New at ALA TechSource: Planning a Mobile Website

// March 2nd, 2010 // No Comments » // Libraries, Web Stuff

Mobile, mobile, mobile.  It’s all we hear these days.  Mobile…it’s the new black.  Mobile…you just GOTTA.  At my library, mobile web browsers have only accounted for .3% of the total site traffic so far this semester.  Taking all the public PCs into account (the default webpage for which is of course the library web page) only takes this up to .5%.  So, should my staff and I still put effort into a mobile library site, just to serve this handful of people?

In a word, yes. Yes, there is a lot of hype right now, but nonetheless, this traffic will continue to grow. With some initial planning like that so thoughtfully presented by Beth Ruane, Missy Roser, and Courtney Greene of DePaul University, at the ALA Midwinter meeting in Boston, a mobile-optimized website is within every library’s reach.

Read more.

Shaded Squares Baby Afghan

// February 28th, 2010 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

Baby Afghan

Originally uploaded by cindiann

This is my first from-scratch pattern. If you repeat it, please let me know if you find errors.

Yarn Required:
MC: 5 skeins Baby Bee Sweet Delight Baby in “charming ombre”
A: 1 skein Baby Bee Sweet Delight Baby in “Pink-a-boo”
B: 1 skein Baby Bee Sweet Delight Baby in “Mint Charm”
C: 1 skein Baby Bee Sweet Delight Baby in “Angel”
D: 1 skein Baby Bee Sweet Delight Baby in “Sugar Plum”

Hook: Size I

Gauge: 12 sts / 13 rows = 4″; overall size = 38 1/2″ square

Pattern:

Squares (4)

Square 1: 1 strand of MC, one strand of A.

Foundation: Loosely ch 51. (Option 1: dc in 2nd ch from hook; dc in each ch to end of row – 50 sts) (Option 2 is to move directly to next row’s instructions – this makes for a more uniform square)

Row 1: sc and dc in 2nd ch from hook; *sk 1 chain; sc and dc in next ch; repeat from * to end of row. Ch 1, turn.

Row 2: sc and dc in first dc; sk next sc; sc and dc in next dc; Repeat from * across.

Repeat row 1 until work is square (approximately 13″ square or about 40 rows). Fasten off.

Square 1 border

Round 1: With D, start just past any corner. dc in each “trough” and sc in each “crest” along the side. 3 dc in each corner; join final stitch with sl st to first dc in round. Along the side comprising the foundation chain: (Option 1: sc in each ch across) (Option 2, for looser foundation chains: *2 dc in loose ch; sk 1 ch; repeat from * to end of row)

Round 2: ch 1; *sc in each dc or sc to end of row; 3 sc in each corner dc; repeat from *; join with sl st to ch.

Round 3: repeat Round 2. Fasten off.

Round 4: with A, ch 2; 1 dc in each sc around; 3 dc in each corner sc. Join with sl st to 2nd ch; Square 1 complete. Fasten off.

Square 2: 1 strand of MC, one strand of B.

Foundation: Loosely ch 51. (Option 1: dc in 2nd ch from hook; dc in each ch to end of row – 50 sts) (Option 2 is to move directly to next row’s instructions – this makes for a more uniform square)

Row 1: sc and dc in 2nd ch from hook; *sk 1 chain; sc and dc in next ch; repeat from * to end of row.

Repeat row 1 until work is square (approximately 13″ square or about 40 rows). Fasten off.

Square 2 border

Round 1: With C, start just past any corner. dc in each “trough” and sc in each “crest” along the side. 3 dc in each corner; join final stitch with sl st to first dc in round. Along the side comprising the foundation chain: (Option 1: sc in each ch across) (Option 2, for looser foundation chains: *2 dc in loose ch; sk 1 ch; repeat from * to end of row)

Round 2: ch 1; *sc in each dc or sc to end of row; 3 sc in each corner dc; repeat from *; join with sl st to ch.

Round 3: repeat Round 2. Fasten off.

Round 4: with B, ch 2; 1 dc in each sc around; 3 dc in each corner sc. Join with sl st to 2nd ch; Square 2 complete. Fasten off.

