming from another server?
Streaming video is located on IT services – launches an external application.

How do you handle removal of item?
“We don’t”. If anyone asks we say no. Moved to the dark archive. If it is illegal or unethical they will remove it.

When you get datasets will you still be using dSpace.
Probably not, might use Fedora, can’t predict

We were commended to check out the Topic Maps LITA interest group also.

Edward and Suellen had an infectious enthusiasm for topic maps, and this session was super! They want to make progress together as a library community, creating and merging topic maps.

Topic maps are a way of describing knowledge structures and associating resources related to them.The topic map paradigm came about in old days of sgml people wanted to combine data with back of the book indexes. There’s a topic map standard: xtm standard derived from sgml.

A topic map consists of topics associations and occurances.Topic maps are graphs not lines of details.They showed several examples of topic maps, and then took the audience step by step through the creation of a topic map.

Examples of existing topic maps:

Australian Literature gateway

http://www.austlit.edu.au/

****************

A web2.0 social bookmarking site using the TMCore Topic Map
engine. The tags used to categorize bookmarks are topics within
a shared Topic Map and topics with associations are created by
the users.
o http://www.fuzzzy.com/

********************

New Zealand Electronic Text Centre

The website of the NZ Electronic Text Centre is driven by a topic
map.
o http://www.nzetc.org/

Or: “A cautionary tale in three acts”

At OhioLink they decided that the repository should be “A place for our stuff”, including:

• art collections high quality/high resolution – multiple tens of thousands of images
• art and architecture slides from U Cincinnati
• paintings and drawings from U Cinn collection
• items from Works Progress from Cleveland State
• Akron art museum
• history : historical photos e.g. Wright Brothers at Kittyhawk
• digs of Mayan architecture
• historical photographs from lake erie
• national underground railroad freedom center items
• OSU geology collection
• forestry research ctr items
• dolphin embryos images
• digital video – documentaries, etc.
• Kent State oral histories of shootings
• 100 level undergrad physics experiments
• OSU lab that has phenomenal archive of bird calls with thorough metadata
• Text site: 9.1M articles of dissertations center
• 7500 electronic books

THE PLAN

They want a unified repository architecture with open source tools. They chose open source software: Fedora – because it has proven to be bullet proof.

Open source: now cost models seem more feasible and lots of freedom to try things out

· in the plan: ingest in xml

· goes from machine to machine xxsl protocol

· get it all into a fedora repository

· and pump it out via various softwares ext or UM digital library extension service

That was his LITA conferrence proposal, and their project is still very much in progress – real life pressures have slowed down the program –they have tried since 2005 and weren’t making progress. Recently someone created a deadline and they got to work; after two years of development: no progress other than determining that they are going to develop what they can using DSpace. Several factors were revealed, including expiring licenses and a need to have something up and working.

Much of the talk was very interesting details regarding their decision making processes and the growth of their understanding regarding what they needed to do in order to get a large-scale repository actually out of development and into production.

Frances Knudsen, Beth Goldsmith – Los Alamos National Laboratory

Our speaker discussed the experiences that they have had working with The Los Alamos National Laboratory Research Library’s aDORe Repository. She spoke about philosophical side versus real world side of QA .

They run a repository on a home made system by Herbert von der Somple, and they ingest using batch mode in this repository of approximately 80 million metadata records, 1.5 million fulltext tems, and several million other complex digital objects from multiple data providers, internal publications, and OAI harvests.

She revealed the details of their QA efforts, discussing their successes and failures and decision making processes.

She gave several instances of human error that quality assurance may not find. And she also passed along several tidbits based on their experience, such as: one of the things they did was to give a style sheet to people who are looking at data – translating it to a form rather than making the cataloger look at the code.

All in all it was a fascinating tale of quality assurance principles and practice.

The room was over-filled showing that a lot of people are interested in the project.

In 2005 the working group thought they’d like to produce a tool that would be a virtual librarian – could they do it wihtout becoming an MS paperclip?

Annette reviewed the decision making process through which they decided on a client side solution rather than server side and the result is the Libx browser plugin.

Libx Editions provide a local, branded editions of Libx, and are created by using the edition builder on the Libx site. Annette demonstrated building an edition in a few minutes – wow.

See details about Libx and the Libx edition builder at “Libx: a Browser Plugin for Libraries”

http://libx.org/

Why Test World Cat Local?

After several internal discussions about NexGen catalogs and conducting literature reviews in this area, the UW staff made the decision to implement WCL. Some of the key issues they considered were how to work at the higher network level and how to facilitate discovery to delivery.

Meeting the User’s Needs

The UW implementation team realized that users are diverse with a diverse set of needs. A patron may need a particular resource on one day and something totally different on the next. They also realized that users often become overwhelmed with choices. As a result of this they added links to the campus portal improving access and visibility to library resources.

Ward also discussed the challenges in silos of information. It’s difficult for users to have to search different databases. There is also some confusion in how to request items whether it’s through the UW Library catalog, Summit, the union catalog or WCL. There is also quite a difference in the amount of time it takes to get an item depending on how it is requested. The UW Library catalog can take up to two weeks, while Summit is much quicker only 2-3 days on average. Illiad is the best method for getting obscure items or items not owned by UW. However, UW library has received negative feedback regarding ILL through Illiad.

Advantages to Using WCL

• Simple search box
• UW holdings float to top.
• Don’t have to change interfaces
• Availability is front and center easy to see
• Get access to full text online through OpenURL
• Ferberized results sets
• Create and save lists
• Multilingual interface
• Book jackets

Ward also mentioned that UW has conducted usability testing and that they are using the results of this testing to improve the interface of WCL. She could not talk about the specifics of this testing, only that they have made significant changes due to it.

Ward did show screen captures of the site.

Highlights of Searching/Interface

After the initial search, facets appear on the left hand side of the screen for content, format, author, language, and year.

The Results screen holdings location is in the middle of the screen. Holdings and availability are retrieved in real time. When a user clicks on the item, it is then requested through Summit.

Libraries tab-location information is based on your IP address. So you will see libraries within a certain IP, but you can change it to your local. You can see if other libraries nearby you have the item.

Details Tab

Likely will soon be the default tab

Item details, summary/abstract and notes

Subjects tab-displays all the subject heading in the record. Includes MESH as well as LCSH.

Editions Tab

Displays all the different editions of an item. Uses OCLC ferber algorithm to pull this information together.

Citations can be formatted in an array of styles such as APA, Chicago, or ALA

Other Notes on WCL

Users can write reviews for an item.

Very clear messaging for items not owned and clear instructions that you can get it through ILL Illiad. Not a dead end for the user

Journal and article displays-e.g. time comes up as first hit in WorldCat, but not in UW catalog. World Cat uses relevancy ranking.

Use web bridge so this is integrated into WorldCat and e-resources are displayed.

Impact on borrowing

After only a quarter, UW has seen a drastic increase in their borrowing. Prior to World Cat, there was an increase in borrowing of 6% a year. With the implementation of WCL, Ill Borrowing at UW has jumped to 39.5%. However, only 16.28% of these requests were processed. The other requests were mistakes. Naturally, the increase in borrowing has impacted staff work load, but Ward didn’t go into specifics about this. However, they are aware of this and working on ways to alleviate it.

Challenges with WCL

• Collating data from multiple sources
• Mapping metadata for articles and books is a challenge to make it findable.
• Mapping records from UW to Summit (pockets of records that aren’t in Summit)
• Locally enhanced records-local holdings data how much of that is network level material.
• Local/consortial policies are not aligned. Some users can’t borrow thru summit but can through UW
• Some lost functionality from catalog-practical info. hours, location of library
• ferber algorithm-it does bring manifestations of a work under on record, but it’s not perfect.
• Planning to continue to use WCL as primary search system through fall Quarter and see how it develops.
• ILL Requests is a big issue and causing additional work.

URLs:

http://www.lib.washington.edu/

http://uwashington.worldcat.org/

When asked what her number one piece of advice in implementing WCL, Ward said to remain flexible.

Ward gave an interesting and insightful overview of WCL and provided some of the challenges and benefits that UW has experienced to date. My notes coupled with the slides will hopefully provide a good overview of the program.

JSTOR is currently in the process of doing a major site redesign, and Beth LaPensee gave an overview of some of the changes that might (emphasis on the word might; this is still a work in progress) be included in the final version, which will be released sometime next year. Some of the more notable changes that she mentioned include:

• The ability to limit searches to journals within a specific discipline from the basic search page.
• The option to rerun previous searches within a session.
• An auto-complete feature when searching by journal title.
• The ability to search at any point while browsing; i.e., there will be a box on all of the browse pages that will allow you to search within a specific journal or issue of a journal that you have browsed to, without having to navigate back to the search page.
• The main page for browsing a journal will be combined with the information page for that journal.
• On the combined information page/browse page for each journal, there will be options for accessing the journal’s content for people who do not subscribe to JSTOR, such as “Publisher Sales Service” (a.k.a. article pay-per-view).
• Citation linking and related articles linking.
• Article-level links out of JSTOR to journal content that is on the wrong side of their moving wall.
• Faceted searching (which is already available in the JSTOR Sandbox).
• The ability to adjust the relative importance of keywords in your searches by using graphical sliders next to each keyword.
• MyJSTOR, which will include things like the ability to save searches; notification of new results for searches; and the ability to save a list of favorite journals and favorite disciplines, which will be used as the default for your searches.

Alice Preston talked about Aluka, another project from Ithaka. Aluka is a digital library of material about Africa. It currently contains 20 terabytes of data, including high-resolution specimen sheets of African plants that can be zoomed in on to the microscopic level, photographs and laser scans of endangered cultural heritage sites, and digitized original source materials from southern Africa’s liberation movements.

JSTOR subscribers have a free preview of Aluka until the end of the year—it’s a link at the top of the JSTOR home page. Aluka will be offered free of charge to institutions in Africa, and Ithaka hopes that when Aluka is formally launched that enough institutions in the developed world will subscribe to Aluka to subsidize that free access for Africa.

*applause*

Thanks go out to:

• Danielle Plumer
• Krista Clumpner
• Jacqui Grallo
• Beth Winstead
• Virginia Kinman
• Beverly Stafford
• Kelly Drake
• Genny Engel
• Melissa Williams

If I missed anyone, please let me know and I’ll append my list.

I hope that everyone enjoyed the keynote podcasts, and the blogging, from LITA Forum 2007. Join us next year in Cincinnati, OH, for LITA Forum 2008.

Speaker: Jennifer Ward, University of Washington Libraries

Jennifer started by showing a YouTube video, “Finding Time in the Penn State Libraries,” to illustrate the problems searchers have when looking for material through library catalogs. I was amused when I looked for the video that another librarian has posted a video response, “Finding Time Magazine at Humboldt State” that shows a simpler search process.

Jennifer is head of Web Services at the University of Washington Libraries, and she described her experiences as a participant in the OCLC WorldCat Local Beta project. She noted that she was not free to share everything, due to a non-disclosure agreement with OCLC. She largely walked the audience through the uwashington.worldcat.org, which is available to all users although it may not behave as expected for users not in Washington state. The other Beta participant currently is the Peninsula Library System in California, with an implementation available at the San Mateo County Library.

Jennifer started by describing the environment in Washington. UW is a member of the Orbis Cascade Alliance and participates in the Summit consortial online catalog. Through WorldCat Local (WCLocal), UW has been able to combine three different delivery systems (local, Summit, and Illiad) and four article databases: PubMed, ERIC, GPO, ArticleFirst (collectively more than 30 million article citations), plus digital collections in CONTENTdm. She noted that it has not been possible to add all of their licensed database content into WorldCat Local due to varying license terms from publishers, but OCLC is working on increasing the amount of licensed content available.

