New vacancy listings are posted weekly on Wednesday at approximately 12 noon Central Time. They appear under New This Week and under the appropriate regional listing. Postings remain on the LITA Job Site for a minimum of four weeks. New This Week: SIU Edwardsville, Electronic Resources Librarian, Asst or Assoc Professor, Edwardsville, IL Olin College of Engineering, Community and Digital Services Librarian, Needham, MA Great Neck Library, Information Technology Director, Great Neck, NY Art Institute of Chicago, Senior Application Developer for Collections, Chicago, IL Visit the LITA Job Site for more available jobs and for information on submitting a job posting.
Month: January 2016
Intro to Youth Coding Programs, a LITA webinar
Attend this informative and fast paced new LITA webinar: How Your Public Library Can Inspire the Next Tech Billionaire: an Intro to Youth Coding Programs Thursday March 3, 2016 noon – 1:00 pm Central Time Register Online, page arranged by session date (login required) Kids, tweens, teens and their parents are increasingly interested in computer programming education, and they are looking to public and school libraries as a host for the informal learning process that is most effective for learning to code. This webinar will share lessons learned through youth coding programs at libraries all over the U.S. We will discuss tools and technologies, strategies for promoting and running the program, and recommendations for additional resources. An excellent webinar for youth and teen services librarians, staff, volunteers and general public with an interest in tween/teen/adult services. Takeaways Inspire attendees about kids and coding, and convince them that the library is…
There’s a Reason There’s a Specialized Degree
I think it can be easy to look around a library — especially a smooth-running one — and forget that the work that gets done there ranges from the merely difficult to the incredibly complex. This isn’t the sort of stuff just anyone can do, no matter how well-meaning and interested they might be, which is why there are specialized degree programs designed to turn out inventive and effective experts. I’m talking, of course, about the accountants. And computer programmers. And instructional designers. And usability experts. And, oh, yeah, the librarians. A double standard? There’s a temptation among librarians (and programmers too, of course, and an awful lot of professors) to think that the world consists of two types of work: Stuff only we can do, and Everything else If I were to head off to a library school for a semester and take a single course on cataloging, my…
Which Test for Which Data, a new LITA web course
Here’s the first web course in the LITA spring 2016 offerings: Which Test for Which Data: Statistics at the Reference Desk Instructor: Rachel Williams, PhD student in the School of Library and Information Studies at UW-Madison Offered: February 29 – March 31, 2016 A Moodle based web course with asynchronous weekly content lessons, tutorials, assignments, and group discussion. Register Online, page arranged by session date (login required) This web course is designed to help librarians faced with statistical questions at the reference desk. Whether assisting a student reading through papers or guiding them when they brightly ask “Can I run a t-test on this?”, librarians will feel more confident facing statistical questions. This course will be ideal for library professionals who are looking to expand their knowledge of statistical methods in order to provide assistance to students who may use basic statistics in their courses or research. Students taking the…
A Linked Data Journey: Survey of Publishing Strategies
Image Courtesy of Shelly under a CC BY 2.0 license. Introduction Happy Friday everyone! This is part five of my Linked Data Series. You can find the previous posts by going to my author page. Last week I was fortunate enough to attend Mashcat 2016 in Boston. It was a wonderful one-day conference. We had some very interesting conversations aimed at breaking down communication barriers in libraries (archives and museums), and I was able to meet some fantastic professionals (and students). In addition to attending, I also presented a talk titled Finding Aid-LD: Implementing Linked Data in a Finding Aid Environment (slides). During the presentation I identified various Linked Data publishing strategies that are currently being implemented. I thought this would be a neat topic to post here as well, so today I’m going to give you the deets on Linked Data publishing strategies. Survey of Publishing Strategies Note that these strategies…
Jobs in Information Technology: January 20, 2016
New vacancy listings are posted weekly on Wednesday at approximately 12 noon Central Time. They appear under New This Week and under the appropriate regional listing. Postings remain on the LITA Job Site for a minimum of four weeks. New This Week: Whatcom County Library System, Online Experience Coordinator, Bellingham, WA California State University, Sacramento, Head of Library Information Systems, Sacramento, CA Penn State University Libraries, Cataloging and Metadata Services, Special Collections Cataloging Librarian, University Park, PA Visit the LITA Job Site for more available jobs and for information on submitting a job posting.
6 Design Resources for Librarians
There’s one little bullet point at the end of my job description that reads: Participate in curation of digital displays, and use social media tools and outlets for promotion of library resources, collections, and services. I love graphic design and take every opportunity to flex my Photoshop muscles, but I know that not everyone shares my enthusiasm. Whether it’s in your job description or not, at some point you’ll find yourself designing a research poster, slide deck, workshop flyer, social media banner, or book display. When the time comes, here’s a list of resources that are guaranteed to help conquer design anxiety. COLOR Creating a color palette is not my strong suit, so I rely on the web to find inspiration. My favorite site right now is the Swiss Style Color Picker. It’s quality over quantity, so you won’t find a ton of options, but the presentation is flawless and…
Express Your Shelf
This won’t be the first time I ever admit this, nor will it be the last, but boy am I out of touch. I’m more than familiar with the term “selfie”, which is when you take a photo of yourself. Heck, my profile pictures on Facebook, Twitter, and even here on LITA Blog are selfies. As much as I try to put myself above the selfie fray, I find myself smack in the middle of it. (I vehemently refuse to get a selfie stick, though. Just…no.) But I’d never heard of this “shelfie” phenomenon. Well, I have, but apparently there’s more than one definition. I had to go to Urban Dictionary, that proving ground for my “get off my yard”-ness, to learn it’s a picture of your bookshelf, apparently coined by author Rick Riordan. But I was under the impression that a shelfie is where you take a picture of…
Jobs in Information Technology: January 13, 2016
New vacancy listings are posted weekly on Wednesday at approximately 12 noon Central Time. They appear under New This Week and under the appropriate regional listing. Postings remain on the LITA Job Site for a minimum of four weeks. New This Week: Princeton University Library, Librarian for Reference & Research Services and Gender & Sexuality Studies – Requisition #160001, Princeton, NJ Colorado State University Libraries, Data Management Specialist, Fort Collins, CO Western Washington University, Director of Teaching & Learning and the Learning Commons, Bellingham, WA City of Phoenix, Library Department, Librarian II, Phoenix, AZ Visit the LITA Job Site for more available jobs and for information on submitting a job posting.
Brave New Workplace: Your Homegrown CRM
What is a CRM? For starters, an excellent starting point for this installment of Brave New Workplace, a multi-part LITA blog series on using tech tools to ease your entry into a new position. A CRM is a Customer Relationship Management database, a record management system comprised of different record levels from individual to organization, with entries and fields for interactions and transactions and notes. CRMs provide essential business intelligence to a company, nonprofit, or even (you guessed it) library. As a new hire, you may feel overwhelmed by the amount of information you receive at first. A CRM can help you organize information by contact, associating workflows, projects, committee information, research interests and more with the relevant colleague. By categorizing and tagging colleagues, you can identify overlaps of interest and synergies. CRMs are used for a variety of purposes, including communications automation and e-commerce. For our purposes, I suggest…