Square 3: 1 strand of MC, one strand of C.

Foundation: Loosely ch 51. (Option 1: dc in 2nd ch from hook; dc in each ch to end of row – 50 sts) (Option 2 is to move directly to next row’s instructions – this makes for a more uniform square)

Row 1: sc and dc in 2nd ch from hook; *sk 1 chain; sc and dc in next ch; repeat from * to end of row.

Repeat row 1 until work is square (approximately 13″ square or about 40 rows). Fasten off.

Square 3 border

Round 1: With B, start just past any corner. dc in each “trough” and sc in each “crest” along the side. 3 dc in each corner; join final stitch with sl st to first dc in round. Along the side comprising the foundation chain: (Option 1: sc in each ch across) (Option 2, for looser foundation chains: *2 dc in loose ch; sk 1 ch; repeat from * to end of row)

Round 2: ch 1; *sc in each dc or sc to end of row; 3 sc in each corner dc; repeat from *; join with sl st to ch.

Round 3: repeat Round 2. Fasten off.

Round 4: with C, ch 2; 1 dc in each sc around; 3 dc in each corner sc. Join with sl st to 2nd ch; square 3 complete. Fasten off.

Square 4: 1 strand of MC, one strand of D.

Foundation: Loosely ch 51. (Option 1: dc in 2nd ch from hook; dc in each ch to end of row – 50 sts) (Option 2 is to move directly to next row’s instructions – this makes for a more uniform square)

Row 1: sc and dc in 2nd ch from hook; *sk 1 chain; sc and dc in next ch; repeat from * to end of row.

Repeat row 1 until work is square (approximately 13″ square or about 40 rows). Fasten off.

Square 4 border

Round 1: With A, start just past any corner. dc in each “trough” and sc in each “crest” along the side. 3 dc in each corner; join final stitch with sl st to first dc in round. Along the side comprising the foundation chain: (Option 1: sc in each ch across) (Option 2, for looser foundation chains: *2 dc in loose ch; sk 1 ch; repeat from * to end of row)

Round 2: ch 1; *sc in each dc or sc to end of row; 3 sc in each corner dc; repeat from *; join with sl st to ch.

Round 3: repeat Round 2. Fasten off.

Round 4: with D, ch 2; 1 dc in each sc around; 3 dc in each corner sc. Join with sl st to 2nd ch; square 4 complete. Fasten off.

Finishing:

Sew squares 1 and 2 together; sew squares 3 and 4 together; sew the two rows together.

Border with 2 strands of MC:

Round 1: ch 2; *sc in each dc around, with 3 sc in each corner dc. repeat from *; join with sl st to 2nd ch.

Round 2: repeat round 1.

Round 3: ch 4 (counts as 1st dc and ch 1 space); *(sk 1 sc; dc in next sc; ch 1) across to corner. (dc in same sc, ch 1) twice in corner sc. Repeat from * around; join with sl st to 3rd chain of 1st ch 4.

Round 4: *Sk ch 1 space; 5 dc in next dc; sk ch 1 space; sl st in next dc; repeat from * around entire edge, including corners. Fasten off. Weave in all ends.

Weave a coordinating ribbon 1/4″ to 1/2″ wide through the dc, ch 1 sp; tie a bow in spot of your choosing,

Square centers inspired by Little House in the Suburbs; shaded pattern inspired by Technicolor blanket; finishing inspired by Alicia Paulson’s Tiramisu blanket.

What I do

// February 6th, 2010 // 3 Comments » // My Kids, Photography, Random, Social Stuff, librarians

A snapshot of projects today that comprise the whole me.

Crochet: an afghan for a pregnant friend (25% done); an afghan for Miss 6 (95% done); an afghan for Miss 4 (65% done); an afghan for me (designed, yarn purchased).