When a user types in a query, WC Local returns items held by UW first, then items in the Summit catalog. When the user selects an item, he or she is presented with four options: “Get It,” “Save It,” “Add to It,” and “Share It,” the same options that are available in WorldCat.org. However, the “Get It” option in WCLocal allows the user to “Request Item,” where WorldCat.org offers as options “Find in other WorldCat Libraries” and “Buy from Amazon.com” (UW opted to turn off the Amazon option). “Request Item” in WC Local sends the request either to the local ILS, if UW has the item, or to Illiad for ILL processing. If the item is an article, the request option looks first for electronic availability, using the libraries’ Open URL Resolver.

The effect of WorldCat Local on their borrowing and resource sharing practices has been significant. Since April 30th, when the system went live, they have seen a 50.28% increase in borrowing within their consortium, a 39.5% increase in ILL requests, and a 16.28% increase in ILLs processed, compared to the same period a year ago (the difference in ILLs requested and processed is due to borrowers mistakenly requesting materials available from a Summit library or a licensed database).

According to Jennifer, WCLocal is only an additional view on top of the local ILS; all cataloging and acquisitions are still done through the ILS, so the impact on staff in those areas has been minimal. The increase in resource sharing has resulted in additional burdens on staff, however. The focus of the trial has been on the impact of the catalog on end users, some of whom love the new system, while others have complained about the change. Jennifer could not share details of OCLC’s user testing, but she said that she was impressed with both their methodology and the quick turnaround; in some cases, the user testing has resulted in rapid changes to the interface. UW is scheduled to keep WCLocal as the default catalog view through Fall 2007, and OCLC is planning to do a second round of formal usability testing during the semester.

Speaker: Mark Phillips, University of North Texas

Mark discussed the experienced he has had as manager of the Digital Projects Unit at the University of North Texas Libraries. Their projects include the Portal to Texas History, a multi-institutional repository of approximately 20,000 items relating to Texas History; the CyberCemetery, a collection of websites from defunct government agencies; Congressional Research Service reports; and other digital collections from the UNT libraries. All together, he said that they manage approximately 70,000 items, with a total of around 500,000 pages, and they expect to double that number within the next year.

Mark described their technical environment. They use an open-source asset management system, Keystone from Index Data, which they have heavily customized. They use the same modified Dublin Core metadata in all their collections, which has allowed them to maintain consistency of cataloging, but he admitted that many of their controlled vocabulary and descriptive processes were developed independently and do not follow standard cataloging practices. In the future, he believes that they will be experimenting with other types of metadata, including MODS, which will make some of their work more challenging.

The Metadata Analysis Tool (MAT) they use was developed in house. It has not been released as open source, but UNT is planning to re-platform most of its projects, and the MAT may be documented and made available for wider use at that point. Mark’s slides were not available in the session materials, and he did a live demo of the MAT, but screenshots from the tool are available in an older presentation available from UNT.

The metadata analysis begins by indexing across the various “silos” of content they manage. They use Solr for indexing and a Python script to push the data into the MAT. At that point, they can examine the metadata based on a number of different aspects. They can look for missing required elements and quickly modify records. They can show terms used in various elements and scan for typographic or other errors; a similarity analysis, which is set to flag content with 90% or greater overlap with a previous term, allows Digital Projects staff to identify problems quickly. Other tools incorporated in the MAT are a term cloud, allowing a graphic display of term use based on frequency, and various graphs and charts showing records added by date and by coverage elements.

Take your online services to the next level: audio, video and more! By Michelle Jeske (Denver Public Library) really showed how you could add visual and audio interest to your library’s virtual presence. Virtual storytime with a children’s librarian reading the book while the illustrations are shown was especially interesting, as was the ability to put audio instructions for using the web site in either English or Spanish.

SFX usability testing at ASU by Tammy Allgood and Jenna Amani (Arizona
State University) showed immediate applications to improving their pages. They observed users going through set tasks and began making changes immediately based on what they learned, cleaning up the pages and converting to more natural language.

Converting technophobes into technophiles: empowering reluctant library staff by Nina McHale (Auraria Library, Denver, Colorado)

Adventures in digitization: a new librarian shares five hard-earned tips to avoid project management pitfalls by Cory Lampert (University of Nevada Libraries, Las Vegas). This really was a good presentation for someone in their first position from library school. Points stressed include planning, collaboration, metadata, using the system you have, completing the project and marketing the final result. And this digitization project focused on the costumes for Las Vegas showgirls. They have already been used by fashion designers, even a follow up call from Paris.

Bright ideas or squeaky wheels: defining a model for R&D resource allocation by Jennifer S. Jutzik and Don Albrecht (Colorado State University Libraries) took a very proactive stance in showing their need for more resources. Being a land grant institution, they surveyed other land grant institutions regarding their IT support. Then they could show where they were in comparison.

Using the access grid videoconferencing system for collaboration and training: an experiment with distributed personal interface grids (PIGs) by Sharon Dennis (Midcontinental Region of the National Library of Networks of Medicine) is certainly an improvement over some clunky delivery methods where there are delays which slow the discussions. While eventually it is hoped to use this with instruction, right now they are using it primarily for conferencing and collaboration among sites at a distance from each other.

Managing library IT projects with agility and innovation by Janetta Waterhouse (University of Kansas) was one I really was interested in seeing, but unfortunately was not there.

MySpace or Facebook – the social networking faceoff: what’s right for your library by Beth Evans (Brooklyn College Library) and Shannon Kealey (New York University’s Bobst Library). And the battle begins, not really. There are good points for both and either social networking tool will get you more in touch with your younger users. One difference to note is that MySpace allows an institution entity whereas Facebook now only allows individual entities. However, in Facebook, if people join your group, you can do mass emails to them.

Advanced optical character regognitions using a cheap point & shoot digital camera by Dimitar Poposki (Department for Translation and Interpretation, Republic of Macedonia) also seemed to be not present.

Reaching students outside of traditional library instruction: creating online tutorials to reach a new generation of information users by Cindy Craig and Curt Friehs (Wichita State University Libraries) use tools like Camtasia, a tool I recommend, to improve online instruction. They have created tutorials for individual online databases to help show how to navigate through using them. Camtasia allows the viewer of the tutorial to see the screen and watch the action of the searching take place.

Why should librarians use Facebook? Because it’s a preferred medium of comunication among college-age and younger students as well as, increasingly, the rest of us. Studies indicate that tweens & teens use Facebook to discuss educational/homework topics; Facebook has the largest number of registered users among college-focused sites.

So why haven’t more college faculty bought into the concept? McKiernan thinks it’s because some of us (I’ve heard repeatedly over the past couple days that 35 is the cut-off for being “cool” but I don’t believe it) aren’t comfortable divulging our age, posting a picture etc. He pointed out that Facebook users have complete control over their profiles and privacy settings, and thus can choose what they want to share.

In addition to its use as a means of communication between individuals, McKiernan cited Facebook groups’ potential to augment/supplement learning management systems, and as community-building tools for distance education and learning communities. He discussed the power of Facebook apps to bring the library to people, and to blend 2.0 technologies.

There were 55 folks registered for this 6 hour preconference. Participants were from all types of libraries – academic, special, public, government, etc. Some support just IT proficiency for employees; others support employees and students.

In the discussion on how to get staff involved and interested they suggested sharing the weekly video by David Pogue. He’s with the New York Times and does a weekly tech tip.

Don’t reinvent the wheel – look for existing lists of proficiency topics, other teaching tips, etc. but do tailor what you find to your audience and your situation. You might want to consider doing a user assessment and tailoring needs to this but remember many staff that really need training don’t recognize it. Find fun and interesting ways to encourage people to show up or take part.

We discussed the need to link competency goals and then holding staff responsible for those in their annual evaluation. There needs to be some responsibility for the need to continue to learn. One attendee mentioned the difficulties posed by working with union employees.

So what kinds of things would folks consider in competencies – one level might be for everyone: basic toner in the printer, saving a file, making sure everything is plugged in. Additional levels of competencies can be set based on areas of responsibility – are they public service? Technical service? Or even a manager – one place has a set of competencies for the branch managers.

Staff need to not just attend training but be allowed (and encouraged) to “play” with what they learn – give a task to practice on, maybe a task that relates to a service they are responsible for providing. Some staff are afraid of “breaking” something, getting past that attitude takes some work.

Frequently teaching appropriate vocabulary to non-IT staff is necessary. Having a complete description of the problem makes it easier to know what the problem is or where to start. Instead of “it doesn’t work” someone reporting that they are unable to open the application X.

There was quite a lively discussion on whether it is the younger vs. older librarians or curious vs. afraid of technology librarians. Considering the majority of people sitting in that room were not 20 something, the consensus was it is more a curiosity or willingness to play and learn – not age. BTW – this part made me feel old – I do remember Crosstalk and when we only had one computer in the library.

The suggestion of going out to the users and asking the “good, bad, and ugly” was something that intrigued me. Seeing users concerns, frustrations, etc for improved communications from IT is an area I want to tackle. As well as talking with new employees about IT issues that would relate to them – email space, passwords, etc.

Another lively discussion was held regarding when organizational IT decides to do maintenance. Several attendees mentioned issues with Sunday night maintenances times – right when students decide “oops tomorrow is Monday and I have work”. There was recognition that many times the organizational IT has no consideration of users needs.

Wiki from preconference – http://itproficiencyresources.pbwiki.com/

Edward Corrado has presented on social software, Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 on numerous occasions and is interested in the use of open source software and Web 2.0 applications in libraries. He is the author of an upcoming chapter in a book from Libraries Unlimited. He has a Masters of Library Service from Rutgers University and is on the Code4Lib Journal editorial committee, an e-journal designed for programmers in libraries.

Where are our users, and how can we meet them on their turf?

The library web site is not necessarily the first place students go, e.g., a student in the library near the reference desk was looking at B&N to find books and then wondering if the library had it.

Next Gen catalogs have generated lots of discussion and some implementations andprojects, e.g., Endeca, Aqua Browser, XC (eXtensible catalog), WorldCat Local (University of Washington), Koha Zoom (Athens County Public Library, Ohio), VU Find(Villanova University open source), Primo by ExLibris (University of Iowa just went live) to try to make the catalog better.

Other services try to engage users with the library website to modernize and take advantage of Web 2.0 ideas, social software, getting users involved in creating content, e.g., New Books at D.H. Hill Library at North Carolina State University, Penn Tags.

What are the common characteristics of these examples?

• Faceted browsing
• Additional resources (other libraries, book jackets, etc.)
• Modern look and feel
• Reviews, tagging, recommendations

This is definitely a major improvement over the previous catalog, but do they really hit the target? If people aren’t searching the catalog, it doesn’t matter how good it is. Beta was better than VHS but it didn’t make it.

Lorcan Dempsey talks about the “low gravitational pull” of library resources. Librarians may like library resources, but that’s not where our patrons look first and sometimes they don’t even go there at all. Do faceted browsers really increase use of the library catalog or materials? NC State can document an increase in the number of searches, but has it really led to increases in circulation?

Where are our patrons? Home, dorm room, computer labs, coffee shops, friend’s house, occasionally in the library.

When are they looking for info? 24-7, when the library (or at least the reference desk) is closed, one hour before an assignment is due. But, Google and Amazon are always available.

Where do they look for info?

• Course management systems – that’s where their assignments are
• Student portals – campus wide, MyLibrary software for library portal
• Course web sites
• Google, including Google Scholar
• Wikipedia
• Social networking sites – MySpace, Facebook

How are we going to remain relevant in the digital age?

• “Good enough is good enough.” Richard Sweeney. Google works.
• IT could buy a database for a department and the library could be cut out of the loop.
• We must go where the students are to remain relevant.
• We must find new, creative ways to market and advertise library materials and services.

So how do we get into these spaces?

A recent article in the Journal of Academic Librarianship indicates a much higher percentage of academic libraries collaborating in person than through course management systems (CMS), even though librarians think we should provide information literacy support in the CMS. So why don’t we? There are barriers from IT and others, but how can we get there?

