Blogging Section of SLA-IT

Guide to Google Wave

Do you have a Google Wave account but feel like you are waving to yourself?  That's how I felt until I checked out The Complete Guide to Google Wave by Gina Trapani with Adam Pash. 

Not looking for a user manual but just wondering what the fuss is all about?  Take a look at 7 Things You Should Know about Google Wave from the popular EDUCAUSE "7 things" series.

SLA Name Change

You've probably read about the name change via some other media - but in case you didn't - SLA is planning on changing its name.

The SLA Board of Directors is excited to propose that SLA change its name to the Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals, or ASKPro. All SLA members are encouraged to voice their opinion on this proposal by casting an electronic vote in a special referendum that will begin on 16 November and end 9 December. The result will be announced on 10 December.

You can find more info on the official page on the SLA website, on Facebook, and on Twitter.  Also, members will be asked to vote next month:

We encourage all SLA members to voice their opinion on this proposal by casting an electronic vote in a special referendum that will begin on 16 November and end 9 December. The result will be announced on 10 December.

Mobile Content Workshop in Philadelphia

NFAIS WORKSHOP ON THE MOBILE DELIVERY OF CONTENT: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES. 

October 30, 2009,  9:00am - 5:00pm, Philadelphia PA.

 

If you are a content provider, librarian or information specialist you need to be up-to-date on the use of mobile devices as an information delivery channel.  For example, did you know that 75% of today’s 1.4 billion Internet users access the Web via a mobile device (29% exclusively via mobile; 46% via mobile and PC)†.  In fact, the global acceptance of wireless mobile devices for communication and accessing information has grown to the point that the technology is now at the threshold of transforming the information industry. According to a recent Pew report, by the year 2020 such devices will have completely morphed into powerful computing devices that are portals to the online world.  To learn more about this rapidly growing content delivery channel, join us on October 30, 2009  when NFAIS will offer a one day workshop on mobile delivery. Virtual attendance is optional for those unable to travel to Philadelphia.

The program will open with an overview of the current landscape for the mobile delivery of content. This will be followed by case studies presented by content providers who are currently delivering to mobile devices, such as The New England Journal of Medicine, John Wiley and Sons, the American Institute of Physics, and Ref-Works-COS.  The meeting will then take a look at the challenges that content providers must meet in order to deliver content to mobile devices, such as content preparation, meeting e-publishing standards, and adapting to diverse technology platforms and infrastructures.  New business practices and policies that are emerging as a result of this new information delivery channel will be discussed and in closing we will take a look at how this channel will evolve over the next five years.

The program, registration form, directions to the meeting location, list of nearby hotels, and general information on Philadelphia is available at: http://www.nfais.org/page/212-mobile-delivery-of-content.

On-site Attendance: NFAIS members pay $395 and non-members pay $445. 

Virtual Attendance: NFAIS members pay $365 and non-members pay $415. 

Unlimited Virtual attendance (3 or more registrations) is $995 for NFAIS member organizations and $1,195 for non-member organizations.

For more information contact:  Jill O’Neill, NFAIS Director, Communication and Planning, 215-893-1561 (phone); 215-893-1564 (fax); mailto:[email protected] or go to http://www.nfais.org/.

10 Things Library Administration Should Know About Technology

Roy Tennant, who gave a great presentation at SLA 2007 on the future of the library catalog, has posted a thoughtful list of ten things administration needs to keep in mind when making technology decisions.  Avoid getting hung up on perfection, have the courage to release a beta version, don't be afraid to fail are just a few pieces of advice from the list.  View the full list.

It's time to vote!

