ALA - Day One

Technically, this is my third day in California, but yesterday and Wednesday, I got a wonderful tour of the area from a friend of mine who lives here. We ended up in a few places she’s never been :) We spent Wednesday in the Long Beach, I got to see the Aquarium of the Pacific and touch sharks. Later, we went to the Queen Mary and took the Haunted Encounters tour. I didn’t see or feel anything, but my friend did get a weird picture that we discovered later that night at dinner (had on the water of Alamitos Bay, nice!). Yesterday, we visited the Getty Villa in Malibu. As an anthropology major in undergrad, it was fun and interesting to see all of the classical art on display. Checking my camera, I’ve taken 334 photos in the last two days and one video.

Last night was a great time, as after I got back from Malibu and said good-bye to my friend, I went out to dinner with some librarian friends who are part of my reader’s advisory circle of acquaintances. We discussed what’s been happening in our lives since we last saw each other, what we plan on doing during the conference, and other issues related to our careers. Situations like this is what makes going to conferences so valuable for me. There some things that just cannot be replicated over the Internet, though it’s a wonderful supplement to the building of those relationships

On today’s docket is registration, touching base with a few friends, and hooking up with my parents when they get in to town. I may go to a reception or two later tonight depending on how I’m feeling as I’m still dealing with jet lag. Waking up on my own at 6 a.m. is definitely not something I normally do

ALA T -2 days

I received an e-mail earlier this morning from the lovely Kate Hahn reminding me of the need to keep a log of my ALA experiences as part of the requirements of the 3M/NMRT Leadership Award, of which I am a recipient this year. I’ll be posting my logs first to my new-ish professional life blog and copy them to here as a transition piece as I will be updating Digging Out more frequently than I plan on doing here.

So, ALA. This is my third ALA Annual and fifth ALA conference: Annual 2005 in Chicago, Midwinter 2007 in Seattle, Annual 2007 in Washington, D.C., and Midwinter 2008 in Philadelphia. I also attended the Public Library Association National Conference in Minneapolis this past March. This is my first time in the state of California and I’m using it as a great excuse for me to finally visit a friend after telling her for almost 10 years “I’ll try to come out next year”. Planning for the conference has been very elastic, time-wise. Once I received word I had been named a recipient of this year’s award, I made my general travel plans, but let my specific conference planning slide a bit. I’ve been playing around with my schedule for probably the past month and got serious about it roughly two weeks ago. I did get a bit distracted as a number of libraries in the area my office serves are located in communities greatly affected by the flooding in eastern Iowa, though there was no damage to our libraries. (Side note: if you’re interested in helping the affected libraries, please visit the 2008 Flood Resource Center or the State Library of Iowa’s update from June 23rd.)

The joy for me about conferences is I get to see friends I pretty much only see at conferences. However, that is also a bane for me. I have a wide range of friends and it’s hard to visit with everyone for as long as I want to and still be able to go to programs, visit the exhibits and do other conference related things. At this point, I’m about done with scheduling specific meetings with friends because I’m pretty booked and I’m tapped out with planning.

Right now, I’m simultaneously ready to leave for my vacation/conference time tonight and I’m in no way prepared. I was up until 1 am last night packing and sorting through everything I wanted to bring home with me for vacation and the subset of what I wanted to take with me to California. With all of the luggage restrictions, I’m only checking my one large suitcase and will have two carry-ons. The large suitcase felt a bit heavy, so I think I’ll rearrange and cull through what I’ve packed when I’m at my parents’ tomorrow. What’s the rule of thumb for packing for vacation? “Pack what you want to have with you and then take out half of it.”? I realize I’m going to have little space for books and other promo items, but I learned the joy of shipping stuff at this past Midwinter and I’m really hoping there will be a USPS area for us in the Exhibit Hall. At the Public Library Association Conference in Minneapolis this past March, there was only the FedEx/Kinko’s in the convention center and there was just not enough space and staff for the amount of people who wanted to ship. Plus FedEx is typically more expensive than the USPS and I’m all about the saving of money

Overall, I’m really excited for this conference. I’ll have a chance to cement relationships that I’ve been building since last year’s Annual and online over the last year. I feel like this conference is both a culmination of projects and goals I’ve been working in my first five years of professional librarianship and a kick in the pants to the next level of leadership.

