2005

Updated posts

Added more notes and picture to Greenstone post. Added lots more pictures to OCLC Bloggers post. Didn’t blog the LITA awards reception earlier, so I’ll just post a photo from it here: Apparently wherever there was free food, I was there with the camera 🙂

2005

Who Do You Trust?

6/25/2005 RUSA/MARS User Access to Services Committee Do You Trust Your IT Staff? Do They Trust you? Talk about a topic close to my heart! Though somehow, in thinking about it before the conference, in my mind it morphed into “Does Your It Staff Hate You?” In fact, around Wednesday, I had to talk to someone in IT via phone, and I asked him if he hated me. He said no. Do I trust him enough to believe him? /humor This program was held on the fourth floor of McCormick, which had had a power failure. No elevators or escaltors, few lights, no A/C. I felt like I was in a Gibson novel as I traveled long, seemingly endless, dark service corridors and stairs. Maybe it was Stephenson? Heinlein? When my friend and I finally encountered humans, I said, “Our kind!” There were four panelists. If you want the names,…

2005

ACRL President’s Program in a TiVo®-lutionary Age

Frances Maloy, ACRL President, 2004-2005, opened the ACRL President’s Program on Monday, June 27, 2005 with a report on the year in review and a statement on the organization’s progress that brought cheers and applause. Frances set the stage for a terrific program saying, “After being President for a year, I have concluded that ACRL rocks!” Awards and Speakers The 2005-2006 President-Elect, Camilla Alire, was introduced. She noted marketing and advocacy to be her passions and priorities for the upcoming ACRL year. Awards were presented to libraries and librarians who demonstrate excellence and employ best practices. A humorous video created by Pierce College Library followed and introduced the members of their 2005 Excellence in Academic Libraries Award-winning institution. The Time for a Reality Check: Academic Librarians in a TiVo®-lutionary Age program speakers presented next as a panel. Beloit College Mindset List Tom McBride, Keefer and Keefer Prof. of Humanities, Beloit…

2005

Tiny Trackers: Protecting Privacy in an RFID World

Thankfully this RFID session was much warmer than the experts panel at the Hotel Intercontinental the previous day. Interestingly, I found it to be less well attended. About half of the seats in the ballroom were filled up. I suspect that the LITA top technology trends program drew a lot of potential audience members away. Overall I found the panelists — Jim Lichtenberg, Jackie Griffin, and David Molnar — to be entertaining and informative. I was familiar with much of the content but learned there is still work to be done as privacy issues have not yet been completely resolved in library RFID. Lichtenberg, a library technology consultant and regular Library Journal contributor, provided an overview of the technology. We’re still at a point where many librarians don’t fully understand how the technology operates and so this explanation was welcome even if it was a bit repetitive for the more…

2005

LITA Councilor’s Report

[Updates underscored] Council 3 wrapped up at 12:15 on June 29, very timely and very congenial. Over our three Council meetings we had several items on the agenda that are very LITA-relevant. I will try to provide links to documents if/when they go online. Special thanks to our charming parliamentarian, Eli Mina, who in his Peter Lorre voice gently keeps us in line, and to ALA ED Keith Fiels for providing a rock-solid wi-fi connection that made many Councilors very happy. The days when 200 librarians could vanish for a week without any connectivity are long behind all of us. Note: we had over 27,000 registrants for this conference–an all-time record, 1,000 registrants higher than the runner-up (San Francisco, the last time we were there) and 7,000 more than Orlando. Council items LITA-worthy: Resolution in support of community broadband, out of Committee on Legislation, with strong encouragement from OITP. Pat…