Photography/Art: taking Art History 497, The History of Modern Art. We just finished lectures on French and German Expressionism from the first decades of the Twentieth century and will start on the Cubists next.  Also taking ART 463 – Photography Independent Study, where I will produce a set of prints in the theme of “My Trees: the Tangency of Rural and Suburban”; write a paper of some kind on sequential photography; and uh, learn how to make digital prints.  Post to flickr occasionally; shoot occasionally for work.  Have literally thousands of 4×6 and other prints to put in albums. None have been printed since 2006 for this very reason!  (small victory: I put photos from the 1930s – 1970s in an album this week!)

Writing: currently drafting an issue of Library Technology Reports on OpenURL and linking, with Jason Price.  Write a monthly column (or 2 shorter ones, or a couple of photos) for ALA TechSource.  Write this blog. Write a personal blog.  Keep a personal data diary.  Tweet endlessly.  Post to Facebook occasionally.

Work: day-to-day management and coaching for four library staff (yikes, need to update that). Daily participation in library management and administration with fellow “Coordinators” (Administrators). Coordination of the UX Team and communication/coaching for its subgroups (OPAC, SFX, LibGuides, Usability, Web Design). Weekly liaison work: weeding, selecting, communication and reference with faculty and students; occasional instruction sessions; weekly LibGuides maintenance. Other Stuff As Assigned.

Entertainment: got caught up on 30 Rock, The Office, and Death Comes to Town (Kids in the Hall).  Still watching the fourth season of Dr. Who. (Oh, David Tennant!)

Family and home: daily work and conversations with daughters and husband.  This morning’s breakfast conversation with Miss 6 ranged from IEDs at Pakistani girls’ schools to vegetarianism in protest of mass-production of animal products (which we are going to try, together; we predict we will miss bacon) to tonight’s sleepover at Miss-Best-Friend 6’s house.  Put laundry in the dryer, dishes in the dishwasher, helped Miss 6 make her first scrambled eggs.  Ken listened with groggy fascination while drinking his coffee.  Miss 4 spent this time in her room cuddling with her blankey and listening to a book on CD.  I missed her.

I am happy.

(Another small victory: a year ago, I would never have used the phrase “the whole me” because I did not think I was, nor ever could be, whole.)

Tardily, A Day in the Life

// February 6th, 2010 // No Comments » // Libraries, librarians

A selection of my daily activities for A Day in the Life of a Library, #4:

Monday, January 26, 2010

8:00 a.m. – meeting prep, to-do list creation and review

10:00 a.m. – Weekly Coordinators meeting

11:30 a.m. – approved staff timecards

12:00 p.m. – paperwork from recent and upcoming conferences

1:00 p.m. – weekly Tech Division meeting

2:30 p.m. – meeting to talk about revamping the furniture in the Documents area, which actually started at 2, for which I hope I made up for a bit by showing up with a basket of chocolate.

Tuesday, January 27, 2010

9:00 a.m. – Leadership team meeting (the Coordination Team, or CT, which I find kind of funny)

11:00 a.m. – Art History 497, the History of Modern Art

1:00 p.m. – Meeting with fellow librarian Cindy Judd to talk about a presentation we’ll be doing on libraryh3lp.

Wednesday, January 28, 2010

7:30 a.m. – cell rings; network is down. Great.

8:10 a.m. – IT reboots router; we are back in business.

9:00 a.m. – spent 30 minutes with an English grad student who ended our session by telling me I’m worth my weight in gold.  FTW!!

12:00 p.m. – crocheting! [Requires Ravelry account, boo.]

1:30 p.m. – Liaison meeting in which the LibGuides group, a subgroup of our User Experience Team (UX), presented our recently-crafted “purpose statement” for our LibGuides.  I recently joined the LibGuides group, who has also put together an amazing set of resources for our liaisons in the “Best Practices” guide.  Wish we’d done that two years ago.

3:30 p.m. – Crashed the English & Theatre Department’s faculty meeting to listen to their updates on study abroad courses (WANT!) and to listen to the discussion of the proposal to put more English classes online, particularly those that meet General Education requirements.

Thursday, January 29, 2010

8:00 a.m. – wrote the first draft of this blog post

11:00 a.m. – Art History 497. There is no link because there is nothing online. Argh.