Getting into course management systems:

• E-reserves, direct links to databases, persistent links to articles or books …. But we have to make it easy for faculty to do this.
• Library pages in the CMS – but will anyone ever click on that page? Even in the old traditional world, we didn’t reach everyone. We have to balance the amount of work with the percentage that we can reach – work/effort vs. expected return – it’s still worth doing as long as it reaches some people.
• Web-based library tutorials in CMS
• Links to subject guides
• Librarian contact info
• Embedded librarians right in a course (involves campus politics, configuration of CMS and what it allows) – TCNJ has homegrown CMS that allows for embedded librarian and has been used successfully by the business librarian. You answer one question and all students get the answer, so you can reach the whole class at once. This saves time for the librarian to do other things, makes librarian more recognizable to students.
• RSS feeds (Corrado did an ACRL presentation on this) provide dynamic content with low maintenance, e.g., new books, database listings, canned database searches using their RSS options (issues linking to library databases – proxy, long URL, etc.). TCNJ has found that people are putting these RSS new book feeds in other places (e.g., Music puts it on department home page, professors put on their web site) – they did this without talking to the library, shows they want this kind of stuff and recognize ways to use it. Other libraries do this, e.g., Yale University puts course reserves dynamically in their CMS.

Getting into student portals:
MyMonash is a great example from Australia, Monash University – reading lists, past exams from professors (scan and put in portal instead of just reserves), search OPAC, links to library resources, podcasts of online lectures, library SMS notification (students can sign up for library messages – overdues, requested item is available). Look at Simon Huggard’s 2007 presentation (http://users.monash.edu.au/~simonh/).

Non-technical ways to go where students are:
Washington State University made door hangers that say “Shhh! Thanks for the courtesy. I’m at the library in my room.” On one side, library info on the other side of the hanger. This is a good marketing tool. See Cummings, L.U. (2007) Reference Services Review.

Roaming librarians have been effective at some schools.

Getting into Google Scholar:

Link to full-text within Google Scholar (students are using it, we should make sure they can get to our resources). This can be a Firefox extension or vendor supplied service.

Getting into Google Books:

• University of Michigan – but they are a partner in the Google Books Project.
• We can make out of copyright digitized books available (Project Gutenberg – e.g., if you only have two copies of a book needed for a class, you can provide a link to the Project Gutenberg copy).
• With Google Books you can make links to your holdings (but you have to pay).

Getting into Worldcat.org:

If our students are going to worldcat and our books aren’t in there, students will think we don’t own things (TCNJ surveys found that some students are searching worldcat and their holdings aren’t there). How do you let them know the books aren’t in worldcat since they aren’t coming to the library anyway? How do we do this outreach?

Getting into social networking sites:

• Note wikipedia’s “social networking service” definition and how Facebook defines itself in its “about” page.
• It’s not just online sites that have these properties but this is often where our users are.
• Where are our students? Even if only 50-60% of our students are in there, that’s where they are, especially for incoming student groups
• Beebo is the big thing in the UK.
• Denver Public Library has MySpace presence for teens (news and events, write reviews, homework help, search the catalog, video promoting the library)
• Brooklyn College Library in MySpace (library blog, contact info, calendar of classes on library technology).

In Facebook it should be done with groups (organizations aren’t supposed to set up), but you can still put up contact details, tutorials, links to relevant materials (students who join the group will get updates on their Facebook page). It takes about an hour to set up something.

Facebook applications: Create apps that people can install on their profile (JSTOR search, ask a reference question, entire pages with advanced search forms, Ryerson University has news headlines and other links) – just one more place where students can go for information.

Recommendations/conclusions:

• Patrons don’t come to the library first.
• Even if they come to the library, they don’t necessarily use the library resources.
• They don’t search the library for fun (they need info for the class – just what will satisfy the requirements). They don’t want us to guide them to the 7 best articles, so how do we guide them to get 7 good articles instead of 7 mediocre articles?
• Library should go to patrons in the online environment.
• In many cases, this is a small investment in time and money, so even if the return isn’t huge, both the library and the patrons still win.

Our mission isn’t to create cool tools that librarians like to use – it’s to create tools for our users.

Plinkit is a program for developing database-driven web sites for libraries, that uses open-source software, and is free to the libraries who use them. Individual library projects are created with training and support by librarians from statewide/regional library organizations, using statewide funding. They work together to bring this resource into existence for the benefit of small towns, particularly in rural areas. The presenters all find it gratifying to help small libraries develop web sites with the Plinkit project.

Each of the presenters gave a description of Plinkit from a different perspective. We heard viewpoints of trainers, administrators, and a librarian from a small town; all who are involved in using the Plinkit in different ways.

Darci Hanning, Oregon State Library Technology Development Consultant at OSU
Topic: Plinkit overview

Plinkit for libraries, background info:

The Problem for Libraries (particularly in small towns)

· Many libraries have no web site at all, or just contact information through a town web site.

· The web site might be entirely a brochure format, but without enought options for change to the site or program news.

· IT departments that oversee an entire city may not provide enough support to library staff

· Control of the library web site might be external to the library, so that development is difficult.

· The web site is created by volunteers; perhaps in a program that the existing library staff can’t update, so that it doesn’t entirely function as needed.

Solution! Plinkit

· Advantages: library staff can update everything using a word.doc like editor, wysiwyg

· Libraries get a pre-built web site that they can use as they need to

· No cost to individual libraries: Plinkit staff provides training and support.

· Create content types that add value to the library.

· Links for authentication of statewide databases, so that residents in rural areas can use statewide sources at any time and place.

Terms and definitions:

· Plone: a zope application using templates and css

· ZMI: Zope management interface – allows for customization

· Plone is written in python script

· Plone has numerous content types; photos, portlets for news of current events of the library. Library staff add new items, and the portlet publishes the most current 3 items.

· Upcoming events – the most current 3 items are always on view in the library web site.

· Photo album – creates a thumbnail view.

Security:

· Levels for administrators, content editors, and publishers for security.

About Plone, the CMS System that Plinkit uses:

· Open-source cms with add-on products for media, we blogs, polls/Surveys, etc.

· Plone uses a template with css that you can easily alter.

· There is a chat room for real-time help, forums and user-groups, a conference yearly.

· Improved documentation in the last few years. Online user’s manual, a new book coming out soon.

· Search features work for the entire website, every search result creates a dynamic RSS.

· RSS can be created for any areas of site

· Plone offers: a weather widget, Spanish language option, a calendar, a community organizations list

· Darci Hanning created custom portlets: an image portlet for new building photos; a library catalog search box, a quotation widget, a research help box, plus customizable content portlets for local library staff to use for new content.

Designing for Two: Darci and Oregon libraries work together to create Plinkit sites. Darci Hanning, as Plinkit administrator, provides libraries with a package to work with:

· OSU Plinkit staff send libraries a Plinkit site pre-loaded with content.

· One step publishing

· Staff-only area

· Different access levels

· Additional functionality

Library staff add content:

· local items and local content, all types of media

Tine Walczyk – Texas State Library
Topic: Collaboration among 4 states using Plinkit

A timeline:
2003: Plinkit started as a grant for Multnomah County Library, in Portland, Oregon

2004: 10 libraries were using Plinkit in Oregon, and now there are quite a few more

2006: Colorado, Texas, Illinois join Oregon to form a consortium for Plinkit support

2007: Admin manual and other documentation for Plinkit libraries.

Currently nearly 100 libraries are using Plinkit in the US among the 4 states in this collaborative system.

Structure of the Plinkit organization: they are building on what they have created thus far:

· A steering committee was formed to plan development of the Plinkit system for libraries

· Where do they want to take Plinkit? What kinds of templates/skins do they want, what added functionality? Add a live reference section? Recurring events on the calendar?

· They get feedback from library staff who use Plinkit, requesting changes. The steering committee helps implement these changes that are requested.

· Another goal is to have a Plinkit users group for discussion.

Documentation: they are writing all of the documentation:

· User’s Manual, Administrators’ Manual jointly created by the collaborative.

· An initial Plinkit.org template that libraries receive. Each state takes the template and customizes for the entire state.

· They are working on support for library staff. Darci provides great support to the group.

· Plinkit.org is the repository for all changes including archives.

Comments from the presenters about how Plinkit works in their state:

Beverly Obert, Executive Director, Rolling Prairie Library System, Decatur, Illinois
One of the library administrators liked Plinkit, and wrote a grant so that they could use it. Their goal is to have 60 web sites for libraries by the end of June, 2007. Illiniois Library administrators looked at the Plinkit site to customize it to match what they needed for Illinois, for laws, for what are required for Illinois libraries, to link to state databases, such as Worldcat, and other needs. They used the Plinkit sandbox to create a manual for Illinois state library staff. Starting with a meeting of 9 libraries, this was enough, and from here libraries took off! They were immediately building their library websites after the training. They found Plinkit easy enough for library staff to use with a minimum of training. Libraries now have great-looking web sites, created by staff who don’t have much training in web site development.

Darci Hanning: Technology Development Consultant, Oregon State Library
Darci brings libraries into the Plinkit system 1 library at a time; they sign an agreement, and she sets up trainings with the library staff person – by phone for convenience – and they work together to create the new library site.

Sharon Morris: Technology and Digital Initiatives Consultant, Colorado State Library
Sharon Morris does all the training for Plinkit libraries. She goes to conferences and arranges for a computer lab for interactive learning among Plinkit libraries. She goes out to Plinkit libraries to help them get started. She takes her digital camera and helps get them started. She helps them structure information in a web environment to help them get started. There is a statistics program so that libraries now have statistics on web site use, a new way to evaluate their services. Plinkit is ADA compliant: built-in alt tags; instructions on how to use the site with keyboard strokes instead of a mouse.

Tine Walczyk: Continuing Education and Consulting Manager, Texas State Library and Archives Commission

The State Library brought staff in from the regional library systems, who in turn helped their local libraries create Plinkit web sites. Tine goes to regional systems for training.
They have written numerous agreements (memorandums of understanding) to formalize policies. Plinkit is needed: currently there are over 200 libraries in the state of Texas that have no web site or minimal sites that are not updated. Interest is shown by library staff of small libraries in Texas, who have driven over 500 miles to take the Plinkit class.

Kristi Lindsey: Director, Penrose Community Library District, Colorado
Penrose is a small community of 500 people with a small library, with a small-town feel. Simple city services, no traffic light in all of Penrose. Their current library is 1800 sq. ft, and they have a building project, raising funds from local residents. Penrose is unincorporated, with a population consisting primarily of prison employees, since prisons are nearby, plus inmate families.
Reaching their community is not easy: there is no local newspaper, no local community radio station, high-speed internet access became available just 2 months ago. Technology is very new in this community. Most people have a computer at home, but only recently with high-speed internet access. No real tech support for the library. The first web site they had was created by local teen volunteers. Their original web site has now developed into a Plinkit site that all of their library staff can use. They now create new content daily.

Contact the speakers for more info about Plinkit.

Sean Cordes was previously Instructional Technology Library at Parks Library, Iowa State University of Science and Technology. He holds masters degrees in educational technology, and in library and information science from the University of Missouri. His responsibilities at Western Illinois include academic web designer, technology librarian and instruction coordinator.

This presentation describes the rationale and practical considerations that went into creating the Iowa State library’s Media Production Services (MPS), a video editing studio that allows students to digitize, manipulate and create media, DVDs, slide shows, etc., over a one to one and a quarter year time period, including how the library and IT came together as a group to define roles and policies. The slides include visuals and photographs of the area, equipment, and signage.

Why provide media production services for students? Why is it important?

