Monday, June 30th, 2008 Hyatt Regency Orange County Walt Scacchi of UC-Irvine stepped in as a last-minute replacement speaker for Karen Sandler of the Software Freedom Law Center and gave a talk entitled “Research Results for Free/Open Source Software Development: Best Practices for Libraries? (and some legal issues too)” based on his empirical research on open-source project processes, practices, and community development . The talk was rich in details on who open-source developers are and what they do. Using the current stats at Sourceforge as a starting point, he estimated approximately 180,000 current open-source software projects, of which approximately 18,000 (10%) are currently being succesfully developed. The largest area of open-source development is in games, in large part driven by the fact that the very successful Sony game systems are built using open-source software. Open-source developers tend to use the tools they build, which is not necessarily the case for…
Tag: ala
Drupal4Lib BoF at ALA Anaheim
We got a great crowd of around 20 people for our Drupal ‘Birds of a Feather’. The above is a shot of everybody in the BIGWIG Bloggers’ room — just before we got kicked out by some group from YALSA (bums, we’ll get even)! (We then proceeded to the next available empty room and had our get-together there.) First up on the agenda was setting up the Drupal IG, making sure we have enough signatures and asking for volunteers to serve as Chair and Co-Chair. For the first year, Leo Klein (i.e. me) graciously volunteered to serve as chair and Ian Chan as co-chair. The name for the IG is ‘Drupal4Lib’ and our purpose is “to promote the use and understanding of the content management system, Drupal, by libraries and librarians”. Next on the agenda was the true meat-and-potatoes of the BoF: shooting the breeze about Drupal and demonstrating a…
Top Technology Trends from Sarah Houghton-Jan, ALA 2008
I had a lovely time presenting virtually, despite the sound issues on all ends. It still was a rather successful demonstration of virtual participation, and I think that was wonderful. Big thanks to Maurice York for organizing this for myself and Karen. I have 5 Trends I’d like to throw out there. I was able to cover three of them (#s 1-3) in the live presentation, but apparently the echo in the room made parts of what I said difficult to hear. So, here’s what I said verbatim, near as I can remember (plus the bonuses of #s 4 and 5). Let’s hit it. #1: Bandwidth Every library complains about bandwidth. Many people have faster access at home than at the library, which is a reversal of what we used to see when people came into the library to use our connections. The problem is multimedia, which is wonderful, but…
BIGWIG Business Meeting – Monday morning
Just reminding any who are interested in getting involved in BIGWIG that we are having our business meeting on Monday morning from 8 – 10 in the LITA Blogger’s Room. This is located in Hilton Hotel in the Carmel room. Just go up 2 escalators from the lobby and take a left down a narrow hallway. We are about half-way down. Hope to see you there!
LITA Blogger's Room
Just so that everyone is aware: the LITA Blogger’s room, open to anyone who needs a quick ‘net connection, can be found at: Hilton convention center, Carmel Room. The Carmel room is up 2 escalators from the lobby. See you there!
Live Streaming from ALA Annual 2008
This is not an organized LITA endeavor, but as a proof-of-concept for BIGWIG, I am going to be streaming as much as I can from ALA Annual 2008. The service I’m using for this is called Ustream, and the live channel can be found here: http://www.ustream.tv/griffey Because of the vagaries of internet access at the various convention hotels, it remains to be seen exactly what I will be able to do…but I’m going to give it a try! Even if you miss the live stream, all of the videos will be at the above URL to peruse at your leisure. If you are interested in trying to catch me live, I’ll be announcing it over on Twitter.
Top Tech Trends for ALA (Summer '08)
Here is a non-exhaustive list of Top Technology Trends for the American Library Association Annual Meeting (Summer, 2008). These Trends represent general directions regarding computing in libraries — short-term future directions where, from my perspective, things are or could be going. They are listed in no priority order. “Bling” in your website – I hate to admit it, but it seems increasingly necessary to make sure your institution’s website be aesthetically appealing. This might seem obvious to you, but considering the fact we all think “content is king” we might have to reconsider. Whether we like it or not, people do judge a book by its cover, and people do judge other’s on their appearance. Websites aren’t very much different. While librarians are great at organizing information bibliographically, we stink when it comes to organizing things visually. Think graphic design. Break down and hire a graphic designer, and temper their…
Google Map for ALA Anaheim
Cindi Trainor, in a fit of Twitter-induced brilliance, started putting together a Google Map for ALA Annual 2008 in Anaheim. Included thus far are hotels and restaurants, but people are still adding to it, so it’s value should increase as we get closer and closer to the conference. Take a look! View Larger Map
New Standard: WARC (Web ARCive) file format
LITA has received news of new standards activity of interest from Cindy Hepfer, ALA Representative to NISO (HSLcindy@buffalo.edu) “A new ballot has been presented to TC46 Ballot Advisory Group: ‘ISO/DIS 28500, WARC file format’. This is a new standard at the Draft International Standard (DIS) stage, and this may be the last chance to provide substantive comments to this standard. If all member bodies vote Yes, this standard can proceed directly to publication.” NISO’s Summary: The WARC (Web ARChive) file format offers a convention for concatenating multiple resource records (data objects), each consisting of a set of simple text headers and an arbitrary data block into one long file. The WARC format is an extension of the ARC File Format [ARC] that has traditionally been used to store “web crawls” as sequences of content blocks harvested from the World Wide Web. The WARC format is expected to be a standard…
ISBN Systematic Review Is Here!
Those interested in identifier issues should take note of this updated info from Cindy Hepfer, ALA Representative to NISO (HSLcindy@buffalo.edu). “A new ballot has been presented to TC46 Ballot Advisory Group: ‘ISO 2108:2005 (ISBN) Systematic Review’. This is a systematic review ballot of the published standard, ISO 2108:2005, Information and documentation — International Standard Book Number (ISBN). ISO now requires the first systematic review of a standard to take place three years after publication; subsequent reviews will be every five years. This is an opportunity for ALA members to provide feedback on the 13-digit ISBN. ALA’s vote options are Confirm (as is), Revise/Amend, Withdraw, or Abstain (from the vote). Comments are required for all votes other than Confirm.” The final deadline for Cindy to vote is Friday, Aug. 29, 2008, and she asks that reviewers respond to her at least one week in advance of this final deadline (Aug. 22…