2:00 p.m. – demonstration of the TurningPoint “clickers” that are available for our use in presentations and instruction sessions.

Friday, January 30, 2010

8:00 a.m. – Fixed the DNS problem I caused the night before, on this blog. In a complete panic then adrenaline hangover the rest of the day.

10:00 a.m. – attended a presentation on Institutional Repositories and Scholarly Communication at EKU by my Dean. It included lunch!

4:00 p.m. – talked with Gretchen Caserotti of Darien Library about the awesome things they’re doing in the Children’s Library.

Read all my tweets tagged #libday4.

New at ALA TechSource: Darien Library, One Year Later

// February 3rd, 2010 // No Comments » // Libraries, librarians

Darien Library has long been known for its “extreme customer service” and for making every Darien experience the best that it can be. When the proposal to expand the old library building fell through, administrators Louise Berry and Alan Kirk Gray applied these same principles to dreaming Darien Library all up again. The resulting new building opened in January 2009 to much fanfare and many awards, including being featured on the cover of Library Journal’s Design Issue. I spoke recently with Darien’s John Blyberg and Gretchen Caserotti and asked them to reflect on the past year and on what lies ahead for this Connecticut public library.

Read more.

On the Great White Shark of Pain

// January 30th, 2010 // No Comments » // Random

There are many things to love about the novel Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace.  There are probably just as many things to hate or to be irritated by.  A friend once told me that this book is kind of like that uncle of yours that you really, really like but are loathe to take to parties because he always gets embarrassingly obnoxious before the night is through.  After that description, I kept waiting to get fed up, but I didn’t.  I was momentarily puzzled by the ending and frustrated by the many unanswered questions and loose ends, but I ultimately enjoyed reading this enormous tome bit by bit, sip by sip, one exquisite and excruciating sentence after another.

I realize I’m not exactly selling this book to you, Dear Reader. The purpose of this post is not to try to do that.  The purpose of this post is to try to begin to tell The Rest of the Story, to which I referred in the previous piece.  Alas, there is no more to report of the interaction I had with Big Publishing, but there is much, much more to relate about the other, more unpleasant topic from yesterday.

I will have to step into that topic bit by bit.  I’m not sure at all that I’m ready to share some or even any of what has come before this moment.  For now, I’m content to set the stage and leave you with a passage from the aforementioned ginormous book.  The paragraphs below resonated through my soul and my past, leaving me simultaneously cold with dread and limp with relief.  Watching unspeakable torment unfold in simple printed words has rendered it a human experience, one more thing that I share with other people, which somehow makes it less scary and easier to live with.  Easier to let go.

From Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace:

Hal isn’t old enough yet to know that this is because numb emptiness isn’t the worst kind of depression. That dead-eyed anhedonia is but a remora on the ventral flank of the true predator, the Great White Shark of pain. Authorities term this condition clinical depression or involutional depression or unipolar dysphoria. Instead of just an incapacity for feeling, a deadening of soul, the predator-grade depression Kate Gompert always feels as she Withdraws from secret marijuana is itself a feeling. It goes by many names — anguish, despair, torment, or q.v. Burton’s melancholia or Yevtuschenko’s(1) more authoritative psychotic depression — but Kate Gompert, down in the trenches with the thing itself, knows it simply as It.

It is a level of psychic pain wholly incompatible with human life as we know it. It is a sense of radical and thoroughgoing evil not just as a feature but as the essence of conscious existence. It is a sense of poisoning that pervades the self at the self’s most elementary levels. It is a nausea of the cells and soul. It is an unnumb intuition in which the world is fully rich and animate and un-map-like(2) and also thoroughly painful and malignant and antagonistic to the self, which depressed self It billows on and coagulates around and wraps in Its black folds and absorbs into Itself, so that an almost mystical unity is achieved with a world every constituent of which means painful harm to the self. Its emotional character, the feeling Gompert describes It as, is probably mostly indescribable except as a sort of double bind in which any/all of the alternatives we associate with human agency — sitting or standing, doing or resting, speaking or keeping silent, living or dying — are not just unpleasant but literally horrible.