• We talk about Web 2.0 – this is the frontier for students to build it.
• Students need skills for the job market: collaborative skills, applied technology skills, problem solving in general, ability to work in groups.
• It is important for students to not only access library materials but also to actually create materials: “Learn – create – participate”.
• Studies such as ECAR’s annual Students and Information Technology Survey (available on the Educause website) and Jill Casner-Lotto in her 2006 “Are they really ready to work?” indicate that students know the content of their fields but not how to apply it in work situations using collaborative skills, problem solving, etc.
• Student familiarity with tools is miles wide but not very deep.

So what do students need to be ready for productivity in jobs, and what are they getting?

• Some disciplines are more strongly associated with specific technologies (e.g., design).
• Some disciplines are more proficient in coursework with advanced software features – but all students need it in the workplace.
• Students use a wide variety of communication tools, but they are more comfortable with “communitainment” tools than academic tools – it’s not about work, it’s about communicating and entertainment and sharing photos, etc.
• Students think instructors need better technology training themselves, and that instructors should provide better training to them as students.
• Academic institutions have silos of technology training, not brought together as part of general education curriculum or graduation requirements.

Trends

• Between 2005 and 2006, student use of higher order software, audio/video, and web development jumped about 11% – so students need access to these tools.
• Second and extended career workers (non-traditional students) may require additional training support alternatives- so we need to take a different approach with these students.
• Students possess discipline knowledge but lack collaboration and technology skills.

MPS moved to the library from Central IT in August 2006 where it was inconsistent and had no support process built in. IT gave it to the library, who had never used or taught these tools before. It was a collaborative effort to relocate everything (hardware, software, network connections, reorienting students, orienting library staff to video service production).

What did it require?

• Expansion of IT and librarian roles and knowledge (power issues, food issues).
• Operational signs – it was stuck in middle of reference area, nobody could tell where it was. Signs in both old and new location, sign/map at library front door to show exact location in library. The color scheme of the signs became the theme for manuals and other MPS literature so it would be easily recognized.
• Revision of transaction log to accommodate library culture and practice.
• Adjustment in service – Changed from sitting at the desk and waiting for students to come for help (they won’t) to just-in-time, just-in-need service, going to the students and asking questions. Students don’t want the information given to them, they want to build it themselves (whether for class work or social), and they want the tools and support to do that.

Equipment needed:

• PC and Mac
• SVHS/Mini DVD – takes VHS and converts it to digital system (large or small tapes)
• Fire Wire (iLink) – standard for transmitting digital signals rapidly, much faster than USB. You can’t have too many – be sure you have plenty for maximum number of input devices.
• Storage – Projects are huge, 40GB hard drives weren’t big enough and neither were campus network shares. Symantec Ghost favored by IT wipes out files and downloaded programs and remains an issue that IT and Reference can’t agree on how to deal with. MPS started by recommending that students bring their own portable 200GB hard drives for videos longer than 1 hour and now have 4 portable hard drives that students can check out for use in the lab.
• Software – MPS changed from what was originally on the machines that had a beginning, middle and high end package for each process to having a low end and high end on Mac and PC (some were bundled, e.g., Adobe Elements and Adobe Premier; iMovie, iDVD and Garage Band all come with iLife now and have a common tutorial format makes it easier to transition from one to another.

Who is using it?

• Beginning communications classes (former English 104/105), foreign language, engineering and design (e.g., engineering students had to track how high a ball would bounce with varying degrees of moisture and had to capture very precise moments in time on video).
• Scheduling problems can arise with many classes using it.
• Sororities and fraternities showcase events, personal projects.
• Faculty use it to evaluate student projects and for personal projects. This became a policy issue – MPS will help and allow faculty to convert family VHS to DVD because they want faculty to use it, be familiar with it, know what their students went through.
• Popular DVD projects include weddings, fishing trips and vacations, kid’s baseball game and activities – yes, this is an educational institution but we want to create lifelong learners, and these projects get them in and get them learning – this can get faculty thinking about how to incorporate these activities into their classroom.

What types of projects can be done in the MPS?

• Capture/edit audio or video
• Author DVD
• Edit images
• Web publishing (CS 3 suite)

What are the key parts of a project?

1. Data import, e.g., movie files into video editor, PPT images into video editor, audio file or CD into video editor, movie files into PPT or DVD creation. Copyright issues can arise with this (solution – play CD into video and then create at DVD?).
2. Data edit – trim and arrange digital and audio clips, add titles and credits, add scene transitions and effects, created animated DVD menus.
3. Data conversion and export, e.g., rip DVD into MPEG and then edit in video editor, or record into VHS and import it that way, convert PPT into JPEG images or movie files, export to hardware (bootable DVD) or to file to mount.

Not everything is compatible with everything else. This was one of the most difficult parts, because the software doesn’t always tell you (had to learn by experimentation, had to know which editing programs will take various file types, and with what degree of ease/quality). For example, YouTube is all Flash, but FLV files aren’t compatible with some of the video editing software, so you have to convert to AVI (I’m not sure about the technicality here!).

Recommendations for converting from one format to another? Go to downloads.com on Cnet and find shareware that would do this. MPS doesn’t have purchased converter software on their system – things change so quickly and there is intermittent use, so why purchase something if it may not work later. HandBrake rips DVD to many other formats (suggested by participant), also see videodownloader.com for converting FLV files to other formats.

Training and support

• Primarily use OEM tutorials and manuals so that when updated, they don’t have to adapt.
• Basic training workshops where they walk groups through the basic steps.
• Manuals from the old IT lab were modified to reflect changes in equipment, made less technical in some areas to be better for library patrons. These manuals just give the basic steps and then refer patron to the OEM manual for the details at each step.
• Each machine has a folder with links to tutorials, guides, online resources.
• “infocational” moments helping students
• Students often come multiple times over a period of time (even full semester), so you get to establish an ongoing relationship with people and can ask how it’s going.
• Guidelines to help users choose what manual and software to choose (modified from old IT lab).
• There is a sign up log, drop boxes, daily operational routines, online form for administrative support.

You have to have vigilant support and people who are aware of what’s going on (e.g., some users spent 3 hours trying to do something when only had a loose cord connection).

Who handles what?

• Roles were an issue (instructional technologist, librarian, information technologist). There was lots of negotiation of where boundaries of support were – this actually applies to any type of library service (e.g., virtual reference) in determining where the lines fall with IT and library.
• Future proof – talk about what happened during the day, cross train.
• Put together activity diagrams (form of business process management to decide who does what role at what time), sort of like a flow chart

What were some of the problems and issues?

• Everything worked last night, but in the morning students have moved wires around (you can’t lock them down because then they can’t do their work – but certain amount of security is needed so certain things are locked down – they are still trying to decide how Ghost will be used).
• Storage options – ended up with portable hard drives as the best storage option.
• Cross platform – people bring in VHS-C tapes and older media.
• Resource attrition – hardware must keep up with software as it changes (Macs were taking an hour or two to digitize until put in CoreDuo processors) – you have to continually update.
• Policy issues with students almost living in the lab – food, can they sleep there, can they take their stinky shoes off and put them on the tables?
• Is there a time limit? They have an unofficial rule that you can’t sign up for more than two 3-hour blocks at a time – but people work around this, different times of semester are heavier, so far hasn’t been an issue.
• Open environment requires extra vigilance in monitoring. MPS used to be in the middle of the reference area, now they have built walls around the area (after a grant to remodel).

Usage statistics from the sign in log indicate more use the Mac than PC (even PC users gravitated to Mac because faster).

MPS has also added duplicating equipment, wider monitors, an additional digital converter box (if one person was editing in one place, both couldn’t use the box so had to buy another because not enough Fire Wire ports).

Goals for future:

• Integrate literacy standards into project outcomes
• Extend support to classroom pre-project training
• Establish requirements and best practice standards

Environmental conditions – emergency backup power is critical.

Cost for 4 PCs, 2 Macs, peripherals and software was $35K

Total weekly support time helping people is about 15 hours/week.

Librarian, student assistant and technology specialist now sit at same desk (used to be in separate locations, so they can help and inform each other as well as support user needs)

Student workers balance project support.

All you need is computer, SVHS, and DVD deck – you can use free software.

The simpler the system, the better – but you still have to have hardware.

Sean ended the presentation by sharing user comments and showing a project created entirely with open source software – still images about Web 2.0 with Beware of the Blob as background music in Windows Media Player.

It’s all just a big blob, perhaps we can capture just a bit of it.

Questions from the audience:

Where do you begin if you don’t know anything about this? Go to the about.com video section, set it up at home to see what you can do (use your own camcorder). Look through Educause. There are not a lot of libraries that do this (usually more of IT function). Most information you will find deals with setting it up for home use rather than as a service. Or call Iowa State or Sean – mostly it’s a matter of getting the equipment.

How deeply trained are rhw librarians? All go through basic session on turning VHS into DVD, but other than that, they just learn as they go. They are getting better at narrowing things down and troubleshooting.

What did communications department use? English department had a new media lab but you had to petition to belong and it’s a small area with fewer stations – they used the original IT lab stuff and upgraded it. Right now the library has the most powerful media processing on campus, but not the only one, just most accessible.

Do you teach group introductory sessions for the English classes who use it? No, they were just piling in as we hear about assignments. It was Sean’s intention to offer sessions, but then he left Iowa State. This would be a good place for a video on how to do things. – but it is still important to pull faculty into the library.

Streetprint is an open-source software program for creating digital collections, developed by the University of Alberta. The purpose of Streetprint, from the web site, is to: “make formerly inaccessible and ephemeral texts and artifacts available to the widest possible audience, fulfilling the promise of the Internet and bringing information ‘back to the streets.’” Martha Chantiny’s session was a tour through the features of this program and the collections they have created using Streetprint.

Link to Streetprint web site: http://www.crcstudio.arts.ualberta.ca/streetprintorg/index.php

Martha has worked at the University of Hawaii at Manoa for over 15 years. In that time, she has initiated an impressive array of projects.

Brief history of digitization projects at the University of Hawaii at Manoa:

· 1991 – They received a Higher Education Act Title II-C grant to scan photos and create collections. This was pre-web, a CARL System digital image display system, that used a novell network internal library system. The collections were available only in the library on library computers, typical of pre-web resources.

· 1996 – library first developed web pages. They began digitizing their primary newspaper collections with a grant, and completed this project in 1998. They worked with microfilm, encountering numerous problems with ocr errors, but the overall result was good.

· They built more collections after the initial newspaper project, with additional grant funds: a digital collection of Hawaiian language newspapers.

· Next: local history: a Micronesian Photograph Collection. This project served as a springboard to help start new projects.

· Ulukau: Hawaiian Electronic Library – this group has created a collection of historic Hawaiian-language newspapers published between 1834 to 1948. They used Greenstone for their project, and took over the newspaper projects that Martha and her staff had begun.

· 2001-2002: the web as delivery vehicle. They developed a new resource: Annexation of Hawaii: A Collection of documents. Currently, the print originals are rare, so they scanned documents for preservation in digital format, using copies in the Bishop Museum.

· Yet more: The Donald Angus Botanical Prints Collection, and multiple others have been added in the past few years.

· Collections were created, actual work done, by a crew of 30 or more student assistants and interns, many of whom have gone on to library and IT careers as a result of these projects.

Subsequently, a major flood in the library destroyed some originals that they had previously digitized in the collections above. She showed a set of slides of images from the flood, that showed damages to library computer equipment and collections that were of historical value.

What happened next, after they made all of the image collections above?
Users wanted them to be in database format. At this point, they discovered the Streetprint program, that they read about in a digital collections forum.

Streetprint was originally created so that faculty could build their own digital collections. The interface is easy and intuitive, with lots of “white space” that gives the whole program an uncluttered look. Fill in the forms to create database fields that will later appear in the templates for adding digital objects. Metadata and alt tags are added in the process of compiling the image collections, all very simply.

As Martha proceeded along through the slides about this program, it was easy to see that Streetprint has many advantages for ease of use for people without technical skills.

Features:

· Uses php/SQL

· CSS files can be easily modified

· Comments feature is useful for improving annotations – contributed content can be reviewed first before posting on the site.