Minneapolis-bound

I'm still at my office until later this afternoon when I leave for Iowa City, the first stop on my way to Minneapolis for the Public Library Association's 2008 National Conference. As usual, I packed more than I wanted to and still feel like I didn't pack enough. For this conference, I have the added joy of driving up four other librarians who we couldn't place on the 55-passenger travel bus my office helped to organize. I pick my first load up tomorrow at 6 a.m., my last person up about an hour later, and then we'll be on our way. This will be my first time in Minneapolis, so I've armed myself well with maps to help me get around. I only hope there won't be much traffic around lunch time tomorrow.

This conference is going to be a busy one for me as I'm trying to cram in as many programs as I can, as well as touching base with some vendors regarding products my office uses and book publicists I began relationships with back at Midwinter. For those of you who are going and haven't left yet, I leave you with the list of conference tips I sent to the people going on the bus trip:

Other general conference reminders:

1. Wear *comfortable* shoes. You will do a lot of walking at the conference.

2. Have a second choice program planned for each session as you may find your first choice is unexpectedly cancelled, is not what you thought it was to be, or is so popular the room is packed beyond comfort.

3. Plan which vendors you absolutely want to visit in the exhibit hall before you go. I find it easier to have a list with me, as well as questions or issues I want to discuss with the individual vendors.

4. Bring a reusable water bottle with you. Hydration is key to keeping your energy level up.

5. Visit the PLA conference website at http://www.placonference.org to print out session handouts you want ahead of time, as well as a map of the exhibit floor.

6. Schedule some down time for yourself. Conferences can be quite overwhelming, and you will need time to process all of the information you’ll be gathering.

7. Bring your business cards as people will want to exchange them with you. When you receive a business card from someone, note on the back where you met them (ex. “PLA 2008”) and a note about what you talked about so it will be easier to remember them when you’re cleaning out your purse or pockets after the conference.

For more tips to a successful conference, check out this article from the New Members Round Table newsletter, Footnotes:

Trudell, Tapley. “Tips for a Healthy Conference”. May 2007. Page 2.

PLA registration

A little birdie whacked me upside the head with the news that PLA 2008 Conference registration and housing are now open, and some hotels are even all booked up! Run over there now if you're going and need a room: PLA Conference Housing. Book the room now, even if you can't pay for registration for another little bit.

More Twitter thoughts

With my envy for those going to CiL this weekend at the fore of my thoughts, and seeing Michelle's post in my Bloglines this morning, I realized Twitter would be good for those of us who aren't married to their cell phones for text messaging purposes, but adore our PDAs when trying to notify friends of our locations at conferences. ACRL was my first time really putting my cell phone through its texting capability paces. I didn't have my PDA with me, as it was enjoying an unexpected vacation at my parents' house, but as there was free wireless available, I would have easily been able to update my Twitter account with my location without messing around with texting and the accompanying charges. I'm trying to remember now if Marc Smith talked about Twitter in particular when he mentioned MoSoSo in his January presentation. The Twitter Fan Wiki has been of some help, and I'd recommend it for anyone wanting to look further into Twitter's uses. I'm still not sure how to best utilize Twitter in a library setting, but I can see some of the personal uses. Once again, with social networking software, an application is not going to be used if the user cannot see how it applies to their life.

ACRL Photos on Flickr

People have been furiously adding their conference photos to Flickr in anticipation of the contest deadline of April 8th. There are some wonderful photos in there, and yes, some of them are mine.

