Unfortunately for Committee Chairs, the meeting room posted in the schedule was filled with another group. The Chairs met in the hall of the Marriot and discussed issues such as getting new committee members onto the committee electronic discussion lists and getting new chairs onto the ComChairs list. The nagging problem of meeting no-shows was discussed – these members should be removed by the committee so that the committee work can carry on without over burdening members that do attend. Aaron Dobbs is the Committee Web Coordinator and he will put Committee reports up o the web site in a timely fashion, so make sure Aaron gets reports. Chairs should also recommend committee members and let Andrew Pace know of suggestions.
Category: 2008
LITA Joint IG and Committee Chairs Meeting 1/12/08 8am
The IG and Committee Chairs meeting is held at each conference in order to discuss issues that Chairs have, and also to provide time and space for all the LITA leadership to interact face to face. Pres. President Mark Beatty encouraged all Chairs to report out about what we’re doing. He asked all Chairs to complete reports so that the LITA Board can be updated and so that all LITA members can have a clear up to date picture of organization activities. Vice President/President Elect Andrew Pace asked Chairs to encourage people to volunteer for Committee positions by completing the online forms available. For those rotating off committees: it would be very helpful if you can mention a potential successor Once people are “in the system”, they can be tapped for all kinds of LITA activities. He also asked Chairs to attend the Town Meeting 8am Monday morning. Executive Director…
Membership Development Committee 1/13/08 8am – 10am
Membership Development discussed the Research and Assessment Committee workshop and implications for forthcoming activities. The membership has increased slightly and is slowly reaching former pre-dues-increase levels. The student category is the fastest growing category. The Committee had a brief discussion of “what next?” in terms of target groups and mention public libraries and technologists who are not in libraries at this time. The Happy Hour on Friday comprised about 90 interesting people, with Don Lemke and Lorre Smith greeting members at the door and distributing “glowy things”. Planning for Anaheim Happy Hour got underway and it will be on Friday at 4:30, just before the LITA 101 Open House at 5:30. Al Kornish took over the duties of scheduling members into the LITA booth, so all of you who are dying to spread the word about LITA can talk to Al about doing so in the booth at the annual…
Standards Interest Group Meeting
The Standards Interest Group meeting on January 12th from 4-6 was very informative. Todd Carpenter, the managing director of NISO, began by giving the group a very thorough report on current NISO activities. Mr. Carpenter described 2007 as a very busy and fruitful year for NISO. NISO received a quarter of a million dollars in grants in 2007. It also passed one standard (SUSHI; Z39.93), two recommended practices and three initiatives. Among many other activities, NISO also finished the third edition of its popular “Framework for Building Good Digital Collections.” According to Todd Carpenter, 2008 will also be a busy year for NISO. For example, a working group to explore issues surrounding institutional identification has recently been formed. This working group will propose an identifier that will both uniquely identify institutions and describe relationships between entities within institutions. One of its first tasks is to review the existing institutional identifiers,…
IG Chair meeting, Saturday 9 a.m.
IG Chairs that were represented at the meeting: Bylaws Authority & Control BIGWIG Distance Learning Imagineering Open Source Systems Internet Resources Remember to renew your Interest Group. Everyone should have gotten an email about the renewal … if you are the chair, you need to be so listed on the website. Check the ComChair list. Many groups are up for renewal and should really contact Mary Ellen Tyckoson. Renewal is streamlined now and please take care of it at midwinter … print off the form from the website or get it from the ALA-LITA office. Review the description of the group, submit 3 reports from the last 3 Annual Meetings, and sign. Question: have renewals ever been denied? Sometimes, the renewal is postponed if the information isn’t complete. Actually, there is no official mechanism for an IG to be disbanded, but Mary Ellen will look into it. To change a…
New ALA website design concept – request for feedback
Per the Web Advisory Committee (WAC) The design concept for the ALA website is now available for review. It’s up in Philadelphia on kiosks in the Pennsylvania Convention Center, but anyone can get to the site from anywhere. The URL is http://alamockups.luminanze.com. Please visit when you get a chance. , Feel free to publicize the URL. There is a link to a survey at the end of the mockups; please be sure to complete the survey to let us know what you think. Also, please remember this step in the process is just about the graphic design. Interactivity and site architecture and other features will be coming in future iterations of the design. {URL corrected to http://alamockups.luminanze.com/}
Sarah Houghton-Jan’s Top Tech Trends for 2008, ALA Midwinter
I have posted my Top Tech Trends on LibrarianInBlack.net. Feel free to comment either here or there (though actually reading the trends first is preferred).
Trends from K.G. Schneider
I just posted my trends over at Free Range Librarian. I realize I left off OPACs, after writing about them all fall. I’ll keep those thoughts as a extra-speshul treat for our meeting this Sunday morning at o’dark-thirty. See you all then!
LITA Happy Hour
Friday, January 11, 2008, 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. Cebu Restaurant and Bar123 Chestnut Street, Old City, Philadelphia (215) 629-1100 The hosts at Cebu have offered LITA the following: Drink Specials: $3 House Mixed Drinks $2.50 Domestic Beer $5 Long Island Iced Tea $5 House Apple Martini’s and Cosmopolitans $5 House Red or White Wine Food: 15% discount (Limited to food bill only, must be seated in Main dining area) Sampler of various Hors d’ oeuvres stationed at the Main Bar Be sure to print out this flier [pdf] and bring it to Cebu; it is your discount card for the evening (copies will also be available at the LITA table)
Top technology trends: ALA Mid-Winter 2008
Here, listed in no priority order, is a set of top technology trends/predictions for fellow librarians to chew on during the ALA Mid-Winter Meeting, 2008. The use of Linux as a server platform as well as a desktop platform will increase – The latest version of Windows seems to have gone over like a lead balloon. Institutions still have server-class needs. Add these two things together, and you will see more IT shops considering and adopting Linux for their operating system. At a much slower pace, Linux will increasingly appear on user desktops because retailers are selling dirt-cheap computers with Linux pre-installed. Ubuntu, a particular Linux distribution, gets rave reviews for its user interface. Clean. Easy to use, and easy to learn. As Linux becomes more predominant, so will the concept of open source software, and that is an additional ball of wax that has already been mentioned numerous times….