Friday, January 23, 2009, 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm Please join the LITA Membership Development Committee and members from around the country for networking, good cheer, and great fun! Expect lively conversation and excellent drinks. Lodo’s Bar & Grill 1946 Market Street Denver, CO, 80202 303.293.8555
LITA Workshop in Denver
LITA is offering User Centered Design for Digital Projects prior to ALA’s Midwinter meeting in Denver on Friday, January 23, 2009, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm. Learn about design process for managing digital projects in libraries, usability theory and methodology. Receive practical steps to implement a design process in your own library plus a copy of presenter Brenda Reeb’s latest book, Design Talk: Understanding the roles of usability practitioners, web designers, and web developers in user centered web design. You do not need to attend the Midwinter Meeting to register for the workshop. Visit the ALA Conference Services Web site to register: http://www.ala.org/ala/conferencesevents/upcoming/midwinter/2009/registration.cfm To add a workshop to your existing Midwinter registration: Call ALA Registration at 1-800-974-3084 OR use your log in and password to access your existing Midwinter registration using the online registration form: http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=Events&Template=/CFApps/Experient/Redirect.cfm Add events in the “Your Events†section; check out and pay for the events…
LITA IG plans at Midwinter 2009
Seven of the 17 LITA Interest Groups responded to repeated requests for their plans at the 2009 ALA Midwinter Meeting. You’ll find those plans here, on the LITA Wiki. One of the other ten IGs has since noted that it’s not meeting at all during Midwinter. That leaves nine unaccounted for–nine IGs for which one of the following must be true: The IG doesn’t actually exist, or has no chair, or the chair never reported an email address to LITA. The chair won’t deal with email or lists because, you know, they’re so 20th century. The (repeated) request to provide a one-paragraph email response required an unconscionable amount of effort and was ignored. The IG has no plans. The IG has no interest in attracting new members. Which of those is true for each of the nine remaining non-responding IGs? Your guess is as good as mine. NOTE: Don’t send…
WordPress 2.7
LITABlog is now running the most current version of WordPress, version 2.7 (codename Coltrane). The backend look and feel of the blog is a little different in this version, so if anyone needs any help navigating, don’t hesitate to let us know in the comments. Thanks!
LITA/Library Hi-Tech Award Deadline Extended
Is there a resource or person that you turn to time and again to learn about or brush up on your tech skills? Is there a librarian or professor that you learn from who deserves to have her or his work recognized? Please consider nominating this person for the 2009 LITA/Library Hi-Tech Award. Use this web form or send nomination materials via email to cindi dot trainor at eku dot edu. The deadline for nominations has been extended to December 15, 2008. The award will be given at the 2009 ALA Annual Conference in Chicago. Read the official award press release, including a list of past winners, on LITA’s website.
Formation of Voting Pools for NISO Standard Reaffirmations
This is the third in a series of messages regarding voting pools for NISO standards reviews, transmitted from Cindy Hepfer, ALA Voting representative to NISO. The text of this new ballot sent to NISO voting members is as follows: “This is the third group of standards due for five-year reviews for which NISO will be issuing ballots. In accordance with NISO procedures, we are offering you the option of joining the voting pool for two of those standards that are under the responsibility of the Content and Collection Management (CCM) Topic Committee.†[Full disclosure: I’m a member of the NISO Content and Collection Management Topic Committee.] Joining the voting pool allows ALA to vote on the standard and provide comments. Once the voting pools have been formed, separate ballots for each standard will be issued only to those who have joined the pool. NISO needs at least 15% of the…
Last Stage for Dublin Core
Ha, I knew that headline would get your attention! But before you panic, let me reassure you, DC is not going away, or anything of the sort. This latest of notifications from Cindy Hepfer, ALA Voting representative to NISO, has to do with ISO/FDIS 15836, The Dublin Core metadata element set. To clarify, this is the Simple DC set, the original 15 elements only, recently revised and available in a new NISO version. The balloting by ISO is the last stage in making the standard versions consistent with one another. The introduction in the standard reads as follows: “In 2006, the DCMI Usage Board undertook an editorial review of terms in the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (DCMES) in order to clarify intended semantics and bring the wording of their definitions and usage comments into line with the language of the DCMI Abstract Model [DCAM]. A set of proposed changes…
ISO 6630:1986, Bibliographic control characters
Our busy ALA Voting representative to NISO, Cindy Hepfer, has notified us of a systematic review ballot of the published standard, ISO 6630:1986, Bibliographic control characters. According to the scope note in the standard: “This International Standard contains a set of 15 bibliographic control characters for use in cataloguing rules, filing rules and indexing rules of the countries and language groups of the bibliographic community. The bibliographic control character set is an extension of the basic control character set defined by IS0 646 (IS0 escape sequence ESC 2/l 4/O). This International Standard consists of a code table and a legend specifying each bibliographic control character and indicating its code position. In addition, it includes explanatory notes, in which the functional characteristics of the individual control characters are described in detail. This bibliographic control character set is primarily intended for the interchange of bibliographic information.” This is another of those situations…
International Standard Collection Identifier (ISCI)
Cindy Hepfer, ALA Voting representative to NISO has forwarded us information on ISO/CD 27730, International Standard Collection Identifier (ISCI), now up for vote by ISO. The scope note in the new standard reads as follows: “The purpose of this International Standard is to establish the specifications for the International Standard Collection Identifier (ISCI) as a unique international identification system for each collection and fond and part(s) of collections and fonds. It specifies the structure of an identifier, and promotes the use of the identifier with regard to pre-existing systems. Any issues related to the description of collections and fonds in general–such as defining a collection or fond, or describing relations between collections and subcollections–are dealt with in NISO standard Z39.91-200X (Collection description specification) and related documents. Each identified collection or fond must however be described as defined in clause 5. Recommended metadata elements are listed in annex B. The ISCI…
The Obligation of Leadership by R. David Lankes
The final keynote of the LITA National Forum 2008 “The Obligation of Leadership” can be found at Virutal Dave … Real Blog. If you missed it do check it out. You can choose how you want to experience it. David posted his slides, audio and video versions of the keynote on his website. If you were lucky enough to be there to experience it in person you may want to listen to it again. It was just as good the second time around.