Flickr: Photos from acrl2007

ACRL - Day Four, Part Two

Morning Session, Part Two:
Analog v. Google in the CMS: RSS Feeds to the Rescue presented by Heather L. Moulaison and Edward M. Corrado from The College of New Jersey (TCNJ)

I thought the presenter looked familiar; I went to grad school with Heather.

CMS = Course Management System as opposed to Content Management System (ie. Blackboard, WebCT, Moodle, etc.)

1 Course shell = 1 class section

TCNJ uses a homegrown CMS.

Mix of systems may be used.

I'm familiar with a lot of CMS functionality as I worked for the UIUC GSLIS Instructional Technology Office, which supported the LEEP program, for one year in grad school. The CMS used at that time was of the homegrown variety, but they now use Moodle.

TCNJ's version is SOCS (Simple Online Courseware System)

TCNJ focuses on print resources. Nearly all students live on campus close to the library.

A little multi-media with some foreboding music with the "Google lurks..." slide.

"RSS - Result Set Syndication" from Walter Lewis.

Previous versions of RSS are not that compatible with older versions (<- did not know this)

Anatomy of a RSS feed - explanation of how they use it

Three stage process in integration of RSS with CMS.

More info: http://www.tcnj.edu/~library/rss/

Need to sell faculty and IT staff on why the library needs to be involved in the development/management of CMS.

Main use of RSS at this time is highlighting new books that may be of use for a course.

RSS feed for databases has been requested by faculty.

New DVD feed in top 5 most used resources on Library portion of the website in the last two months.

Course guides by librarians have been integrating the homegrown RSS feeds as well as featuring RSS feeds from other sources like specific websites and blogs and del.icio.us.

Students interested in one-stop shopping and want the course guides in SOCS rather than just on the library's website.
- The library resources need to be involved in the CMS, not just the librarian.

Up next (providing wireless access, Nina Totenberg.

ACRL - Day Four, Part One

You get to see how I take notes!

Session of the morning:

PennTags: Building a Social Tagging System in an Academic Library presented by Laurie Allen

UPenn is University of Pennsylvania in Philly

(Michael Winkler is the tech end of the presentation, but not present.)

PennTags = del.icio.us for the Penn community
- If they've got it on the web, it's taggable or will be soon. Ie. OPACs, etc.

Users collect resources
- add tags like del.icio.us
- unlike del.icio.us, long annotations are possible (specifically in response to one assignment on campus)
- annotations displayed in OPAC records and on PennTags website, RSS feeds, etc.

Copyright used 4 times more often than fair use.

Most recent posts go to the top of the page below tag cloud on main page.

If in OPAC, in tagged list, title linked to record.

PennTags projects, example given "Reclaiming p2p" found by just clicking through various tags.

Demo of how users actually use PennTags.

Call number included in citation record.

Recent tags available for quick addition.

SFX/RFX links available in a database means you can use PennTags to tag content.

Bookmarklet (like Blogger's) available for general webpages (doesn't really work in Safari).

PT too small to use as a way to find resources, at this point more as a personal collection tool.

PT *NOT* a replacement for the catalog.
- Not a part of the MARC record.
-- PT display a separate part of the record's page load.
- When searching in Franklin, you are searching that database and may stumble upon a book that's tagged, when using PT, all books in Franklin that are tagged.

PT
- Sub for del.icio.us for academic purposes
- Annotated bibliographies (previously mentioned)
- Base for research guides by libns
- "Shadow" catalog - specialized collections by enthusiasts - dkelly's for music scholarship

PT designed *FOR* the Penn community.

"Books are for use"
What used to be private types of use is moving into the public sphere (categorizing, remembering, etc.)
-- Libraries need to be more involved because of this.

PT has not ever been marketed, only really shown to the one instructor's classes.
- More librarians in general libraryland know about PT than Penn community members.

Working on a new version and when that's available a large marketing campaign will be launched.
-- New version will be more robust in functionality.