· Easy to use

· Easy formatting to begin a collection, clear wording of site design templates “Fill in the blanks”

· Creates a database with pull-down menus for types of documents and subjects.

· A series of steps to create content templates for collections.

· Creates a database with pull-down menus for types of documents and subjects.

· Multiple uses: use this system for quick digital presentations as well as long-term image collections.

· Unicode compliant, but MSWord can alter text uploading, requiring more edits.

Drawbacks of Streetprint:

· No batch load of items, one by one instead, which is not very efficient

· Code not bug-free or finished

· Only Dublin core metadata scheme

· No cross-collection searches

Examples of Streetprint collections that Martha and her staff of student assistants have created:

Save our surf: http://digicoll.manoa.hawaii.edu/sos/
Unpublished materials from the SOS organization

Social Movements http://digicoll.manoa.hawaii.edu/socmovements/
140 archival boxes scanned with student help

The Hawaii War Records Depository http://digicoll.manoa.hawaii.edu/hwrd/
Hawaii War records archives

Steve Thomas Traditional Navigation Collection http://digicoll.manoa.hawaii.edu/satawal/
Traditional canoemakers collection with photographs under copyright protection of Steve Thomas. For this project they used the comments feature – Pacific islanders have been sending in comments.

TRAIL http://digicoll.manoa.hawaii.edu/techreports/
Federal technical reports collection

Hawaiian Photo Album http://digicoll.manoa.hawaii.edu/hawaiianphoto
Hawaii description and travel and Hawaii pictorial works. Some of these came without identification, but comment options allowed for images to be updated with new descriptions by the Historical Society.

Hawaiian music collection – Audio Files http://digicoll.manoa.hawaii.edu/music/

The next step: contribute their digital collections to national digital library programs:
OAI harvesting worked well after they made a few alterations in code, so that the Dublin Core metadata terms matched other libraries. They are now publicizing their historical resources more extensively using the Open Archives Initiative.

This session reviewed three different ways or projects that provide faceted searching.

Danielle Plumer – Texas Heritage Digitization Initiative. http://texasheritageonline.org/

The Initiative is a statewide plan that unifies previously created pockets, not a centralized database. They have an OAI harvester (to be described later by Mark Phillips), a real time search, and soon – web search.

There are metadata synchronization issues, item description issues, and differences in how the different systems display information.

So they assign “Collection Level Metadata” to make facets in an institution “profile” that help the user narrow searches and identify the institutions.

David Dorman – Faceted Searching in a Metasearch Environment: The Index Data Experience.

Index Data (http://www.indexdata.dk/) is a 13 year old company that develops and supports open source software.

Talked about a product called MasterKey which searches multi datasets and provides search results with a left hand faceted navigation menu. System does real time queries against databases or web pages. Search results are returned on a single page with records that link out to the actual record/item.

Richness of metadata dictates quality of the faceted search results. Relevance ranking of these results is still to come, as is normalization of unstructured data. With the implementation of standards (he recommends z39.50), there are many opportunities for improved faceted searching.

Mark Phillips – UNT

Took us through using OAI-PMH to provide access to collections that are not z39.50 systems, as part of the Texas Heritage Digitization Initiative.

You have the data, at data-providers, service-providers, a harvester, a repository.

There are 6 verbs that are commands.

Step 1 – Harvester – many available at openarchives.org – anyone can harvest! They settled on OCLC’s one page harvester which they customized. This creates one huge xml file of the data-provider.

Step 2 – Then they turn xml files into searchable data. Use python conversion scripts to send to a solr format for indexing. Create a Dublin Core document.

Step 3 – mod-python based SRU access, CQL conversion to Lucene query.

Challenges:

• Speed
• The ability to display thumbnails – not standardized part of Dublin Core
• Getting repositories to use OAI-PMH – not all of them have it initially enabled.
• Customization OAI-PMH output

And all this feeds into the Texas Heritage Digitization Initiative

(good website for those interested in open source, and library 2.0 technologies)

Abstract:

Corrado began with an introduction of web2.0 then walked participants through the transformation of a Library 1.0 page to a Library 2.0 page, all by using freely available, low IT involvement, and commonly accepted web tools.
Why Web 2.0?

The talk began with a brief introduction on The College of New Jersey, and its Library. The Library has a very large big presence and is an important player on the campus that serves a ‘Millenial’ – those who have grown up online population. Corrado reminded participants that an other important reason to serve and involve the Millenials is that they will soon be professors and leaders of our culture and they want to create.

A review of Web 2.0

Web 2.0 supports group interaction, collaborative, leverages wisdom of the crowds through various tools, mediums, and ecology

Must:

• Get the user involved
• have a low barrier to adoption
• be mashable
• be fun

Transforming from 1.0 to 2.0

Corrado then began the transformation. Beginning with a Library 1.0 webpage and typical OPAC record display screen. He explained that static web pages do not encourage people to keep visiting. Why visit a page when you know what will be there? On the other hand continually updating pages or getting your already overloaded IT department to build and maintain systems that would automate the process can be hard.

To answer these issues Corrado then discussed various off-site, web 2.0 apps that can easily be integrated into the Library homepage.

• Flickr’s badge feeds allow Library’s to post images, coincidentally allows users to comment on them.
• Del.icio.us is a great tool to ‘store’ your bookmarks anywhere and also share them with others. Libraries, after setting up accounts, can create tag rolls and clouds and post them on library pages. Del.icio.us is only one of many useful tagging sites.
• LibraryThing was also mentioned as a good social software tool for building new book lists on the Library homepage. Implements tagging, list of other people who have the book and what they like, user supplied cover images, users can write reviews.
• WordPress or other blogging software is useful for announcements. Start a blog and then embed its RSS feed into your library page. You might need to use Feed2JS to convert feed into page.

And that’s it! Your Library 1.0 can go 2.0 and your users can get more involved in your collections with little or no additional technical knowledge.

If you value these podcasts and the blogging that we do, please let LITA and ALA know!

[There were two of these sessions and they both ran a bit differently. Gregg ran this as a discussion group and I captured as many of the comments as I could. Audience comments are marked “comments,” my comments are in brackets, and Gregg’s words are as is. I came in a bit late to this one. The group was discussing what will happen when books are all online. Surprisingly, not all the comments were negative. I think that many of us realize that this will be our reality in some fashion. I think there will still be paper books, but we will have more options for format type then we have now because so many things will be digital.]

Comment from the audience, Jason Griffey: [paraphrase] If we have that many things online, we can not traditionally catalog items. Self tagging works better and people like it. LibraryThing and del.icio.us have taught us this.

Comment: Originally libraries were created around the notion of a scarcity of resources and access to resources. Now we have an overload and people can find what they want. There are 30,000 things that might be what someone wants. We have trouble figuring out what people want.

Comment: Who is going to be using our catalogs in 20 years? Students are already expecting full text everything. We have to assume that everything will be electronic.

Comment: Books can fit on computers and phones. Libraries as a place for books is a vapor. [He says in a brilliant accent.]

The library is an ambient place. People still want a place to go.

Comment: Libraries can still provide access through technology. In some communities, it is the main place that people do access technology.

Lexis Nexis and West Law have the best indexing in the world. They use people to do their indexing.

In response to a comment from Jason saying that Japan and China have less of a digital divide because they use high power cell phones for everything.: You can fit all of Japan inside Wyoming. I don’t know; I just made that up. [hilarious]

Comment, Jonathan Blackburn: the library is a place for people. The catalog is more then just a representation of things; it is a meta representation that sits on top of the thing. [interesting]

Comment, from a guy who works on OCLC’s Content DM: Libraries can help publish content. There is a need to have a repository for different kinds of formats.

We need to help the users create information.

Comment: What drives people into the library?

Comment: If people are still accessing our information online, they are still using us, even if they never come into their building.

[Jonathan, who is sitting next to me, says I am an information toddler because I want what I want now and not later. He is right]

Comment: Libraries should disappear completely. Stop teaching me how to search more effectively. I do not know. I do not have time for that. Boolean this and Boolean that. I feel overwhelmed. There should just be a label that says information is here. [Well that would be lovely.]

Comment: Undergraduates work is junk. Not everything a student produces is for anything other then learning. We have come to worship any produced information and we need to balance that.

Comment, Jonathan Blackburn: The relevance of libraries relies on the relevance of librarians. If the library is a place for people and not for things, then what value to we add to the conversation? What assistance can we add? How can we facilitate conversations between our users and other users?

Comment: We have all been control freaks and saying we have the best information, but information is moving beyond us. If libraries are going to stay relevant we have to decide what role we are going to play.

Google is beating us at our own digitization game.

Copyright – something is going to have to happen to copyright. People are violating copyright all the time and copyright is so extreme.

Comment, Andrew Pace: Publishers make us look like laissez faire.

Comment: Public libraries are the gateway drug to violating copyright. [oh, that is brilliant!]

There are ads in magazines all the time but we react differently when they are online.

There are two files: this one is his actual keynote, and the upcoming post is the question and answer session afterwards.

As always: enjoy! If you value these podcasts and the blogging that we do, please let LITA and ALA know!

Meebo widget at University of Utah

Meebo widget added to their user instruction web site redesign — why Meebo? It integrates with blog software like WP, plus, is a standalone widget that goes in your web page, which means it doesn’t require any specific client to be installed on the user’s computer.

“We can dismiss these as fads, or we can incorporate them into our site. We deal with incoming freshmen, and this is what they’re using.” That’s why they decided to incorporate them.
Widget is embedded on ALL pages not just Ask a Librarian page (cited Wells, 2003 p. 136 “Chat request button needs to be on all frequently-used web pages”).

RSS Feed – New acquisitions at BYU

Ranny Lacanienta, ranny@byu.edu
4,500 new titles a month so he split it into subject specific feeds
Also offers “Custom Feed”

Oops, I forgot to ask if I could have his code

LOCKSS for local materials

Ranti Junus – their issue is exactly that of the last Q&A from the second keynote: The library used to receive campus publications in print, but now they no longer receive the publications at all, since departments view “publishing” on web in PDF to be the end of their distribution process. So the library is seeking ways to grab the PDF content and auto-archive it.

The MetaArchive Project was their inspiration.

David Lee King, Digital Branch and Services Manager at Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library in Kansas

David’s site: www.davidleeking.com

David Lee King is unusual for librarians: his job is “Digital Branch Manager” with a new job description created from elements of his old job, but with an entire focus of electronic resources incorporating library 2.0 concepts. He took a photo of the audience as he began his talk, for flickr. This report is a summary from the presentation.

The benefit for librarians of new technology: Some people think of change as lots of opportunity, lots of options. Yet some think: who knows what’s over the horizon, maybe trouble? DLK: “We are the lucky ones, interested in leading-edge technology for libraries.”

Transformations in the social networking world are rapid:
Example: YouTube, started in 2005 , is now one of the most popular websites in the world.

Emerging trends:

Commenting:
Old model: before 2000, there were no conversations on the web, one-on-one only.
New model: now, the internet is fundamentally an ongoing conversation on the web all the time.

• Before Library 2.0, ways for comments in the library were limited. Now, a library director’s blog for AADR receives comments from readers on the web site. Now, a public conversation right on the web site about library issues. Keep the good conversation with the bad for realism and true dialogue.

Friending:
Old model: not participation or interconnectivity of library staff and users of library
New model: use 2.0 technologies for participation with your customers.

On the web, friending is a new concept for libraries. Examples:

• MySpace for libraries
• YouTube channel
• Buddy Lists on IM

Benefits of the friending concept: you can be friends for life, since you can so easily keep track of friends through changes of school, work, etc. Everything stays current for people with this model.