It is also lonely on a level that cannot be conveyed. There is no way Kate Gompert could ever even begin to make someone else understand what clinical depression feels like, not even another person who is herself clinically depressed, because a person in such a state is incapable of empathy with any other living thing. This anhedonic Inability To Identify(3) is also an integral part of It. If a person in physical pain has a hard time attending to anything except that pain, a clinically depressed person cannot even perceive any other person or thing as independent of the universal pain that is digesting her cell by cell. Everything is part of the problem, and there is no solution. It is a hell for one.

The authoritative term psychotic depression makes Kate Gompert feel especially lonely. Specifically the psychotic part. Think of it this way. Two people are screaming in pain. One of them is being tortured with electric current. The other is not. The screamer who’s being tortured with electric current is not psychotic: her screams are circumstantially appropriate. The screaming person who’s not being tortured, however, is psychotic, since the outside parties making the diagnoses can see no electrodes or measurable amperage. One of the least pleasant things about being psychotically depressed on a ward full of psychotically depressed patients is coming to see that none of them is really psychotic, that their screams are entirely appropriate to certain circumstances part of whose special charm is that they are undetectable by any outside party. Thus the loneliness: it’s a closed circuit: the current is both applied and received from within.

The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.

But and so the idea of a person in the grip of It being bound by a ‘Suicide Contract’ some well-meaning Substance-abuse halfway house makes her sign is simply absurd. Because such a contract will constrain such a person only until the exact psychic circumstances that made the contract necessary in the first place assert themselves, invisibly and indescribably. That the well-meaning halfway-house Staff does not understand Its overriding terror will only make the depressed resident feel more alone.

1 – a reference to a text that does not exist; possibly a reference to the Russian poet Yevgeni Yetushenko.

2 – throughout the novel, Wallace uses the word “map” to mean “life.” To be “demapped” is to be killed.  Not sure if this is a reference to that convention.

3 – one of many references to the language and lingo of Alcoholics Anonymous, at least as it’s represented in the novel.

You may have heard that David Foster Wallace killed himself in 2008.  Anyone who’d experienced clinical depression and who had read Infinite Jest was likely not surprised.  The splintered-glass details of the book could only have come from the experiences of depression, addiction, withdrawal, even psychosis.  You can’t make this shit up is the way I thought of it.

I hope that someone, somewhere takes comfort in the fact that, even though we lost Mr. Wallace (Mr. Foster Wallace?), his pain has helped someone else.

Read more:

• DFW interview from Salon.com
• “The Unfinished: DFW’s Struggle to Surpass Infinite Jest” (New Yorker)
• DFW’s Kenyon College Address: Great and Terrible Truths (NYT)
• Lost Years and Last Days of DFW (Rolling Stone)
• The Howling Fantods! a news and fan site
• Infinite Jest wiki, including an impressive compendium

The sum of me is …

// January 28th, 2010 // 9 Comments » // Libraries, Photography, Random, Web Stuff, librarians

If you know me at all personally, you know that I have a dark side, and that dark side is prone to depression, despair and self-loathing.  My problems have been so black—yet so fucking mundane—that there have been many times in my life that my only thought was escaping the pain.  This tendency runs in my family, which makes me at once electrically fearful and fiercely vigilant for the psyches of my daughters.  My purpose here is not to address the stigma of mental illness.  I inherited bad brain chemistry; would you shame me for medicating my poor cholesterol?  No. Moving on.

My outward confidence is a carefully-rendered house of cards, whole wings of which flutter to the ground after the merest of stumbles.  I am stupid.  I am ugly.  I am fat. The sum of me is less than zero.  Nothing I do or say is of any importance.  We are all our own worst critics, but my hypercritical nature knows no bounds.

Until today.

Something happened this week that two years ago would have sent me into a weeks-long depression.  It’s interesting to note that, this time, my inner voice has not withdrawn into a spiteful litany of self-loathing but has instead said, “Hey! Wait a minute. I don’t like being treated that way.”  A first, after nearly forty years of spinning highs and crushing lows.

