Uncategorized

Volunteers needed to help with privacy initiative

Are you interested in improving privacy in libraries all across the country? If so, we need your help! The recently-released ALA Library Privacy Guidelines are a great collection of the standards and practices that libraries should be putting into place to protect users’ digital information. A small group of us is now working on creating checklists and resource guides for each set of guidelines in order to help real live library staff implement these guidelines with ease. And we’re looking for volunteers to help! We need folks to help out with developing checklists for the following. We’re particularly hoping to find people with experience in school libraries and networked services, but we’ll take all willing volunteers! Library Privacy Guidelines for Public Access Computers and Networks Library Privacy Guidelines for Library Websites (social media), OPACs, and Discovery Services Library Privacy Guidelines for Library Management Systems Library Privacy Guidelines for Data Exchange Between…

2009

Top Tech Trends from Sarah Houghton-Jan

I’m not able to be there at the session, but I’m sharing my top trends below. Please add your own thoughts in the comments section. Discussions often bring out the best in all of us! The Art of Web Presence Maintenance With libraries extending their web presences out beyond the borders of their own websites proper, the coordination and successful maintenance of these presences has become a skill in its own right. How to successfully leverage a Facebook page for your library? How to successfully use Wikipedia to promote your library’s services? On which sites should you be present? How to successfully use YouTube for library videocasts? The list goes on and on. The skills include the ability to creatively manage your different presences, updating them when appropriate, keeping information current, participating in new sites when warranted, and deleting outdated presences. More libraries are designating people other than their traditional…

2008

Top Technology Trends from Sarah Houghton-Jan, ALA 2008

I had a lovely time presenting virtually, despite the sound issues on all ends. It still was a rather successful demonstration of virtual participation, and I think that was wonderful. Big thanks to Maurice York for organizing this for myself and Karen. I have 5 Trends I’d like to throw out there. I was able to cover three of them (#s 1-3) in the live presentation, but apparently the echo in the room made parts of what I said difficult to hear. So, here’s what I said verbatim, near as I can remember (plus the bonuses of #s 4 and 5). Let’s hit it. #1: Bandwidth Every library complains about bandwidth. Many people have faster access at home than at the library, which is a reversal of what we used to see when people came into the library to use our connections. The problem is multimedia, which is wonderful, but…

2006

Top Technology Trends, NISO's "Identifiers Roundup", Electronic Resource Management Systems in Consortia, and JPEG2000 in Libraries and Archives

Just when I needed it (e.g. the ALA convention) I found I had lost my credentials for the LITA Blog, so I’ve been posting summaries of meetings on a personal blog, the Disruptive Library Technology Jester. Michelle has reset my password (thanks, Michelle!), but rather than reposting entire entries here I’ll just include a summary and a link to the DLTJ entry. (You really didn’t think I’d try to jam all four reports into one blog posting, did you?) It’s All About User Services: A Summary and Commentary on the LITA Top Technology Trends meeting A summary and commentary on the LITA Top Technology Trends meeting. What I tried to do is collate comments from the panel members and add my own commentary (marked off from the rest of the summary) where I thought I had something useful to add. The summary is broken down into “Evolution and Interim Solutions,”…

2006

Sarah Houghton's Top Technology Trends

I won’t be at ALA, but I’ll note three trends I see in full force: Returning Power Over Content to Those with the Knowledge Eric Lease Morgan touched on this in his second trend about blogs and wiki websites becoming the norm rather than the exception. My twist is this: people who have the knowledge will once again be in control of the content. Until recently, most websites (library and otherwise) have fallen victim to the camel through the eye of a needle problem: only the webmasters can post the content, and sometimes such insufficient and incoherent content is given to them, that they end up creating much of the content themselves. Library staff, largely librarians, are responsible for the collections, programming, and services in our libraries–the content. The same should be true with websites. With WYSIWYG interfaces with blogs and wikis, those knowledgeable people can once again be in…

2006

Sarah Houghton’s Top Technology Trends

I am unable to attend ALA Midwinter again this year, but here are my top technology trends. Someone can read them in a big booming voice so it will sound impressive 😉 IM reference goes mainstream After reading the existing studies showing that co-browsing is of limited value in many chat reference situations and thinking about how much money they’re spending on their web-based chat products, libraries will begin to re-think how they offer live online reference to their users. More and more libraries (as has been the trend for the last year) will adopt instant messaging for online reference, either in addition to or as a replacement for their existing expensive and bloated web-based chat products. A year ago I and a few others were called shortsighted and sometimes even “stupid” for pointing out the negatives of web-based chat. We were also called “extremist” and “too youth-oriented” for promoting…