A trusted network of friends: “Always have the library in your pocket”

Content: post photos, events, media, all sorts of content

Content:
Old model: the physical library of books, pathfinders in print
New model: RSS, comments, subject guides with RSS, interactivity of librarian-generated content

• Content going out via blogs: ex. Papercuts blog about new content for books; 60 second book reviews; a human voice telling you about what’s new in the library. Take a look at the videos they have on
• Let library users help create part of the library with youtube videos
• Wikis for libraries: Stevens County – Have Stevens County create information for Stevens County. The library staff creates something and then gets out of the way.

Tagging:
Old model: authority control, subject headings
New model: Authority control plus new systems for patrons to tag content.

• Add delicious tags to book records in catalog along with traditional cataloging.
• Lamson Library: Casey Bisson, adapted the library catalog and web site to WordPress.

The Web as Platform:
Old model: computer pc as platform
New model: use distributed content: google docs, a different model using open-source programs.

• Use the web to create content, connect to others, interact.
• Old model : patrons visit the library to access the web… so they can do stuff outside the library

Mashups:
Old model: combine content in a research paper
New model: freely combine content from more than one info source online

• Add mashups to Libraries: ex. Danbury Library Catalog

Why use these tools?

• Be relevant to the next generation: IM/text messaging; create user-generated content (flickr, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook)
• Web 2.0 tools are useful and convenient for storage of image, video, and text files.
• From the world of commerce: Amazon, EBAY, consumer sites are examples of entire communities creating content for others to use.
• Another example: newspapers’ online sites: the editors start content, readers comment online results in a participatory form that is quicker than paper.
• Mobile technology is getting easier to use, coming down in price, and fun to use: Examle: IPhone: this device looked fun to use on the tv ads.

What are other libraries trying out?

• Computer classes for all skill levels, all ages
• Second life projects
• Charlotte-Mecklenberg Library: made a podcast station for kids
• Teach the current generation information literacy: show them flickr, vanity searching, aggregate news, subscribe to your library.
• Teach older people social networking tools so they can learn how these work.
• Teach a class on how to use flickr
• Teach a class on myspace for parents so they can learn about this system, its risks and benefits.
• For librarians: Library 2.0 helps you save time: Organize professional reading through rss and blog feeds, IM can save you time over email or phone; bookmarking can save time in delicious. Work smarter by using these tools.
• Rationale: Customers want to participate! Example is Time Magazine Person of the Year: YOU – refers to the millions of people who are creating content on the internet.
• Be a community leader: become a community resource.
• Teach small business owners how to make a blog to connect with their customers
• Teen Tech Week – teach skills, teach animation videos, runescape videos, be relevant to users through teaching.
• New jobs in libraries use these skills: NextGen Librarian, Web 2.0 Librarian, Emerging Technology Manager, User experience strategist …these types of job descriptions that use library2.0 skills are becoming more common.

How do I make time for new stuff?

• Making time is a balance between willingness and priority.
• You have to want to change.
• A common complaint: ”I’m not techie enough” However, this is not true, since Library 2.0 is NOT techie stuff, uses easy technology., everyone can create a word document, so they can blog.
• Adapt job descriptions: when they post a new job opening, David King’s library looks at the job description and makes changes to meet new directions they want to develop. Another way: adapt job descriptions for current jobs to match technological changes.
• Let go of the past: the OCLC Perceptions Report is a useful survey that indicates good directions for libraries.
• Try it out: do something scary to stay relevant. Try 23 links, look at library 2.0 sites and play around with them.
• Library managers: grant staff time to explore, send staff to formal training, arrange practical trainings for library staff. As administrators, describe these change succinctly, plan carefully, use constant communication with staff, model new behavior for library staff, give people extra time to learn if needed. Don’t block the entrance or prevent them from using new tools!

5-year forecast:

• The web is 17 years old. By 1993, Mosaic existed. Yahoo started up in 1996, but in 11 years, everything about Yahoo has changed.
• Changes in the library world from 17 years ago: many. Now there is more interaction, participation, personalization of content “My amazon” more multimedia, more mobile technology – actual functionality for those without technical skills, easier designs (via templates and skins)
• Libraries increasing use 2.0: Atchison Public Library: this library is using wordpress for their entire library site
• In 2017 libraries will be anywhere, anytime, anyhow.
• In 2017 libraries will be about communities, not computers.

Everything will look different in 5 years, and David Lee King can’t wait!

Change
“We are the lucky ones” being the computer geeks, yet much of the audience raised hands when asked if they felt pulled in multiple directions being in IT work.

Transformations

• Shared comments as conversation is “new” (at least in terms of public conversation with patrons and community) — e.g., AADL director’s blog and comments
• Friending on the web – Flickr/MySpace/Facebook, IM buddy lists – you now have friends for life (do you? is this really web-dependent? As the technology changes and Facebook gets bought out by Yahoo and requires a Yahoo login, will your old high school friends really still stay on the same channel with you?)
• Content changes e.g. patron-generated content such as Denver Library YouTube contest, RSS feeds for snippets of only certain kinds of content (“PaperCuts” blog at Topeka; sports blog at Kansas City) — this need not be viewed as transferring control of the information to patrons, but adding “user-generated” (staff and customer) content to the authority-controlled content — involving the user
• Tagging: del.icio.us at Lansing Public Library for reference links; AADL customer-generated tags in OPAC; Casey Bisson at Lamson Library WPOPAC supports tags
• The web as platform: instead of going to the library to use library content, patrons are going to the library to use the Internet to use non-library content — “we are now a launch pad to a destination rather than a destination”
• Mashups: combining content used to be limited to e.g. writing a research paper, now it is combining applications and content from multiple web sources

Why are we doing these changes and transformations? Should we be doing these?

• We should be relevant to the next generation: IM and texting, creating user-generated content; using content from other users in making their decisions, e.g., Amazon user reviews. Why did few in the audience raise hands when he asked if their library did IM reference?
• Mobile technology is getting much easier to use & coming down in price.
• What are you doing in your library to interact with patrons in these spheres? To support them in using & understanding new apps?
  • Charlotte & Mecklenburg podcast booth for teens
  • www.myspace.com/vsotkc to create interactive art exhibit at Topeka
  • Princeton Public Library classes in Flickr
  • Teach parents about MySpace
• Save time by using newer tools to support your own professional work
• “Customers actually want to participate with you now”
• Be a community leader — Topeka was the first place in their community to teach business people classes in Word. Why not teach them how to create What’s New blogs? (Not sure how many local business people in my area would be remotely interested in spending time on updating their web site since they don’t even want to read email)
• Land a cool job: “NextGen Librarian” and “Web 2.0 Librarian” and “Digital Branch Manager” and “User Experience Strategist”

How do I make time for this new stuff?
Says you have time — if you make it a priority — gave example of the library cart drill teams and said these are the same people who “don’t have time” for learning new technologies. (Are they? Are the people on the drill team the circulation technicians — who often, in my library, are also the first to embrace new technologies that make their work easier?)

Read from (NYPL?) news where 200 librarians took advantage of early retirement as alternative to learning new technologies — “letting go of the past” can feel to librarians like their whole life is being negated — this can be scary.

The OCLC customer perceptions report said most patrons saw library as books — but it is not just books — it is not really useful comforting yourself with the idea that you can stay with a focus on traditional services (hmm, but I’m absolutely hopeless with the print reference collection, so when a customer has a question that’s answered better via those resources than via our databases, isn’t it an important and valuable service to keep the people who know the print references like the back of their hand?)

Granting time (advice to managers)
Not just a matter of staff taking time to play — managers have to give time for learning, creating, what may seem like playing

Steps to take (advice to managers)
Plan carefully
Model new behavior!
Constant communication
Describe the change succinctly
Photo of “Do Not Block Entrance” sign fronted by stanchions blocking entrance: Don’t be the person to send staff to LITA Forum to learn new stuff and then not let them use that new stuff when they come back

Predictions for 5 years from now

• more interaction, participation
• personalization (maybe My Library’s time has finally come)
• more multimedia — anyone can post a video to YouTube vs., say, how it was in 1997 to post a video to a web site
• mobile – tools like iPhone are precursors – actual functionality for non-nerds

One thing is sure: change
Flickr set from New Zealand National Library “In 2017 libraries will be …” (cute! Check it out!)
“In 2017 libraries will be anywhere, anytime, anyhow”
“In 2017 libraries will be about communities, not computers”

Q&A
Q: Changes you see that you don’t like?
A: Second Life just because it’s cool, if it’s not relevant to your community. Doing technology outside the planning process: When the library director has just heard about blogs and says “we need to start one tomorrow” — it is easy to set up a lot of these technologies without putting much thought into how they fit into your larger plan.

Q: What about obsolescence — all the time you waste on technologies that go away soon?
A: Not a waste if you learned something. Start small with a pilot project.

Q: What about academic libraries that are hesitant to allow user-generated reviews etc. because it’s “not scholarly”?
A: You can set up separate forums or discussion groups to open up for conversation. A product manager for Encore says many of their academic customers are also concerned about this, but the faculty are “users” and their contributions actually add value. You can open up the “user-generated” part to just a subset of users.

Q: Digital divide issues: larger institutions being able to do things that smaller institutions cannot
A: Find out what your community needs and seek to meet those needs — focus your efforts.

Q: What kind of archive will we have in 40 years of our community “conversations” today in these online media?
A: That is an issue for libraries to address. If you have an archive of letters from 40 years ago, should you be saving blog posts?

History of climate change science
Joseph Fourier (the same mathematician who gave us the Fourier transform) asked: What determines the temperature of Earth? In papers published in the 1820s, he hypothesized that the atmosphere must be blocking the escape of some of the reflected heat from the Sun; otherwise the earth’s surface temperature would calculate as near freezing. In the 1860s, John Tyndall built on Fourier’s work with experiments to determine which gases absorb heat rather than letting the heat out of the atmosphere. One of these gases was carbon dioxide. Svante Arrhenius noted that the Earth would warm by 4 degrees Centigrade with a doubling of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to the amounts released by then-current industry (1890s).

Not until the 1950s did Dave Keeling at La Jolla put together a lab to measure the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That regular measurement has continued to this day and the carbon dioxide is continuing to increase over time. There’s a regular up-and-down line in the graph of levels of carbon dioxide which Jeffrey calls “the breath” of Earth. During the summertime, the level of carbon dioxide lowers because plants absorb carbon dioxide. During the winter, when deciduous plants drop their leaves, carbon dioxide levels increase.

How has the climate changed?
Temperature increase
Rainfall increase in intensity
Snow cover and sea ice decrease
Ocean heat and acidity increase (most particularly has effect on the ability of the smallest sea organisms to grow shells and survive)
Sea level rises, not due to polar ice cap melt, but due to increase in heat of the ocean and to melting ice from land masses draining into the ocean (if Greenland and Antarctica both had all their ice melted off, this is projected to increase sea level up to 250 feet)
Observed temperature data for last approximately 100 years used to generate simulations into the past as well as the future
Previous large increases in heat and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere caused large extinctions of both sea and land species about 250 million years ago
Scientists still do not understand why measurements of e.g. Greenland ice melt are accelerating relative to what their models would have projected

How will the climate change?
Trying to extrapolate from current trends: Why does just a 4 degree temperature change make a difference? 100 million years ago the planet was approximately 10 degrees C higher than it is now. We will take the Earth back to a climate it hasn’t had in millions of years within the space of 100 years. This will have tremendous consequences for life because evolution does not normally operate in timeframes of a century.

Running simulations against previous observed data into the past shows a good correspondence between projected and observed data. However, a model projected a sudden collapse of polar sea ice conditions in about 2030 — but a paper that just came out shows the actual observed level has reached the 2030 projection now. Scientists are concerned there is some other factor they don’t know about that is also having an effect beyond what their current projections show.

He displayed a chart projecting US southwest water availability — lower and lower in the next century, although it wasn’t clear to me what the direct relationship is between temperature and water availability. He did show a map indicating the temperature changes over time are not evenly spread around the world, but rather concentrated regionally over areas like Greenland, the US Midwest, and northern Africa.

