Standards Watch

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…

Standards Watch

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…

General information

Survey from the Task Force on Electronic Membership Participation (TFOEMP)

The ALA Task Force on Electronic Membership Participation (TFOEMP) has been charged with evaluating ALA policy as it relates to members’ ability to engage with and interact with the work of the association through committees and other working groups. A survey of members’ practice and attitudes toward serving on Association committees, task forces, and interests groups at a distance is being undertaken. Through this survey, the TFOEMP hopes to gauge member familiarity, interest, and comfort with various means of participating both synchronously and asynchronously. Please visit this link to respond to the survey. You will be asked to provide your ALA Membership ID. The survey will take 10 minutes and offers both structured and open responses. Member ID numbers will be collected in order to correlate responses in the aggregate to membership participation in divisions, round tables, and committees, as well as by geographic regions and type of library or…

BIGWIG

Your BIGWIG

The LITA Blogs, Interactive Groupware and Wikis Interest Group (otherwise known by the sobriquet BIGWIG) is pleased to announce a new online presence for the group: www.yourbigwig.com What is YourBIGWIG? Straight from the site itself: BIGWIG has created this website in order to facilitate communication between BIGWIG members, potential members and interested parties. We hope to use this site to enable BIGWIG to be more efficient and effective in the work we do, allow for virtual participation, and solicit feedback and commentary on our activities. So: head on over and check us out. Sign up for an account, and make yourself part of the process of making LITA a more efficient, effective, and forward-thinking division of ALA.

2007

Public Libraries Technology Interest Group

Sunday: 8 – 10 a.m. Our first event/meeting was a big success with almost 30 participants. Thanks to everyone who attended. Paul Keith and Irmgarde Brown (co-chairs) welcomed everyone, gave a brief introduction to our new interest group and encouraged public librarians to join LITA. Our Discussion Topic Our guest speaker was Brian Auger from Howard County Public Library in Maryland. Brian shared a few facts about his system: 3rd wealthiest county in the country, second smallest population at 260,000 people, and yet they circulate over 2M items a year out of only 6 branches. Howard County started re-thinking their commitment to “traditional” computer software as Web-based technologies began emerging. It appeared to them that such a basic system should be cheaper and easier to secure. With the support of only 2 I.T. staff back then, the library began a slow evolution into Linux (first by implementing the Linux Firewalls…

LITA Officers

First Days on the Job as LITA President

The ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans was an awe-inspiring experience on many levels. I was so overwhelmed by the gratitude of the New Orleaneans who could not have done a better job of making the 16,000+ visitors comfortable. New Orleans has a huge struggle ahead as the recovery has only begun. ALA set the example to the world that we believe in the city and want to help as much as possible in its recovery. Librarians not only helped economically by coming to the city, but many donated time and energy through volunteer service. I am proud to have attended the conference and even prouder that ALA chose to keep the conference in New Orleans. I began my LITA Presidency at the end of the day on Tuesday, June 27. I want to thank Pat Mullin for all he did in the past year as President. He has been…

2006

ETIG Program in the Big Easy: Audio Book 3.0 – The convergence of the mobile media lifestyle platform

This program will be held on Monday, June 26 from 8:00AM – 11AM in Rooms 340-341 at the (MCC) Morial Convention Center. ————————————————————————————————— Please Forward to anyone you know will be attending and would have an interest in this program!!! ————————————————————————————————— Please join the LITA Emerging Technology Interest Group for a product presentations, a panel discussion and an interactive question and answer session. The session title. Audio Book 3.0 – The convergence of the mobile media lifestyle platform. ( Please note this title on the program differs slightly, being named Ebook 3.0… While there will be a number of issues raised in the session regarding the way audio books and ebooks are also converging my original focus on ebooks 3.0 appears to be “bleeding edge” at this point and not just yet fully emerging. After extensive discussions with Sony, Apple, iRex and many others the newest push for eInk based…