Earlier this week, one of my photos appeared in an online newsletter, with no accompanying credit.  Fine, that happens—nearly every single time, I contact the author or other appropriate person, and they address it.  I emailed the publisher, in this case, who responded almost immediately that they take their responsibility of crediting art and photography very seriously.  A link back to my photos was added right away.  Cool.

BUT, the photo in question—which clearly had been downloaded from flickr and posted as-is—was not only licensed Creative Commons – Attribution, it was also licensed Non-Commercial.  Interpretations of all attributes of Creative Commons vary, of course, but the web page in question was not a mere blog post, it was an article published in a regular newsletter, by a very well-known industry publisher.  Pretty clearly NOT “non-commercial.”

The publisher’s response to my inquiry was to add credit to the article, saying that they had been sent a jpg file of unknown provenance (ok, that happens sometimes, too), and—rather pointedly, I thought—leaving the question of the NC attribute completely unaddressed.  “Ha! You are a meek librarian!” they roared. “We can have you for a song! You are worth nothing!”

Right. The old me would have quailed at this.  Instead, I pushed on.

Meanwhile, I contacted the subject of the photo to let her know this was going on.  She sent me the email that she had sent to the article’s author, which did not have a jpg attached to it, but had a link to the flickr page and listed my name as photographer.

Uh… what’s going on here?  Wires crossed?  Someone not owning up?

So, I pointed out the NC attribute and asked how they could address that, figuring the response would be something like “Oh, you’re right.  Sorry, we can’t pay you, but we’d very much like your permission to keep the photo with the story.”  Which I would have granted.

Instead, the response was: “I’ve taken the photo down.”  The publisher reiterated that this was an innocent mistake; they had no idea about the rights status of the photo.

Yes, I am a meek librarian.  They sure showed ME.

Screw that.

I let the publisher know that I was aware that they had been sent a link *and* my name, and that I was disappointed that this happened.  The response: We have acted in good faith.  We have taken the photo down.  What more can we do?

That’s a good question—what do I want here?  I don’t want money.  I don’t want the photo reinstated, though I would be fine with that.  What do I want?  I think I want to get to the bottom of the story, the culprit of which I suspect to be carelessness rather than malice.  I can imagine the reporter honestly not remembering the contents of the email sent by the photo’s subject, after having clicked the link, downloaded a satisfactory image and sent it on without another thought.  I can imagine—and I understand and support—the publisher inquiring and believing the reporter assurances.  We are all busy; there was a deadline to meet.  I cannot imagine that there is any deliberate lying here, or covering up.

Stay tuned for the rest of the story as I await a conclusion and reflect on what this means for redefining the sum of me.

Reflecting on Committees

// January 25th, 2010 // 4 Comments » // Libraries, librarians

3D Bar Graph Meeting

Originally uploaded by lumaxart

I’ve had the privilege (no, really) over the past couple of years to serve my profession and professional association as a committee chair, committee member, and task force member. ALA Committees could use a lot more sunshine than just this blog post, and I encourage other committee members across the organization to write and share your experiences.

LITA’s Top Technology Trends is often said to be the organization’s flagship brand. As an attendee, I had no idea how it worked. Turns out it works in a way similar to other committees and interest groups who put together programming for ALA conferences. For this purpose, it functions very smoothly: there is a group of folks who decide together via various online meetings and email threads who to ask to speak and how to share the session. Top Tech has been known for pushing the envelope, trying different technologies to bring in remote speakers and audience commentary and to push out audio and video. When we have failed, we have been criticized, but we have learned from our mistakes and tried something different the next time. I look forward to being off this committee so that I can actually listen to what is being said!