Tags have the potential for usage indicator in weeding considerations.
- Most books that have been tagged have been checked out at this point.

Lexis-Nexis will supposedly be having durable URLs in the near future.

PT default is public, but you can designate posts to be private.
- In upcoming version, you can "friend" people to view private posts.

New version will have copyright assignment functionality (Creative Commons/all rights reserved).

When Franklin was redesigned, Subject Headings were moved from the "Detailed View" to the "Basic View" mainly because tags were being displayed in the Basic View.

ACRL - Day Three, Part One

I'm sitting in the room for my first session of Day Four, so I'm not really going to post anything significant right now. Providing my battery and the wireless connection holds out, I will do live blogging of sessions today as I've obviously brought my computer. However, highlights:

• "Keeping Libraries in the Flow" workshop - Interesting. I was the recorder for my table, so I ended up being a little out of the flow of discussion, but as this really seemed to draw more on the academic library day-to-day experience, I was a little out of the flow, anyway. Some very good ideas came out of the session, though.


• "Cyber Zed Shed: Second Life" - This could have easily been a full panel session with demonstration, and probably would have worked better. The presenter did an awesome job for being limited to 15 minutes, but we left with more questions. There was apparently a poster session, too, which I missed.

Oops, session's starting.

ACRL, Day Two, Part Two

First, Jenny, seriously, media card readers at Annual!

Second, I did get a picture with John Waters at the booksigning. He was even kind enough to let me photograph his *tres* cool gold lame sneakers.

After the booksigning, I wandered by the poster session. During the break in my morning session, I stopped by and was caught up in the mass of humanity flowing through and didn't really get a chance to ingest any of the information presented. I did see a friend from grad school though. The afternoon session, at least when I was there, was quite pleasant. I think the morning session scared off a number of people. I got to listen to two presenters, one of whom was in my morning session. I think I need a bit more time to digest what I learned, but I really liked Simmons' MassBLAST intern program.

I then stopped by the ALA booth and talked with Cathleen Bourdon, the former author of the Librarian's Toolkit (?) column in American Libraries and who was on my flight out here and will be on the one back, and Mary Taylor, the Executive Director of LITA. Both are very nice ladies.

Next on my schedule was the session where David Silver was the speaker. Looking up title...oh yes, "Invited Paper: Digital Media, Learning and Libraries: Web 2.0, Learning 2.0 and Libraries 2.0". While there were some technical difficulties with the microphones in the beginning, Silver quickly fell into an engaging rhythm. He talked about his concept of AEIOU: Already Existing Information Optimally Uploaded. I'm still a little unclear on some of the theoretical details, but I think (and those who were there, please correct me if I'm wrong) it's a way to repackage/bundle content in a more accessible way. One of the examples he gave was library displays, in particular a display on graphic novels in his school's library. The library already had a collection of graphic novels, but they used this opportunity to publicize it, make people aware of graphic novels and what subjects they cover, and they invited -- through a suggestion box sitting on the main display case!! -- patron input on what titles they should consider buying.

He went on to talk about how "Web 2.0" is really collective intelligence, which is what a lot of people consider libraries to be. I would go a step further and say that it's collaborative intelligence. The other way he put it was the web is no longer a lecture, but a conversation. As librarians, we also need to think beyond the high technology of "2.0" and think of low technology: the suggestion box among other things. I thought this was very interesting because you're taking a concept that's been proven to work, but looking at it in a fresh way.

The room was packed (I have pictures to prove it, though I'm sure others have posted theirs already), and I know that he inspired a lot of the audience members.

To wind down, I enjoyed a walk along the Skywalk to the Inner Harbor. I'm glad I did it because I needed a little touristy time and the weather was nice! Tomorrow is another full day of sessions followed by two meets and greets.

