E-rate isn’t new news. Established almost 20 years ago (I feel old, and you’re about to too) by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, E-rate provides discounts to assist schools and libraries in the United States to obtain affordable telecommunications and internet access. What is new news is the ALA initiative Got E-rate? and more importantly the overhaul of E-rate which prompted the initiative- and it’s good news. The best part might well be 1.5 billion dollars added to annual available funding. What that means, in the simplest terms, is new opportunities for libraries to offer better, faster internet. It’s the chance for public libraries of every size to rethink their broadband networks and make gains toward the broadband speeds necessary for library services. But beyond the bottom line, this incarnation of E-rate has been deeply influenced by ALA input. The Association worked with the FCC to insure that the reform…
Category: General information
What is a Librarian?
When people ask me what I do, I have to admit I feel a bit of angst. I could just say I’m a librarian. After all I’ve been in the library game for nearly 10 years now. I went to library school, got a library degree, and I now work at FSU’s Strozier library with a bunch of librarians on library projects. It feels a bit disingenuous to call myself a librarian though because the word “librarian” is not in my job title. Our library, like all others, draws a sharp distinction between librarians and staff. Calling myself a librarian may feel right, but it is a total lie in the eyes of Human Resources. If I take the HR stance on my job, “what I do” becomes a lot harder to explain. The average friend or family member has a vague understanding of what a librarian is, but…
Learning to Master XSLT
This semester, I have the exciting opportunity to work as an intern among the hum of computers and maze of cubicles at Indiana University’s Digital Library Program! My main projects include migrating two existing digital collections from TEI P4 to TEI P5 using XSLT. If you are familiar with XML and TEI, feel free to skim a bit! Otherwise, I’ve included short explanations of each and links to follow for more information. XML Texts for digital archives and libraries are frequently marked up in a language called eXtensible Markup Language (XML), which looks and acts similarly to HTML. Marking up the texts allow them to be human- and machine-readable, displayed, and searched in different ways than if they were simply plain text. TEI The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Consortium “develops and maintains a standard for the representation of texts in digital form” (i.e. guidelines). Basically, if you wanted to encode a…
Share Your Committee and IG Activities on the LITA Blog!
The LITA Blog features original content by LITA members on technologies and trends relevant to librarians. The writers represent a variety of perspectives, from library students to public, academic, and special librarians. The blog also delivers announcements about LITA programming, conferences, and other events, and serves as a place for LITA committees to share information back with the community if they so choose. Sharing on the LITA blog ensures a broad audience for your content. Five recent LITA blog posts (authored by Brianna Marshall, Michael Rodriguez, Leanne Olson, Bryan Brown, and John Klima) have been picked up by American Libraries Direct – and most posts have been viewed hundreds of times and shared dozens of times on social media. John Klima’s post on 3D printers has been shared 40 times from the LITA Twitter account and another 40 times directly from the blog (a cumulative record), Bryan Brown’s post on MOOCs…
Out of Control
Last week I found myself in a grey area. I set up a one-on-one tech appointment with a patron to go over the basics of her new Android tablet. Once we met in person I learned that what she really wanted was to monitor her daughter’s every move online. It felt like a typical help session as I showed her how to check the browsing history and set up parental controls. She had all the necessary passwords for her daughter’s email and Facebook accounts, which made it even easier. It wasn’t until she left that I realized I had committed a library crime: I completely ignored the issue of privacy. I’m still mulling this over in my head, trying to decide how I should have acted. I’m not a parent, so I can’t speak to the desire to protect children from the dangers of the Internet. Chances are her daughter can…
LITA Interest Group Events at ALA Midwinter
Are you headed to ALA Midwinter this weekend and curious about what the LITA interest groups will be up to? See below for a current listing of LITA IG events! Saturday, January 31, 2015 10:30am to 11:30am Imagineering Interest Group, Hyatt Regency McCormick Adler/CC 24C The Imagineering Interest Group will meet to plan for future ALA Annual programs and meetings. We will also talk about future group endeavors, such as creating online resources. Please attend if you are interested in working with the group. Additional Information: Librarianship, Adult Services, Collection Development, Popular Culture, Reader’s Advisory Open Source Systems Interest Group, Hyatt Regency McCormick Burnham/CC 23C Meeting to discuss future projects for the Open Source Systems Interest Group. Search Engine Optimization, Hyatt Regency McCormick Jackson Park/CC 10D Attendees will have an opportunity to share their experiences with search engine optimization. We will also discuss the SEO Best Practices Wiki entry in Library Success:…
Leveraging MOOCs for Fun and Profit
Let’s Talk about MOOCs If you are a current or recent graduate student or work in higher ed, you have heard of the disruptive tech du jour, Massive Open Online Courses (or MOOCs). While MOOCs are in their infancy, they are being scrutinized pretty heavily because of their potential to drink academia’s milkshake. While the course structure of a MOOC and a university course are fairly similar (a domain expert organizes a field and puts together a linear curriculum of lectures, readings and quizzes), the primary differences lie in the method of interaction (synchronous and personal vs. asynchronous and impersonal) and their perception of credibility (though certain platforms are experimenting with offering credentials, they don’t carry as much weight as a traditional university degree). While it will probably be a while before MOOCs start poaching would-be university students, we can still enjoy and make use of MOOCs as they…
Tech Tools in Traditional Positions
During this winter break, I’ve had a slight lull in library work and time to reflect on my first semester of library school, aside from reading for pleasure and beginning Black Mirror on Netflix (anybody?). Overall, I’m ready to dive in to the new semester, but one tidbit from fall semester keeps floating in my thoughts, and I’m curious what LITA Blog readers have to say. Throughout my undergraduate education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, I was mainly exposed to two different sets of digital humanities practices: encoding and digital archive practices, and text analysis for literature. With my decision to attend library school, I assumed I would focus on the former for the next two to three years. Last semester, in my User Services and Tools course, we had a guest speaker from User Needs Assessment in the Indiana University Libraries. As the title suggests, he spoke about developing physical…
Do You Really Need a CMS?
No, this post isn’t about another license, credential, or degree to put after your name. CMS stands for content management system, and in this case I’m referring to any of the applications that allow for publishing, editing, and organizing of content on web pages. Content management systems are powerful tools that make it easy to create, manage, and update websites and web content. But do you really need a content management system for your website? Due to their wide range of capabilities, these systems can be very large and slow, which might not be a suitable trade-off if you’re trying to build a very simple website. Below, I outline some* considerations you should make before deciding whether to use a CMS. Content How much content will be posted, and how often? If you only have a fixed amount of content to post — maybe you just need the basics, like library…
We Want YOU to Write a Guest Post!
Yes, you! Are you looking for a platform to share your ideas with the library tech community? We’re a pretty friendly bunch in LITA and we hope you’ll consider sharing your intriguing library tech-related stories, plans, failures, hacks, code snippets – whatever! – here on the blog this year. There is a lot of room for contributor creativity, so get excited. You do not need to be a LITA member in order to write a guest post, though it’s great if you are! To submit an idea for consideration, please email LITA blog editor Brianna Marshall at briannahmarshall(at)gmail(dot)com sharing a bit about yourself and a brief summary of your post topic.