The 2010 National Forum Committee seeks proposals for high quality concurrent sessions for the 13th annual LITA National Forum to be held at the Hilton Downtown hotel in Atlanta, Georgia from September 30 -October 3, 2010. The theme is “The Cloud and the Crowd;” submit proposals by February 19, 2010 online at: http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/lita2010/ The 2010 Forum Planning Committee will review proposals starting in February 2010. You will be contacted about the status of your proposal by the end of March. View the complete call for proposals for more info.
Category: General information
LITA Election: 2010 Slate of Candidates
Check out the slate of candidates for the 2010 LITA election. Positions up for election include Vice President/President-Elect, Councilor, and two Directors-at-large. Polls open March 18 and close April 23. Voting instructions will be delivered to the email address listed in your ALA member record; to update your email address log in to your member profile.
LITA Town Meeting 2010
The LITA President reviewed a market survey, comments from the joint LITA Board Meeting with the Committee and Interest Group chairs in 2008, the LITA Town Meeting in 2009 and the LITA Board Meeting in 2010 and identified all of the possible ideas that LITA could explore as potential strategies for the next LITA Strategic Plan. Those strategies were then sorted under major categories. At today’s LITA Town Meeting we are going to review the the existing strategies and identifying missing strategies. During the Town Meeting we will break out into groups and each group will review one section. Each group will then perform the following tasks for their assigned section: add possible strategies that are missing identify which strategies are worth developing and incorporating into the future strategic plan and give them a time frame (can be complete in 1 year, 2-3 years or 3+ years) identify the possible…
Standard character sets and transliterations
Cindy Hepfer, ALA’s Voting Representative to NISO, has been busy pushing NISO standards announcements our way. I will be combining the announcements to save your time and LITABlog space. Instructions for requesting the relevant documents from Cindy appears at the end of this message. The first group of announcements has to do with special character sets and transliteration. 1. Systematic Review ISO 10754:1996, Extension of the Cyrillic alphabet coded character set for non-Slavic languages for bibliographic information interchange. “This is version three of the standard that specifies a set of 93 graphic characters with their coded representations. It consists of a code table and a legend showing each graphic, its use and its name. Explanatory notes are also included. The character set is primarily intended for the interchange of information among data processing systems and within message transmission systems.” The deadline for comments to Cindy is no later than Monday,…
New LITA officers elected
Karen Starr, Assistant Administrator for Development Services at the Nevada State Library & Archives, is the new vice-president/president-elect of LITA. Her term, and that of newly elected LITA board members, begins after the 2009 ALA Annual Conference in Chicago, Ill., a few weeks ago. Starr has served as a member of the LITA Board of Directors. She has experience in international relations having served on the LITA International Relations Committee and in various roles with the ALA International Relations Round Table. In addition to the IRC, Karen has served LITA on the Program Planning Committee and the Nominating Committee, “Creative change comes with long term investment, commitment, and patience. Every 10 years of the last 30, the library field has passed a milestone in its use of technology including online searching (1970s), CDROMs (1980s), and the Internet (1990s). Now we are involved with the digital world. Everyone is struggling with…
A Plethora of Standards News
Our ALA Voting Representative to NISO, Cindy Hepfer, has passed on a number of notices to LITA members, and in order to bring them quickly to your attention, I’m going to be briefer than usual. The first group is for upcoming ISO ballots: 1. Systematic Review ISO 21127:2006, a ballot for the published standard, ISO 21127:2006, Information and documentation — A reference ontology for the interchange of cultural heritage information. This is the first edition of the standard that is intended to facilitate the exchange of information between cultural heritage institutions by defining a domain ontology for cultural heritage information. (Cindy’s deadline for comments is Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2009). 2. Systematic Review ISO 12083:1994, a ballot for the published standard, ISO 12083:1994, Information and documentation — Electronic manuscript preparation and markup. This is the first edition of the International Standard that presents four document type definitions and additional facilities conforming…
Early bird rates extended for 2009 LITA National Forum
The early bird registration deadline has been extended for the 2009 LITA National Forum, October 1-4, 2009 in Salt Lake City. Now is your opportunity to realize excellent savings on registration for the forum. Registration rates are $50 lower through August 31 – Register Now
ALA Emerging Leader Program DEADLINE EXTENDED
The ALA Emerging Leaders (EL) program is a leadership development program which enables newer library workers from across the country to participate in problem-solving work groups, network with peers, gain an inside look into ALA structure, and have an opportunity to serve the profession in a leadership capacity. It puts participants on the fast track to ALA committee volunteerism as well as other professional library-related organizations. The EL program kicks off with a daylong session during the ALA Midwinter Meeting. Afterward, it grows and develops in an online learning and networking environment for six months. The program culminates with a poster session presentation to display the results of the project planning work of each group at the ALA Annual Conference. LITA will sponsor 2 Emerging Leaders this year. LITA will contribute $1000 towards expenses ($500 for each conference). The LITA sponsored EL’s will also be paired with the LITA Vice…
Net Neutrality and Its Implications for Libraries
LITA Technology and Access Committee Program MCP W-184 Gregory A. Jackson, University of Chicago; Carrie Lowe, OITP for ALA; Clifford Lynch, Director of the CNI  Clifford Lynch tells Cool History. Thinks Net Neutrality is a relatively new phrase, says it happened within last 10 years–but is an old idea. Monopolies, natural or otherwise. Once upon a time, there was a thing called the Bell System aka “Ma Bell”.
Creating Library Web Services: Mashaps and APIs
Title of the Preconference: Creating Library Web Services: Mashaps and APIs Presenter: Karen Coombs The pre-conference session began shortly after 9AM. Ms. Karen Coombs introduced herself and refreshed participants memory about what “web services are?†and why we need Mashaps and APIs, and what we can do with them and how they work. She presented sample. “An application-programming interface (API) is a set of programming instructions and standards for accessing a Web-based software application or Web tool. A software company releases its API to the public so that other software developers can design products that are powered by its service.†Mashaps and APIs both bring different and disparate data together and enhance the accessibility of an existing source of data, and improvs usability and user interfaces, and make web pages more dynamic and engaging. They allow the users (patrons) to make informed decision about the information the want or need….