ACRL, Day Two, Part One

I spent the morning in a session on CoLAB(R). It turned out to be a training the trainer workshop for a process on developing collaborative relationships. The presenters were very dynamic and I came out of it with ideas on how I can bring this back to work. I could also see the percolating ideas among the other attendees. Even better, I was able to get a number of academic librarians interested in 5in5!

Today was the luncheon with John Waters as the guest speaker. No photography was allowed, but I hope to get a picture with him at the booksigning later. He is a *highly* irreverant speaker. I was greatly entertained, but not every one may be. A few of the things that I feel I can repeat:

- Librarians need to make books cool again.

- "It is impossible to commit a crime while reading a book."

- He thinks the Hairspray remake is really good, and he would be the harshest critic.

That's it for now!

ACRL - Opening Session

Today we had the joys of mass registration, the keynote session, and the exhibits opening.

Registration - If you you come to a conference the day of and try to register right before the fun begins, be prepared to wait. The ALA staff did a good job and kept the line moving at as brisk of a pace as they could manage. I will say the conference bags are pretty nice as they're messenger bags. I probably won't be carrying mine around however, as I brought my "conference bag" with me.

On my way to the opening session, I ran into Courtney L. Young who is the ALA Councilor for NMRT. Courtney is a lot of fun and we ended up hanging out for the rest of the night.

Opening Session - This afternoon's speaker was Michael Eric Dyson. He is a *vibrant* speaker. He is thought-provoking, engaging, comedic, dynamic and completely quoteworthy. Once Courtney realized I was taking notes, she kept making sure I wrote down certain tidbits. Here are but a few:

"Yes, I'm preaching to the choir, but the choir got to sing better."

"[Librarians must be] True patriots of the country and nation of Literacy."

"...patriarchal and phallocentric metaphor..." (I completely missed what this is in reference to)

***"Meet the people where they be and take them where they need to be." (emphasis mine)

Potential response when asked what we do: "arbitrator of enlightenment for the future of civilization."

Other highlights:

-If you're interested in the movement towards anti-intellectualism, read Richard Hofstadter's book "Anti-Intellectualism in America" from 1966.

-We need to help create learning addicts.

-To create those learning addicts, we need to be Trojan Horses by slipping those learning moments into the students', and patrons', everyday lives.

If you ever get the chance to hear Dyson speak, do.

Exhibit opening:
The more conferences I go to, the less time I want to spend in the exhibit hall without a plan in mind. I like talking with the vendors and learning about their products, but with the position I'm in now, there's not much call for what the vendors are trying to sell me. I did win a $10 Starbucks gift card from H.W. Wilson, though. This was after I told Courtney that I wasn't interested in hunting down all the giveaways, especially as I had won a gift bag from Borders last week (I was the first name drawn after I walked in the door). The salesman was good, and we sat down for a short session with four or five others. When they did the drawing, Courtney said, "watch, you'll win." I started to reply "Don't even joke about that" when he did call my name. In addition, the exhibit opening was fun as I ran into one of my committee's members and a chair of the same committee and we talked shop for a little bit. I'm feeling a little like a fish out of water as my background is in public libraries, but I do know a fair amount of academic librarians, and luckily, I have been running into them.

After I came home from dinner with Courtney, I discovered that while I had printed out my responses to a pre-survey for my morning session tomorrow, I had neglected to actually take them out of my printer and put them into my bag. Seeing as that and my toothbrush were the only things I forgot, I think I'm doing good.

Tomorrow, sessions, workshops, posters, and more sessions.

Welcome to Baltimore!

While I've flown in and out of BWI before, this is my first time staying in Baltimore. I was hoping to make it to the First-Timers orientation, but my flight out of Chicago was almost an hour behind schedule and the shuttle took longer than expected. We ended up at my hotel at the time the orientation was to start, and after standing in line to check-in, I decided I needed a break after almost 8 hours of traveling. While standing in the check-in line, I did get to speak with a presenter who is doing a panel session on how academic and public libraries and cooperate and work together. With my new position, this would be an ideal panel session for me to go to, but I'm signed up for one of the three-hour long workshops at the same time, so I'll be missing it. Unfortunate, but the nice thing about the schedule I've seen so far is there's good programs spread out and not all grouped together at one time. This afternoon/evening is the Opening Session speaker and the exhibits opening. I'll report back later tonight, especially as my hotel has free wireless!

