In an effort to reach out to the library technology community and provide better services, LITA (the Library and Information Technology Association) is interested in how LITA members and non-members perceive the association. Please take just a few short minutes out of your day to let us know what’s on your mind.
Tag: Interest
The World (and Jason Griffey) Interviews Vernor Vinge
Jason Griffey kicked off the session by introducing Dr. Vernor Vinge and talking about his many accolades as a science fiction writer and futurist. Dr. Vinge then talked about how humans are the best tool-creating animal and the only animal that has figured out how to outsource their cognition — how to spread their cognitive abilities into the outside world. As an example, he talked about how writing and speaking are an outsourcing of our thinking and money represents an outsourcing of our perceived value for things. As humans continue to outsource cognition more effectively by harnessing powerful machines and complex networks, we move closer to a point of technological singularity. At this point, where a superhuman intelligence can be achieved by machines or some combination of humans and machines, it will become too difficult for humans to fully grasp the present or to predict the future. As an example, he talked about how someone might be able to explain the…
Electronic Resources Management Interest Group: Friday, June 27th, 6:30-8:00pm
SUSHI– Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) update: http://www.niso.org/workrooms/sushi Adam Chandler presented an overview of what was happening with SUSHI – it’s available at http://www.niso.org/workrooms/sushi/info/SUSHI_ALA_Annual_2008-nisoupdate.ppt. First he gave some background on SUSHI itself. SUSHI uses the COUNTER schema – it’s a protocol for moving statistics between two systems. Just the exchange – COUNTER actually codifies what’s in the reports. He presented conceptual diagrams of how the information is exchanged. Then he talked about a survey of content providers and consolidators done in May 2008. Most consolidators plan to have support for SUSHI 1.5 by late 2008 or one in early 2009. Content providers were mostly going to implement in 2009, although some would be early, and some are still deciding. Adam also called for volunteers for the NISO steering group, especially those with access to data such as those who work for a consortium. He also called for “Sushi Shokunin 
LITABlog upgrade
LITABlog was just updated to the newest version of WordPress, 2.6. For those that poke around behind the scenes, if you are interested in the newest features, here’s a video overview:
Next Generation Catalog Interest Group Meeting
Monday, June 30th, 2008 Anaheim Convention Center Sharon M. Shafer, Vice Chair, welcomed everyone to the 3rd meeting of the Next Generation Catalog Interest Group. The program panelists included Karen G. Schneider, Equinox Software, Sara Davidson, University of California, Merced, and Amy Kautzman, University of California, Davis, “Running a Free and Open Source Software ILS does Not Equate to a Tightrope Act with No Net†Karen G. Schneider began her talk with a definition of open source software from Wikipedia. Karen explained that open source software is free to use, free to download, and free to modify. Support is also available from the open source community or from a vendor. Karen further stated that “development†happens out in the “wild,†occurring on IRC, listservs, etc. It is important that development no longer take place in silos. With open source software problems can be quickly resolved. There is no need to…
Ultimate Debate 2008
Thanks to the Internet Resources and Services Interest Group (IRSIG), there was another Ultimate Debate panel at ALA Annual 2008. The title this year was “There’s No Catalog like No Catalog”, and we are remarkably lucky that we were able to get a full recording of the debate for podcast here on LITABlog. Enjoy!
The Open Library: Realizing the Promise and Mitigating the Peril
Cindy Gibbon, Access Services Coordinator of Multnomah County Library (MCL), Oregon, opened the discussion about privacy and intellectual freedom in a web 2.0 world by sharing the results of a study of MCL’s users. Some things MCL users said they want: Notification when requested items are added to the catalog Public comments and recommendations of books read Blogs, podcasts, reference via instant messaging Text message alerts Saved lists of titles checked out or of interest RSS feeds Ability to communicate online with other library patrons She then shared some compelling data from the December 2007 Pew Internet & American Life Project Survey about the ubiquity of mobile communications technologies. The bottom line: MCL patrons want a 2.0 library experience. Some library patrons indicated that it is important to them that their library records remain private, and some did not. Cindy pointed out that it is librarians’ responsibility to protect patrons’…
You Know FRBR, But Have You Ever Met FRAD
Time and Location: Sunday, 1:30 pm – 5:30 pm, Anaheim Convention Center, 210 A-C One would expect for something that old (in Google time) such as Ferber (FRBR), which has been around since 1998, to have spawned some kin. Meet Fred, er, FRAD (Functional Requirements for Authority Data). And they didn’t tell you that in this program, you also will meet Farsar (FRSAR – Functional Requirements for Subject Authority Records). Actually, the first hour and a half of this program dealt with updates on activities at the Library of Congress (by Dave Reser) and at OCLC (by Robert Bremer). The next hour and a half was devoted to the main program topic and the last hour was for a meeting of the LITA/ALCTS Authority Control Interest Group. The cataloging and metadata crowd must have been conferenced out by this time because attendance was low compared to the sessions Getting Ready…
Open Source Open Services – Emerging Technology Interest Group
Joe Ford convened the Emerging Technology Interest group managed discussion on “Open Source, Open Services” Darrell Gunter began by discussing Collexis research projects and applications for libraries. Fascinating work is being undertaken on computationally derived ontology, what Collexis refers to as Fingerprinting. [Bibliographic ontology (like FRBR or FRAD not getting any play in the semantic portion of the presentation). ] Screenshots of tools (presentation slides to be posted to the LITA wiki) included the Knowledge Dashboard, which is being used for Hypothesis Generation by scientists. Biomedexperts.com discussed as a Collexis partner with tools for researchers including expert visualization, social network graphs of who is publishing with whom. Asklepios Group discussed as a user of collexis tools which utilizes mobile technology for patient-side consultation and comparison of relevant treatments. I would characterize Collexis methodology as relying on computationally derived indexing for data visualization (btw-the intellectual foundations of LIS exist (partly) in…
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…