The LITA Next Generation Catalog Interest Group will meet on Sunday, January 25, 4 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. in Colorado Convention Center Room 110 We will have presentations and discussion about two examples of recent next generation catalog endeavors. Beth Jefferson (Founder of Bibliocommons) will share real world examples and implications of “Transforming online library catalogs from searchable inventory systems into engaging social discovery environmentsâ€. John Mark Ockerbloom, University of Pennsylvania Libraries and chair of the Digital Library Federation’s ILS-DI Task Group will “Outline the DLF ILS-DI recommendations, describe some of the activities inspired by or related to the recommendations, and discuss what fruit they can bearâ€. The demand for new ways for users to discover relevant library resources has grown tremendously in the past few years. Application development and deployment has been limited, however, by the need to interoperate with any of a variety of integrated library systems. In…
"What's happening at Midwinter"
For each conference, ergo biannually, ALA insiders and ALA staff route information about what’s happening in their area(s) of the Association to Mary Ghikas, who attempts to make sense of it all. The result of all this effort is a ~30 page document deatiling some of the major goings-on at a given conference/meeting. I’ve found these handy since I “discovered” these three or so conferences ago. Midwinter 2009‘s “What’s Happening“document is now available [PDF].
Midwinter Map
Following in the steps of the BIGWIG Google Calendar for LITA’s Midwinter activities, here’s a Google Map of the Midwinter places, populated by BIGWIG and friends. Thanks, as always, to Cindi for getting the maps for ALA Conferences started. View Larger Map
Special ALA Membership Meeting Called
A special membership town hall meeting has been called for Saturday, January 24th, 2009 from 3:00 to 4:30 in the Colorado Convention Center Four Seasons Ballroom. (which is also where ALA Council meets) What library issues are most important to ALA members to share with President Obama? Â The ALA Town Hall Meeting will discuss this topic on Saturday, Jan. 24, 3 PM to 4:30 PM, in the Four Seasons Ballroom at the Colorado Convention Center. Share your views at the Town Hall Discussion wiki. http://wikis.ala.org/midwinter2009/index.php/Town_Hall_Discussion
Top Tech in Denver: Let the Trends come to you
Our semi-annual gathering of trendsters to converse about the leading technologies and tech topics of the day will take place in Denver in just over a week. This year we’re blowing the doors off of Top Tech so that you can follow the conversation and participate in the discussion from anywhere–California, Maine, Florida, or even from another conference session in Denver.
Call for Proposals for LITA National Forum 2009
*Reminder* CALL FOR PROPOSALS The 2009 National Forum Committee seeks proposals for high quality concurrent sessions and poster sessions for the 12th annual LITA National Forum to be held at the Hilton Salt Lake City Center hotel in Salt Lake City, Utah from October 1-4, 2009. This year we have switched over to online submissions so it’s quick and easy (see the URL below). Also, we’ve extended the deadline for submitting proposals to February 20, 2009! Theme: Open and Mobile The Forum Committee is interested in presentations that highlight specific technology implementations; just over-the-horizon technologies that are almost ready for implementation; or information technology research. We are interested in all types of libraries: public, government, school, academic, special, and corporate. Proposals on any aspect of library and information technology are welcome. Some possible ideas for proposals might include: * Handheld Technologies: PDAs, Smartphones, Tablet PCS * E-learning: Effective e-learning and…
Thesauri & interoperability, oh my!
Cindy Hepfer, our vigilant ALA Voting representative to NISO, has forwarded to us a new ISO ballot: ‘ISO/CD 25964-1, Thesauri and interoperability…, Part 1: Thesauri for information retrieval’ As usual, she provides us some text to pique our interest: ‘ISO/CD 25964-1, Thesauri and interoperability…, Part 1: Thesauri for information retrieval’ This is the first ballot on a new standard, Information and documentation — Thesauri and interoperability with other vocabularies — Part 1: Thesauri for information retrieval. This standard is a revision and merger of the two existing standards for monolingual (ISO 2788) and multilingual (ISO 5964) thesauri. The new standard is planned to be issued in two parts. This ballot is for Part 1, which covers the development and maintenance of thesauri, both monolingual and multilingual, including formats and protocols for data exchange. Part 2 is still in development; it will deal with interoperability between different thesauri and with other…
Eric Lease Morgan's Top Tech Trends for ALA Mid-Winter, 2009
This is a list of “top technology trends” written for ALA Mid-Winter, 2009. They are presented in no particular order. Indexing with Solr/Lucene works well – Lucene seems to have become the gold standard when it comes to open source indexer/search engine platforms. Solr — a Web Services interface to Lucene — is increasingly the preferred way to read & write Lucene indexes. Librarians love to create lists. Books. Journals. Articles. Movies. Authoritative names and subjects. Websites. Etc. All of these lists beg for the organization. Thus, (relational) databases. But Lists need to be short, easily sortable, and/or searchable in order to be useful as finding aids. Indexers make things searchable, not databases. The library profession needs to get its head around the creation of indexes. The Solr/Lucene combination is a good place to start — er, catch up. Linked data is a new name for the Semantic Web –…
Gracelyn Cassell-2008 LITA Forum Travel Grant Winner
Gracelyn Cassell, Librarian, Montserrat, West Indies 2008 Errol Hill LITA Forum Travel Grant Winner LITA NATIONAL FORUM 2008 REPORT I was indeed fortunate to have been the Librarian from the Caribbean who received the 2008 Errol Hill Travel Grant to attend the LITA National Forum that was held in Cincinnati October 15 to 20, 2008. The process of preparing this report on my attendance at the Forum had me spending quite some time reflecting on the journey that led to the LITA National Forum in Cincinnati where I attended three general sessions and six of the concurrent sessions. It all started back in 1979 with my undergraduate studies at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, Jamaica when students there were still using punch cards. On graduation in 1982, I started my library career in the Montserrat Public Library which became the local hub for regional initiatives in the…
LITA Town Meeting
LITA President-Elect Michelle Frisque invites LITA members to the LITA Town Meeting, Monday, January 26, 2009, 8:00 am – 10:00 am, Colorado Convention Center, Korbel Ballroom 2C. Meet your fellow LITA members, and participate in a conversation about what role LITA plays in the larger information, association, community-building, and technology- related landscape. What makes LITA unique? Special guests from other organizations that are involved in the technology related landscape will also attend and participate in the discussion. Rick Lugg and associates from R2 have graciously offered their services and will be facilitating the discussion. Other participating organizations include: American Society for Information Sciences & Technology (ASIS&T) http://www.asis.org/ Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alcts/alcts.cfm Digital Library Federation http://www.diglib.org/ OCLC http://www.oclc.org Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/rusa/index.cfm TAIGA http://www.taigaforum.org/