Category: 2007

Martha Chantiny, University of Hawaii at Manoa 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.

Edward M. Corrado, The College of New Jersey, http://www.tcnj.edu/~corrado/ (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…

A Fun Discussion Moderated by Gregg Silvis [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…

This was a good idea and we should repeat it in future Forum years … maybe even at ALA. The program proposal submission and acceptance timeline is so long, this is the only way to get some of the late-breaking news from people who are doing interesting projects. Next time, though, let’s do this in a room with Internet access! 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…

The Future is not out of Reach: Change, Library 2.0, and Emerging Trends 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…

David Lee King, Digital Branch & Services Manager at Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library, gave this second keynote, subtitled Change, Library 2.0, and Emerging Trends. He started off with “If you hate being on Flickr, duck” — the second time someone has said this at a session. Is photographing the audience the new fad? 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…

Jeffrey Kiehl is a senior scientist in the Climate Change Research section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. The Forum committee tries to include a speaker from a local organization at Forum; this year that speaker happens to be talking about a topic that’s been much in the news lately. 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…