This is my first Blog posting, my first post to the LITA Blog on my first LITA Forum. That is a lot of firsts for a weekend trip to beautiful San Jose. I learned some important lessons at this first forum. First, fly in Thursday night whether or not you are attending a pre-conference. The second would be that the LITA hotel rate extends for the three days before the forum and for three days after the forum. If the hotel gives you trouble, call the LITA office. Third borrow a laptop from work that doesn’t tend to run hot and if does wear clothes that offer better insulation from the heat, like denim. Fourth, build a little time in for exploring the city but that goes without saying at a conference. Most importantly, do not let your laptop get dropped at security at the airport. Aside from those rather…
Month: October 2005
Web Feed, The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread.
Gred McKiernarn from Iowa State University presented on “Web Feed, The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread. Greg with a confessed quirky sense of humor discussed why web feeds are the best thing since sliced bread with copious power points that contained numerous examples of RSS feeds. For those of us not familiar with RSS feeds he gave an overview of broad and specific use of web feeds. Why a feed?Automatic notification of a change on a website. The news comes to you. How a feed?There are software products available that can create RSS outputs. You also need reader to read an RSS feed. Currently IE does not have one native to it. However it is rumored that IE 7.0 will have one. Where a feed?You need to subscribe RSS feed When a feed? Examples of RSS feeds are: Notice of changes in Library Services. For instance, a library can have…
E-Matrix: NCSU Library Eresources Management System
A great session with the bigger picture of eResource management in mind. Useful for any librarian looking to manage a dispersed and disparate set of library data. Andrew and Stephen have got their mind around what it means to administer records of database subscriptions, ejournals and print journals while at the same time managing access and display issues for librarians and the users we work for. It’s an all encompassing system that reworks how we can manage our growing eResources and it will involve ALL departments in the library.
danah boyd and Michael Gorman slug it out
I was supposed to blog the danah boyd keynote [note: she has now posted it here], but it’s now difficult to view it outside the context of the subsequent Michael Gorman luncheon speech. When I dutifully met with the other members of the LITA Forum 2005 committee on Sunday morning, they remarked that attendees had found boyd "provocative", and at least anecdotally it sounds like you all enjoyed the juxtaposition of the two speakers. We think of them as on opposite sides of the spectrum. Are they? Both addressed the failings of tools like Google to capture and use important metadata, as follows: Gorman: Google lacks both precision and recall — it retrieves too many results, that are not the best results for the question at hand. [I would argue here that Google lacks access to the best results (buried as they are in proprietary and/or password-protected OPAC and vendor…
Keynote Slides
Slides of Roy Tennant’s Forum talks
Re-imagining Technology’s Role in the Library Building
Re-imagining Technology’s Role in the Library Building Sue Thompson and David Walker of Cal State San Marcos gave us an excellent presentation, which focused on public computing and instruction labs as well as a Web page redesign in their new Kellogg Library. I am going to limit my focus to the public computing and instruction lab portion of the presentation for the purpose of this review. Anticipating completion of the new library building in the winter of 2004 gave the team at San Marcos the opportunity to examine and plan out exactly how they wanted to approach the new technology that would be implemented in the building. Rather than just “install a bunch of computers and software†the librarians and IT staff worked together to define the use of technology in the library space. Historically, technology in the library is used to access the OPAC, databases and software applications. However…
Downloadable Books, Audio and Video: One Experience
Users of downloadable eBooks and audio books want many of the same titles as print readers, according to Michelle Jeske of the Denver Public Library. In her presentation Downloadable Books, Audio, and Video: One Experience, she reported that DPL is a large customer of downloadable materials and it foresees an increasing demand for them. Being one of the first customers of eBooks from netLibrary, starting in 2000, DPL has found that service both useful and frustrating. At this point DPL owns most of the netLibrary titles, but it will not be adding any more; the difficult user authentication process and the inability to customize the service to DPL’s needs has led the library to decide that there is little future in the contract. DPL has signed on with Overdrive, which has more bestselling materials and is more user friendly; users can enter their library card numbers and do NOT have…
Information and the Quality of Life: Environmentalism for the Information Age (take 1)
Levy’s basic idea is that we spend a lot of time using technology to find, gather, and consume information, but we have lost sight of the need to slow down and process the information—a time to contemplate the world (the Greek ratio vs. intellectus).
Currency, Convenience and Access
RSS Technology Applied to Subscription Database Content
Currency, Convenience and Access: RSS Technology Applied to Subscription Database Content
John Law (ProQuest Information & Learning) and Karen Schneider (LII) spoke about the wonderful world of RSS to a full room on the last day of the conference.