Sea surface warming leads to more severe hurricanes and to sea water impacts onto freshwater supplies in Pacific islands. Polar bears are expected to be extinct within 40 years.

How are we involved in the change?
The amount of resources required to support everyone on the planet at the level of US society would require eight planets Earth. The amount of carbon emissions from China has just started to exceed the amount from the US. That’s not a high amount per person, but the direction of the Chinese economy and society is towards the per-person level of the US.

• Growth in population
• Growth in demand for energy
• Changes in technology
• Changes in consumption

How to communicate information to the public?
Switching gears from the scientific to the social. It is very difficult to translate the information into a form that’s “digestible” by the public or politicians; “you have to find the right language.” This reminds me of a book I read recently on the communication issues between geeks and suits (technologists and management).

How the public values the environment:
Utilitarian value (what nature can do for me)
Intrinsic value (inherent value in nature independent of us)

Public surveys have indicated enormous (near 90%) of US population agrees with reducing emissions and Kyoto Protocol but very little (below 20%) support a gas tax. Despite apparent support for “them” to change, there’s less willingness for “me” to change — although Toyota is making lots of money on hybrids and Ford is losing (no-pain solutions do work).

What is the role of affect in conveying the message? Information by itself isn’t enough. Information is received in a context of other social factors. Scientific information, particularly, is generally shared in language that doesn’t have affect laden metaphors. If a message is transmitted with affect, there’s a tendency to defend against depressing news, taking forms like – denial – numbing – wishful thinking – wishing for a technological fix. Information is not enough to change attitudes.

Without deep reflection, we have taken on the story of endings, assumed the story of extinction … We need new stories … a new narrative that would imagine another way …” — Linda Hogan

Q. What are the differences in emissions in western Europe vs elsewhere? They are staying level
A. Changes in technology, e.g., much of France is nuclear

Q. And the big drop in emissions in Russia and former Soviet states?
A. Collapse of USSR

Presented by Brenda Chawner and Grace Sines

This session was very informative. The preconference covered technology competency frameworks, understanding proficiency issues, discussion on what makes a good IT staff and IT fundamentals. One major point made was that in order to be successful in this process each of need to know our end users needs.

Competency Frameworks:

The first thing that is needed is a list of competencies. Most of the time you need minimum levels that everyone will need to know and then a second tier or level that is based more on specialist’s or higher level competencies. Some lists are broken down by department or even job type and job level. Most competencies need to be task based so that it is easier to demonstrate and measure.

When developing these competencies involve a range of staff so that all aspects are included. Consulting existing lists can also help you develop one that is relevant to your organization or library. Also, putting an angle of gaining something by attaining additional competencies make people work harder to achieve those goals. Defining IT competencies will also require the need for assessments. Competencies need to be tied to the evaluations but not without warning. Never refer to specific operating systems or products in the competencies because it is an ever-changing.

Challenges:

Some challenges that present themselves are the fact that many that are unfamiliar with technology are afraid of breaking it. In order for this to work however you have to empower and enable staff with certain IT proficiencies. Communication is a key factor because staff and faculty have to know what is expected out of them. Always remember that when someone calls panicking, that their problem is an emergency to them. Be sensitive.

The first part of this preconference was a lot of group discussion to get input and ideas on how we perceived a competency program working and what collective and specific needs would most likely need to be addressed.

End users need to have confidence in themselves and trust their judgment, it is a culture change. They also do not need to be fearful of change or of breaking things. Also, be aware of global affects and know how things are affecting everything else. If all else fails, Make it FUN.

Liaison Programs:

Many discussed their individual liaison programs and how they are setup and the responsibilities. One of the criteria should be a desire to learn. Many that attended said they allow the supervisors of the areas/branches to determine who the representative in their area. Expectations of this group were also discussed.

The Good, Bad, & Ugly Meetings:

The best way to have a successful IT group is to LISTEN, LISTEN, LISTEN. One example was to have meetings with the different areas or the entire library and ask them; What do you not like, what do you like, what are we doing right, what are we doing wrong, etc. Do not respond to any comment made at the meetings just take it all down. Take all comments back for review and then comment back.

A Primer:

Another good idea that was presented was having a primer for new employees. This would give new folks an understanding of what the IT department does as well as the structure and responsibilities of that group.

Training:

Training can come in many fashions. Technology changes so rapidly that it is easy to get left behind. Some examples of training possibilities are listed: Free or low cost, online, expert knowledge of co-workers, mentoring programs, etc. Or you could go with fee based training like subscriptions, online classes, webinars, and onsite training.

This preconference was very helpful. It not only allowed us to share information and knowledge on how we perceive proficiencies, liaisons, and training but it also allowed us to find out that we are all in the same boat. Many of the needs were similar across the many represented libraries. A number of handouts were given as well as a few examples of forms that these ladies use. The presenters also issued a cd to participants that included all PowerPoint slides, examples of IT proficiencies, and a primer.

The first question Silvis posed to the participants was, What if there were 100,000,000 books available for free in full text?

First the group critiqued NetLibrary’s business model, then brainstormed about a “killer app” that would make ebooks enjoyable to read. Some folks seemed more comfortable than others with the idea of a device that could be directly implanted into the optic nerve. This blogger was quite comfortable using her institution’s new tablet PC to read magazine articles on the airplane on the way to the conference, and just might download an ebook for the trip home.

Whatever happens with ebooks, everyone agreed that maintaining equity of access will continue to be an important and central concern for libraries, and that our role as a place for people to connect will continue to be one of our mainstays.

Next, Silvis asked, What if copyright legislation were rewritten to more reasonably reflect real world practices?

We know we’re supposed to come to a complete stop at a stop sign, to obey the speed limit, and thinking back on the prohibition era, to abstain completely from alcohol unless given a written prescription by a doctor (nice graphic, Gregg), but, well, you know how it is. One attendee made the important point that copyright law was originally intended as a contract between authors/creators and our governing body, to insure that one’s intellectual property could be disseminated in such a way as to serve the public good, while still providing incentive for the individual to create (forgive me—and comment on this post, attendee—if I didn’t quite get that paraphrase right).

The conversation then turned to scholarly publishing, peer review, and one of my favorite topics, open access. There seemed to be a shared sense of optimism in the room about the future of scholarly publishing; specifically it was said that open access journals are developing a strong peer review infrastructure. That’s good news for those of us who won’t be up for tenure for a few years yet and who’d like to see all publicly funded research and scholarship be made freely available to everyone.

Then, What if Star Trek style reference became the reality?

Um, I don’t really remember Star Trek, especially those black and white episodes, but I’m all about Web 2.0, so I beamed myself back to my hotel room, went to Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki, and found this: http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/LCARS. Can we design computers that we can teach to answer the kinds of questions humans ask? Or will we have to train humans to communicate in ways our computers will understand? It was suggested that the semantic web is only about five years off, and it will be interesting to see how that plays out. One thing that Star Trek-style computers, the semantic web, reference robots, etc., etc., may not be able to do anytime soon is conduct a reference interview. Until, that is, technology is developed that will allow us to network directly into our patrons’ brains. Won’t that be cool.

The last few minutes were spent talking about What will happen when nanotechnology and quantum computing become reality?

For one thing, books will be really, really small, so we’re going to need better glasses. Also, we could find ourselves suffering from information overload like never before—imagine being able to search the full text of the entire contents of the Library of Congress (not just the records, everything). Sound scary? Fortunately, humans are highly adaptable creatures, as evidenced by recent studies highlighting real differences in the brains of children who’ve spent their young lives plugged in. Plus, we’re talking 2023 here, and at least a few of us will be retired.

Summary: As e-book platforms change, so does the experience for readers of scholarship in electronic format. Georgia Tech Library’s web usability working group undertook an e-book study in early Spring 2007 in order to gain insight into user expectations and perceptions of this increasingly popular research tool. Presenters will discuss the variety of e-book platforms, the techniques used in the Library’s usability study undertaken at Tech, and the effect of the study’s outcomes on e-books as licensed electronic resources in our library.

E-book readers have been available since 1990, but as pdas, smartphones, iphones, ipods, and the rest of small handheld devices serve more uses for all ages, the use of electronic text and technology of e-book readers has begun to change as well. Question: are e-books/ readers becoming more interactive? Do they have the potential to match the prevailing and essentially permanent fascination we see with handheld devices for media, music, and communication? Do electronic books offer more convenience for schoolwork, a new and potentially better way to read and study?

Since 2005, these librarians, who work together at the Georgia Institute of Technology Library and Information Center, have collectively been observing e-books and similar devices, and their use among students. Beginning in Spring of 2007, they conducted two surveys to determine the potential of e-book formats among students. This session was a review of this very current research among students, consisting of usability testing of e-books. They brought the Sony and iRex iLiad e-book readers with them, and sent these around through the audience so that we could all try them out. A librarian attending this session told us that she had just bought a Sony reader, and she was impressed with how useful and practical this was for trips. She had all the books she wanted to read for the flight to Denver in this lightweight format, and she said it worked very well. What follows here is a summary of this interesting presentation, but you might contact the presenters should you want to know more.

No surprises: For all the incredible wealth of electronic and print resources in the library, most students never used the physical library. Survey results of undergraduates showed that 198 out of 200 total students in the survey worked from their dorm and elsewhere. “I use what’s freely available online.” Almost never did they use the library web site. Typical response: amazement at discovering what the library offers to them for research online through the library web site.

Conclusions from the surveys:

“Young people are open to accessing electronic material on mobile devices.” E-book readers should be like print, but better. E-book readers should offer the same types of flexibility and options that are expected with other mobile devices. They should merge the benefits of digital with that of paper: create something new that allows for taking notes in the margins of a hypertext medium.

What students liked about e-books and readers; the features that were most valued:

· Students wanted hypertext or rollover text tags like the way the internet works, allowing linking to other concepts and information.

· From a law student: “I would love to have all my law texts on this type of device.”

· Portability: “keep all my books in one place” and “load everything on one device and read it anywhere.“

· What students liked best, in order of preferred options:
zooming, portability, legibility, searching, annotation, bookmarking.

· E-books offer enhanced ways to use books (annotations, search features, etc.)

Concerns and problems with e-books and readers:

· battery life – would it last for study all night?

· inconvenience of turning off and on if taking a break

· speed of loading pages was slow

· navigating was hard to do between sections, easier in a print book than e-book

· lack of color in the e-book reader interface – black and white only

· none of the e-books support multiple windows at the same time

· not as intuitive – takes study to learn

Interesting responses to e-books and readers from the surveys:

· Students were interested in etexts, since they thought that the etext would be free. An intriguing commentary about how the internet is considered to be free content for music, text, and images without copyright and intellectual property rights or ownership issues. The idea of dual publication of a text in print and electronic formats for purchase generated numerous comments from students.

· Results were opposite in the two surveys for types of use: In the first survey, 6 out of 7 students would choose e-books for schoolwork; only 1 out of 7 like to use them for leisure reading. From the second survey, a comment that: “novels, other leisurely reading would be best: not really suitable for school textbooks.” The presenters concluded that purchase of popular fiction titles in e-book format would be a more effective and cost-effective way to provide more leisure reading titles for students than print.

· In the Admissions Office, admission counselors asked new students: would you use resources if they were available in an i-pod or similar device? – answer : yes.

· A faculty member discovered that one of his required texts was available as an e-book, and planned assignments using the electronic version. However, the number of simultaneous users was not sufficient for the class.

· Licensing and copy issues related to e-books are not very clear to students.

Surveys used for this study:

1^st survey: Spring, 2007:
Purpose: find out if the library should purchase more e-books and develop use.
Methodology: sent email to 2000 students to request participation; offered i-pod shuffle to students who contributed responses to e-survey of 10 questions.

2^nd Survey Sept. 2007:
Purpose: A usability study with undergraduates to compare e-books readers. Three readers were tested using Netlibrary and other e-book systems.