Technology lessons learned:

1. Live blogging via CoverItLive is pretty effective for sharing content and for soliciting comments and questions from those in the room and those reading or watching online. It feels redundant at the time if there are media streams, but it’s easier to refer back to and serves as a backup archive in the case where media is not saved—like this year.
2. Ustream.tv is invaluable, but we have to remember to record what we’re streaming.
3. The most effective use of the projector and screen is a rotating slideshow listing speakers’ and committee members’ names as well as the URL for the live blog, media streams and the hashtag. This helps people who drop in after the session has started.
4. Twitter is a great tool for learning what’s not going well and for addressing it on the spot. The audio stream was great, but remote listeners were asking for video. I asked over twitter if someone in the room could stream video; two people volunteered and voila, our remote listeners could also watch (Thank you Maurice York and John Blyberg!). Several listeners kept asking who was speaking; I wrote a note to the moderator to ask the speakers to say his or her name when speaking. People observed that this year’s panel comprised all academic librarians. This was not our original intent at all, but this result has made us glad that there will be a TTT panel at this year’s PLA conference.
5. Twitter, as mainstream as it’s become, is still not for everyone, and, as such, projecting tweets or a chat session still gets mixed reviews.

General lessons learned:

6. Good leadership is key; delegation is keyer. Just like at work, one person can’t do it all, and everyone has a contribution to make. It’s up to the chair to figure out what that is and to harness it for the good of the committee’s work and for that person as an individual.
7. It’s ok to fail, but you’ll get criticized for it. Just keep swimming. Reminds me of an email signature I saw this week, quoting Dr. Seuss: “Those who matter don’t mind, and those who mind don’t matter.” [Even better: acknowledge and learn from your mistakes!]
8. In-person business meetings at conferences could be much improved and might be completely unneeded in many cases. Particularly for LITA, all meetings should offer remote participation opportunities. Skype in members who can’t attend; create a live blog and hash tag to push out content and pull in comments; set up a free ustream account to stream out audio or video and provide a chat room.
9. ALA Connect is a great communication tool, but it requires setup of communities and friends. The latter could be made easier by adding a tool that checks one’s email contacts for matches.
10. Show up; speak up; get put to work!

Have you served on association committees? What has your experience been?

image cc:by-sa lumaxart

Books read, 2009

// January 3rd, 2010 // No Comments » // Random

At the end of 2008, I posted a list of books that I was currently reading, as well as this list of books that I wanted to read in 2009:

• Mistborn, Brandon Sanderson (science fiction) (finished January 2009)
• Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen (fiction) (via DailyLit.com; abandoned after 4 chapters)
• Little Brother, Cory Doctorow (fiction) (iPod copy abandoned after chapter 2; RSS copy via DailyLit.com still unread)  Kindle edition finally read May 2009
• Exposure Photo Workshop, Jeff Wignall (finished January 2009)
• Cambridge Guide to Emily Dickinson, Wendy Martin (non-fiction) (never actually opened this one, but I had it checked out for a long time!)

Books I intended to read in 2009 (and how that worked out):

• Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky (non-fiction) (May/June 2009)
• Tribes, Seth Godin (non-fiction) (downloaded audio January 2009–still haven’t listened!)
• The Well of Ascension, Brandon Sanderson (fantasy) read February 2009
• Hero of the Age, Brandon Sanderson (fantasy) read March/April 2009
• Wise Man’s Fear, Pat Rothfuss (fantasy) – not yet published, more than a year behind schedule…
• Until I Found You, A Novel, John Irving (fiction)
• The Big U, Neal Stephenson (fiction) (February-March 2009)
• The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson (fiction) – I read a couple of chapters
• Anathem, Neal Stephenson (fantasy) – I have read one chapter
• A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway (fiction) I read a few pages.
• The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (fiction)
• Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace (fiction) – bought the Kindle edition on the library’s device June 2009, bought the paperback in August 2009 and finally finished it 12/29/09!
• Clay’s Quilt, Silas House (fiction)
• Deer Hunting with Jesus, Joe Bageant (fiction)
• Everything is Miscellaneous, David Weinberger (May/June 2009)

Other books I actually read, 2009:

• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (audio) (January 2009)
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (audio) (February-March 2009)
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (audio) (March-April 2009)
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (audio) (May 2009)
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (audio) (May – June 2009)
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (audio) (July – August 2009)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (audio) (August – September 2009)
• Slide-ology, Nancy Duarte (March 2009)
• Presentation Zen, Garr Reynolds (March 2009)
• Pro Drupal Development (read first several chapters February 2009; over my head)
• Using Drupal, Angela Byron, et al (er…)
• The Warded Man, Peter V. Brett (fantasy) (April 2009)
• Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present by Cory Doctorow (May/June 2009)
• Social Software in Libraries, by Meredith Farkas (April 2009)
• Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, by Cory Doctorow (May 2009)
• Tales of Beadle the Bard, by J.K. Rowling (May 2009)

Books read with Miss6, 2009

• Ramona Quimby, Age 8, by Beverly Cleary (february)
• Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, by Judy Blume (March & April)
• Beezus and Ramona, by Beverly Cleary (March)
• Earthquake in the Early Morning, by Mary Pope Osborn (January)
• Hello, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, by Betty MacDonald (April & May)
• Midnight on the Moon, by Mary Pope Osborn (June)
• A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engel (June)
• James and the Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl (June/July)
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl (July)
• Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, by Roald Dahl (August)
• Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder (August – read chapter 1)

I lost track of these in the fall, but we also read Roald Dahl’s Witches, Clementine, gave The Hobbit a try, and are almost done with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.  She reads tons of books on her own and is impossible to keep up with!

Books I’d like to read in 2010

• Warbreaker, Brandon Sanderson (fantasy)
• The Long Division, Derek Nikitas (thriller)
• Anathem, Neal Stephenson (fantasy)
• Until I Found You, A Novel, John Irving (fiction)
• Clay’s Quilt, Silas House (fiction)
• The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (fiction)

After finishing Infinite Jest, I’ve sort of been casting about.  It will be a hard act to follow.

Know any fabulous library technologists? Nominate them!

// November 17th, 2009 // No Comments » // Libraries, librarians

Official press release stuff:

LITA/Library Hi Tech award nominations sought

Nominations are being accepted for the 2010 LITA/Library Hi Tech Award, which is given each year to an individual or institution for outstanding achievement in communication for continuing education in library and information technology.  Sponsored by the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), and Library Hi Tech, the award includes a citation of merit and a $1,000 stipend provided by Emerald Press, publishers of Library Hi Tech.  The deadline for nominations is December 1, 2009.

The award, given to either an individual or an institution, may recognize a single seminal work or a body of work, created during or continuing into the five years immediately preceding the award year.  The body of work need not be limited to published texts, but can include course plans or actual courses and/or non-print publications such as visual media, for example.  More information and a list of previous winners can be found at on the LITA website in the Awards and Scholarships section.

Currently serving officers and elected officials of LITA, members of the LITA/Library Hi Tech Award Committee and employees and their immediate family of Emerald Press are ineligible.

Nominations must include the name(s) of the recipient(s), basis for nomination, and references to the body of work and should be sent to afifarek@scottsdaleaz.gov.  Electronic submissions are preferred, but print submissions may be sent to Aimee Fifarek, Scottsdale Public Library, 3839 N. Drinkwater Blvd., Scottsdale, AZ 85251-4452.

The award will be presented at the LITA President’s Program during the 2010 Annual Conference of the American Library Association in Washington, DC.

Unofficial bits from me:

2009-2010 marks my third year working with this LITA committee.  It is gratifying to beat the bushes for and comb through nominations from my professional colleagues and recognize the best of those with this award.

The award’s entire title is “LITA/Library Hi Tech Award For Outstanding Communication for Continuing Education in Library and Information Science,” which is quite the mouthful and most often shortened to the “Library Hi-Tech Award.” Doing so leaves out its essence–in my not-so-humble-opinion–that this award is best given to someone who gives back to our profession, though his or her work, writings, presentations, or general professional outlook.

So, I urge you to think about who deserves this recognition. From whom do you learn most, either in writing, presentations, teaching, or even informal interaction? Whom do you know who is making a widespread and lasting impact on our field of library technology, however you define it? There is so much amazing work done by our libraries’ technology staff and our profession’s technology evangelists! Let’s dig in and recognize this great work.