Midwinter musings

Yeah, I know this is a month late, but here's my Midwinter wrap-up.

Friday: OCLC Symposium - "Who's Watching Your Space?"

I have seven (7) pages of notes from this program. It is one I'll still be trying to process six months from now. The streaming video is now available on the OCLC website if you're interested in watching. Honestly, if you're interested in social networking, particularly theory, it is well worth your time. Something Howard Rheingold said that stands out for me in my notes (especially after reading this Tribune article*) is digital natives need to learn citizenship, both within the digital world and outside of it.

The intermission videos showing people's answers to questions on how to describe social networking, privacy, security, communication, and life without social networking were very intriguing. If nothing else, watch the streaming video for those.

danah boyd's insights into social networking and the role it plays in people's, especially young people's lives, gave me some food for thought on how we serve kids, teens and young adults. How do we as a digital population create privacy in a world without walls? I live a great deal of my life online. I try to create a buffer/privacy zone in some of those areas, but I know that area would easily be eradicated by a persistent individual. In the scandals of teens and MySpace over the last few years, we can see the truth of the statement that the binary concepts of public and private have blurred. It is much easier now, than in the past, to make available information on the public web that would have only seen the light of day on pain of death.

Marc Smith from Microsoft rounded out the trio of presenters. His work with mobile social software (or MoSoSo as he called it) is a bit scary, but makes total sense. One of the first things he talked about was that footprints are aggregatable and and analyzable. Considering the statistic he later quoted, that if you own a mobile device, you will likely leave behind three terabytes (yes, 3,000,000,000,000 bytes) of information, why not try to collate and interpret that information?

I'll finish with a quote from either Marc or Michael: "The need for information guides is ever greater." Above that in my notes I wrote: libraries do not equal librarians. These are concepts we will *need* to keep in mind when communicating with the public and legislators on why we are vital to an information literate society.

For Saturday and Sunday, read the archives.

Monday: NMRT Executive Board meeting

We had two guests at the board meeting, the candidates for ALA President-elect. I would say both seem qualified, but I think Jim Rettig was a bit more prepared than Nancy Davenport to talk about his platform and how it related to members and potential members of NMRT. I highly recommend you check out their websites for more information, and if you have specific questions to contact them.

What did I ultimately get out of the conference? A lot. Even something I in no way expected or planned for: a committee appointment within RUSA CODES. That happened because I showed up at one of the committee meetings and contributed to the discussion. The chair remembered me and recommended me as someone to approach for further involvement. This is why I heartily recommend going to conferences if you can. The connections you make at conferences will put you in contact with opportunities.

*If you don't have a Chicago Tribune registration, check out Bugmenot's offerings.

Some mini-updates

1. I've moved into my new apartment and started my new job. However, I'm still on the lookout for the notebook with all of my notes from Midwinter in it. As I'm not quite done unpacking I have hope that it will show up.


2. I noticed today that younglibrarian.net was being forwarded to the old Geocities site. I apologize for this and it should be fixed within the next 24 hours. It looks like when the domain name expired earlier this year, it reset to the original settings when I renewed.


3. Thanks to Blogger forcing me over to the new version, I now have an additional e-mail address you can contact me at. The contact form on the site will send you to young_librarian at yahoo.com, but you can now also use younglibrarian at gmail.com. If you have New Members Round Table or other ALA related questions, please use nmrtkatie at gmail.com.

Look for some thoughts on Midwinter and professional involvement next week. How in-depth will depend on if I can find that notebook.