E-book readers they used for the 2^nd trial and results:

1. Sony Reader:
Cost: $300
Weight: 8.8 oz.
Features: 64mb ram; memory stick 4gb, rechargeable battery, variety of formats (pdf, jpg, mp3, text, gif, bmp, etc.)
Pros: user friendly, lightweight, offers an option to play music while reading.
Cons: didn’t like black & white, no color / no touch screen; no annotation; screen burn from text.

2. iPhone: The presenters considered this option though it is not solely an e-book reader.
Cost: $399
Weight: 4.8 oz.
Features: storage 8G, flash drive, built-in rechargeable lithium-ion battery.
Pros: portability, zooming, touch control, color interface, great resolution, easy to use in low or minimal lighting, multifunctional, good control over display variables.
Cons: web-based, no accessibility of pdf content or other applications, no way to make annotations, with zoom feature it is easy to lose context, hard on the eyes to read over longer spans of time, requires web access or 3^rd party access.

3. iRex iLiad:
Cost: $700
Weight: 13.7 oz.
Features: 64 mb RAM, 256 flash memory
Pros: designed specifically for e-book reading, offers ability to annotate text, create notes pages,
bookmarking, zooming, wifi capability, large display, intuitive flip bar & stylus , allowing you to flip from one page to another easily.
Cons: steep learning curve, confusing interface, large & clunky

Survey conclusions:

Students interviewed in the survey are ready to try e-books and readers; the library will purchase Sony Readers to expand this service.

· Librarians concluded that it would be effective to increase promotion of both e-books and electronic resources overall that are available from the library’s web site.

· These devices can be used to meet an increasing demand for popular fiction.

· More comments comparing print, computer online books, and e-books:
“ Reading on a computer can be difficult because of the brightness of the screen”
“An e-book feels more similar to reading a physical book than reading a book on the web”
“An e-book is easier to read than a physical book”
“I don’t believe that e-books are the same as having the books on the shelf. The uses are different & both fill a need “ –librarian response

· New products, such as Amazon Kindle, and others coming on the market, will offer new options for us to try.

Future uses of e-books/readers based on these surveys and usability studies with students:

· The increasing demand for popular fiction can be managed with e-books.

· Provide Sony e-book readers for circulation.

· Improve catalog integration of e-books and other electronic resources.

Shawn Carraway, Midlands Technical College

Michael Bowden, Harrisburg Area Community College

Michael Bowden and Shawn Carraway presented on two major customizations they made to their OPACs

Both presenters work with SirsiDynix Unicorn but regardless of vendor any system should be able to, and want to impliment these ideas.

Michael presented first on “Keyword in Heading” which he defines as a cross between a keyword search and browse authority search, and which allows the user to do a keyword search on the headings fields. The reason he set this up is because he feels students are not familiar with LCSH searching.

The search page is located at:

http://lib2.hacc.edu/web2/tramp2.exe/goto/guest?screen=home.html

Michael pulls out heading from Sirsi into a separate MySQL database every night after the subject headings are compiled.

The search interface then uses a keyword in browse field from which a php search retrieves a subject heading list that the user can then choose from. Works the same for titles, authors, and series.

Shawn Carraway

Catalog is at: http://www.lib.midlandstech.com/

Set up a system in the catalog to allow students to tag records via del.ico.us for several reasons:

• Felt it provided a better way for students to find materials.
• Wanted to involve users, let them actively participate in the Library
• Allows them to organize the information in the way that makes sense to them.
• It also allows them to help each other.
• Make tag clouds
• Changes as language changes
• Good way to make quick lists – especially professors
• Compliments, not replaces MARC

How does it work?

Students have to log in with their regular username and password – not anonymous. Then they click to tag a record and the tag is saved in a separate database that connects via a key to the item record.

Possible Problems?

Foul language? Not really, she personally monitors the tags

Misspellings and typos? Not really, she personally monitors the tags

Confusion – i.e. gum, soda, etc. – she leaves it.

Despite popularity among students, some Librarians are still opposed. “Guys in Ties” are very supportive but will draw the line if it is misused.

There was then a discussion on privacy questions, which basically concluded that there is no issue with the materials and students although Shawn still is divided on the privacy issue.

A participant asked why they did not use LibraryThing. Shawn felt the tag clouds, and tagging works too differently, the database does not have enough academic books and would not allow the students to tag, and would therefore defeat the primary purpose of engaging students, which really is the primary purpose of the innovation.

If you are signed up to blog for the Forum, please find me and I will see what I can do to make the process of live blogging slightly easier for you. I am currently in the opening keynote in the back of the room capturing audio for podcast, if you are in attendance there, or email me at griffey@gmail.com.

For those attending, if you are taking photos at Forum, uploading videos, blogging on your personal site, etc, please tag your content with:

LITAForum2007

That way those at home can follow along if they wish. As photos hit Flickr and other sites, we’ll try and keep a running list of content we are alerted to here on LITABlog.

As well, if you Twitter and want to contribute to the LITA Forum Twitter stream, head on over to http:/twitter.com/LITAForum and add LITAForum as a friend. If you want to follow along the Twittering stream:

http://twitter.com/LITAForum/with_friends

or

This RSS feed 

To follow along with those of us who might be Twittering along in Denver.

We will also, of course, have our crack team of bloggers covering as much of Forum as we can possibly cover, barring the limitations of space and time. Keep your browsers tuned to LITABlog for all the informational goodness.

If you’ve read the LITA Forum schedule, you may have noticed the Saturday morning Session titled: 5 Minute Madness. This year, LITA is trying something new and setting aside a session for informal presentations of projects and ideas that weren’t really gelled when the Call for Papers closed back in the winter. The Forum Planning Committee knows that nine months is a looong time in IT, and we want to be able to offer a conference experience that includes new ideas in addition to the more formal presentations that go through the peer-reviewed proposal process. We’re borrowing this idea from the Access conference which has used this impromptu, less formal approach for a few years.

The idea is simple: presenters get five minutes to talk about their project or idea. Then there are a couple minutes for questions while the next person gets ready, and then you’re done – or you get the hook!

Interested? There will be a sign-up sheet at the Registration table area starting on Friday, and we’ll have time for a maximum of 9 talks. To help keep things moving, you should count on not having Internet access, and bring whatever AV materials you need on a thumb drive. Or just talk! Your presentation materials will be posted after the conference.

The meeting will be Saturday, October 6th from 8-9am in the Molly Brown Room. Grab some breakfast and come in for a discussion.

Join us as we continue our discussions (started at ER&L, ACRL and NASIG) on the future of e-resources management. We’ve been exploring ideas of how to create a community, a collaborative work space, an understanding, and a vocabulary about how we need to manage and make accessible our electronic content. These conversations spurred this blog and ideas for other collaborative spaces, like the projects wiki.

Bonnie Tijerina will touch on some of the highlights of the discussions held so far and possible future projects. This is very informal, allowing for time to talk about what’s happening in your libraries and your ideas for ways to improve.

ER&L Forum: http://www.electroniclibrarian.org/forum/
LITA ERM IG: http://www.lita.org/ala/lita/litamembership/litaigs/litainterest.cfm

But, as always, we need your help!

Do you like to write? Looking for new ways to get involved? Take this opportunity to become a LITA Blogger!

The blog schedule for Forum has been posted and will be updated as we receive more volunteers.

We have over 50 sessions to be covered, so your help is needed more than ever.

If you are interested, please email Tiffany Smith and let her know what sessions you would like to cover and if you are new to LITA Blog.

We will be taking volunteers up to and during the conference.

Two full day preconferences on gaming and library-wide IT proficiencies provide opportunities for hand-on experiences and in-depth discussions:

Keynote sessions enrich each day’s programming:

Local topic with Jeffrey Kiehl, National Center for Atmospheric Research, CO
The Scientific and Social Challenges of Global Warming

David King, Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library, KS
The Future is not out of Reach: Change, Library 2.0, and Emerging Trends

Jeremy Frumkin, Gray Chair for Innovative Library Services, OR
In Our Cages With Golden Bars

The LITA National Forum provides a wealth of opportunities for growth and development. In addition to the above programs, there are 34 concurrent sessions and 11 poster sessions planned where you’re sure to find practical advice, new ideas, and tested solutions to technological issues you encounter every day. Networking opportunities throughout the Forum will provide ample opportunity for interaction with colleagues.

All Forum events will take place in the Denver Marriott City Center hotel at a discount rate of $139 per night.

http://www.lita.org/forum07

Register now to get the best rate!

Don’t miss these great Keynote Speakers at the LITA National Forum:

The Scientific and Social Challenges of Global Warming
Jeffrey Kiehl, Senior Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado

Global warming is the greatest environmental crisis facing humanity. The magnitude of climate warming to occur in this century has not occurred for millions of years. The rapidness of the change is unprecedented. I will briefly review the science of global warming and its implications for society. I will also explore the difficulties in communicating aspects of global warming to the public. Finally, I will explore how humans
disconnect from Nature and the social implications of this disconnection.

The Future is not out of Reach: Change, Library 2.0, and Emerging Trends
David King, Digital Branch and Services Manager at Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library in Kansas

Change is good, but sometimes it is also hard. Emerging tech trends are also good, but sometimes the change needed to implement those emerging trends feels like scaling a mountain! David will discuss these changes and emerging trends. he will discuss the current social networking transformation taking place, and apply those changes to a library setting. Then David will discuss the changes a library needs to make to meet and participate in our new online, participatory world. Finally, David will take a look down the path, and discuss tech changes coming in the next 5 years.

In Our Cages With Golden Bars
Jeremy Frumkin, Gray Chair for Innovative Library Services at Oregon State University

Libraries have a long-standing tradition of providing quality information and information services. These traditions have and continue to serve us well. However, the ever-evolving digital world is forcing us to look beyond our traditions and extend our thinking about how we provide our services, and what services we are providing. How can we think outside of our cages with golden bars? How do we move beyond simply improving on our existing systems and services, and move to pursuing better ways of providing information and information support services to our users?

Sponsor: Mrs. Grace Hope Hill, in Memory of Professor Errol Gaston Hill

Conference Theme:

• Technology with Altitude: 10 Years of the LITA National Forum
• October 4-7, 2007, Denver Marriott City Center, Denver, Colorado, USA

Details:

The Library and Information Technology Association, a division of the American Library Association, announces a grant to support and promote international participation at the 2007 LITA National Forum.

The grant provides up to $2,500.00 US for a librarian currently living and working in the Caribbean, with preference given to a librarian from the Leeward Islands (especially from Antigua, Barbuda, Montserrat, Nevis, St. Kitts) to attend the 2007 LITA National Forum in Denver, Colorado, October 4-7, 2007. The grant covers only airfare, hotel, registration, and currency conversion fees up to the grant total. The grantee is responsible for meals and other expenses not covered by the $2,500 grant. He or she will have opportunities to meet with the LITA leadership and members as well as attend the full forum.

To be eligible, an applicant must: (1) be living and working in the Caribbean; (2) hold citizenship other than U.S.; (3) have between five and fifteen years of work experience in a library or information setting; (4) have an interest in or experience with using, managing, or leading technology in a library or information setting; (5) understand English; (6) and not be a regular LITA Forum attendee.

Applications should be sent by e-mail to hillc255@yahoo.com with subject line: LITA Grant.

The application must contain the following, submitted in English: name, work address and e-mail addresses, current job title, brief resume, a brief summary of experience working with technology in a library or information setting, and a 200 or fewer word statement about why you would like to attend the LITA Forum including an indication as to whether this is the first time you would be attending a LITA Forum.

Application deadline is 5:00 pm (EST) May 1, 2007.

For more information about the Forum, visit
http://www.ala.org/ala/lita/litaevents/litaeventsprograms.htm

Questions to hillc255@yahoo.com or lita@ala.org.