2007

Town Meeting, always interesting

Liki Originally uploaded by Wandering Eyre. The LITA Town Meeting yesterday was action packed even at 8am. I know there were a couple of other people taking actual notes. These are just my thoughts. The activity that Mark Beatty had the packed room complete involved writing things we liked about LITA or things that LITA could do on pieces of paper. Groups then took their “tags” and made tag clouds out of them. It was fun, loud, and very productive. I was again reminded why I love LITA. People like being here. We like each other and the “people” aspect of LITA got more tags then anything else. Education, training, and technology were close follow-ups. Some very hopeful member also requested a new Mac, but I am not sure that is in budget. The picture here is one of the tags for the “Liki” as it has come to be…

2007

LITA IRC meeting

About a dozen people attended the meeting on Monday morning from 10:30 to 12:30. International Visitor Grant The first topic of discussion focussed on the very generous donor who funded the attendance of a librarian from Trinidad and Tobago at the LITA Forum in October – he was so impressed by the moving thank you he received from the winner (“a memory I will always treasure ..”) that he is funding two more awards. The announcement for this year’s award had been written, and accepted by the committee. Details of procedures will be ironed out by Claudia with the LITA liaison, Karen Starr. There was general excitement about the possibility of more awards, particularly for international librarians from areas other than the Caribbean. Ideas for encouraging more donors were solicited, and some will be pursued. Members of the committee were surprised by the fact that LITA charged a $500 overhead…

2007

Top Tech Trends

With enormous thanks to Maurice York, the first of many LITA Podcasts! There are seven segments in all for about an hour and forty-five minutes of trending goodness. For the sake of immediacy, this is pretty much the raw audio–not much editing or finessing. A more refined audio experience will be posted as we go. If you enjoy these, be on the lookout for more podcasts from the 2007 ALA Midwinter meeting from LITA. We’ll be podcasting more than just the Top Tech Trends in the upcoming days, including some video from the LITA officers, and reactions to the LITA Town Meeting. If you’ve never subscribed to a podcast before and would like some tips on how to subscribe or applications to use, post a comment to this post and I’ll go more into depth….just trying to get this up quickly for now!

2007

LITA Town Meeting

Today, I attended my first LITA Town Meeting. It was great, and I hope to attend many more. I liked that it was a good blend of meeting other LITA members, learning about our users, and brainstorming about the future. The Town Meeting started with a breakfast and introduction to the LITA leadership. We were shown the LITA Wiki, the LITA committee volunteer form, and were told that there is still time to apply to be on a committee. Appointments will be made over the next three months. Then, even though it was a large meeting, everyone introduced themselves and revealed how long they had been LITA members. Reception was warm for new members, and the crowd was impressed with folks who had longer memberships. Then, Mark Beatty, vice-president/president-elect, gave a presentation on his presidential theme. He gave an overview of the OCLC Perceptions report, the Pew report on Social…

2007

Connecting View..at 6 Arms Brew Pub

LITA’s Happy Hour at 6 Arms on 300 E. Pike Friday night was great! About 35 members showed up to network and discuss LITA activities and meetings here in Seattle. The brew pub is a cozy place with a wide selection of frothy, bubbly and hot stuff. And the place was hopping! In conversation with Clara Ruttenberg, Systems Librarian in D.C., she said that Happy Hour was where she could quickly see her colleagues before the conference was underway. Though not on a LITA committee yet, she planned to volunteer for one soon. Mike Sainsbury from Greater Victoria Public Library and an enthusiastic participant on the LITA Membership Committee has lots of ideas for increasing LITA membership including looking into drafting IT support staff in libraries to join LITA. Speaking of membership, Diane Bison, who is running for LITA VP told me that she feels that “there are many librarians…

2007

No Discussion Discussion on RDA

Saturday 10:30-12:30: ALCTS/ Electronic Resources Interest Group [NOTE: I’d promised to blog this session for the new ALCTS NRMIG Metadata Blog, but since one person at ALCTS must approve all potential bloggers and has no sense of urgency about it, I’m posting it on the LITA Blog. Maybe ALCTS will get their act together for Annual?] The description for this session was pretty tempting: “If RDA is attempting to be “all things for all,” is it accomplishing its goal with Dublin Core, LOM, and visual resources communities? We have heard from many perspectives, commentaries to RDA from “traditional cataloging” communities, but what is it to different metadata communities? We have very little direct information from those communities how they think this content standard will work for them. This discussion will address these issues.”

2007

OITP Telecommunications Subcommittee

Welcome & Comments Legislative/Regulatory Update * Outcomes of 109th Congress — “Not too much” harm done? * “Predictions” for 110th Congress — Universal Service reform (E-Rate) — Network Neutrality — Spectrum Allocation/Ownership — DOPA (again) * State Issues — S-DOPA (State-level DOPA look-alikes) — Idaho is already facing an S-DOPA *Other news — E-Rate is 10 years old this February Internet2 – Presentation from Lou Fox * Defined I2 * K20 * Demoed some projects utilizing K20/I2 * Last mile & bandwidth/workstation difficulties * Immedeate issue is not getting 10meg to every workstation, the issue is getting access to the network to experiment and see how the bandwidth can support applications for multiple audiences (public libraries) * High res and detailed streaming programs are being produced at academic libraries on I2 * Need to figure out how to do a national non-profit which can apply for E-Rate nationally, how to…

2007

LITA Board Meeting, Saturday

This was a loooooong meeting with a lot of content. I tried to condense it has much as I could. There are three main sections to the meeting and I have bolded them for easier skimming. Present at the meeting: Bonnie Postlethwaite, Mary Taylor, Mark Beatty, Jonathan Rothman, Andrew Pace, Karen Starr, Barbara Higginbotham, David Bretthauer, Valerie Edmonds, Melissa Prentice, Debra Shapiro, Michelle Frisque, Amira Aaron, and Maribeth Manhoff Consent Agenda –Motion to accept the Consent Agenda is passed. Budget Report is Accepted. LITA Assessment and Research Task Force is here to report of their findings. Assessment is not something that LITA has been very good at doing in the past. The task force used the strategic plan to inform the report and decided that future assessments should be done consistently throughout the program. It should also be given a home so that the assessment can be carried out and…