Voting is now open for the 2010 Board of Directors.
The candidates are:

• President-Elect: Agnes Mattis and Cindy Romaine
• Treasurer: Karen Reczek and Dan Trefethen
• Chapter Cabinet Chair-Elect: Liz Blankson-Hemans and Debal C. Kar
• Division Cabinet Chair-Elect: Mary Ellen Bates and Stacey Greenwell

Polls close October 1st at 5pmEST, so cast your vote now!

inspiration...

we all need some inspiration every now and then. sometimes it's hard to remember that great idea you had for a new project, or find a solution to that problem that has been irking you for months, or figure out a new way to present your year-end report without killing everyone with bullet points and clip art.

when i find myself in this situation, i watch a TED Talk. these are 18 minute presentations given at the annual TED (Technology Education Design) conference. have no fear, this is far from death-by-powerpoint. these are slick presentations (want to see some seriously good-looking stats?) given by remarkable people (a brain researcher discusses what she went through while having a stroke) on a wide variety of topics (this one is a personal favourite).

and TED Talks aren't the only ones out there - Mashable created a list of the "Top 7 Places to Watch Great Minds in Action" showcasing other conferences which have posted their talks online for everyone to enjoy.

to give you a taste of how these talks can give you a little boost when you need it, check out Seth Godin's TED Talk on the tribes we lead:

what is your favourite TED Talk?

Library Mashups Published

For those of you who attended my talk at SLA 2009 for the IT Division (and those who wanted to attend by couldn't) you might be interested in knowing that my Library Mashups book has finally been published!!  If you pre-ordered a copy at the conference you should get it soon, if not you can order your copy from the links on the official book website at http://mashups.web2learning.net.

Thanks to all of you who expressed an interest at the conference and those who have kept up with my progress on the book.

SLA IT Continuing Ed Survey

The IT Division needs to understand YOUR needs for documentation around the weekend workshops given at the Annual Conference.  We're particularly curious to know your thoughts around CEUs (continuing education units).  PLEASE -- even if you have not taken yet a workshop at the Annual Conference -- PLEASE take the eight (8) question survey.  Your thoughts and comments will help us next year and for years to come.

The survey will close Sunday night (Aug. 9).

Thanks in advance for your help!

Click Here to take survey

Open Source Bookmarks

At SLA I taught a CE course in which I listed tons of open source apps.  Since then I have added even more great resources to my open source bookmarks. Since some of you probably attended my class I thought I should share the new sites I found with you all.

• All for Good
  Inspired by the call of President Obama to engage more Americans in service, a group of individuals from the technology, marketing and public sectors came together to build an open source application that allows you to find and share volunteer activities.
• VirtualBox
  VirtualBox is a powerful x86 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).
• Fluid Project Wiki
  An open, collaborative project to improve the user experience of community source software.
• Fluid Engage
  Fluid Engage is a new project that will create an open source community that will provide curators and educators within museums and galleries the necessary supports, tools and resources
• MacLibre | Open Source Software Distribution for Mac OS X
  MacLibre is an Open Source Software Distribution for Mac OS X. It's simple, intuitive with applications you need. It brings a new way of software installation on your Mac.
• Three Open Source E-book Readers Worth a Look
• Over 40 Free, Must-Have Open Source Resources
• The EveryBlock source code
  EveryBlock.com is an experimental news Web site that provides information at a "microlocal" level — by neighborhood or city block. It was funded by a grant from Knight Foundation, which requires the site's backend code to be open-sourced. Here is the code.
• Teaching Open Source
  This is a neutral collaboration point for professors, institutions, communities, and companies to come together and make the teaching of Open Source a global success.
• Melody: Community Powered Publishing
  Melody is an open source content management system for bloggers and publishers where its community of users and contributors is its most important feature.
• 40 Mac Freewares and Open Source Software for Web Designers | Desizn Tech
• Sugar on a Stick - Sugar Labs
  A "Linux-based learning environment" that boots from a USB drive and is designed for children’s ease of use.
• Free / Open Source Research Community (Home)
  In the spirit of free and open source software (F/OSS), we are attempting to establish a community in which information will be freely exchanged, so that we may further the understanding of open source and its implications outside the realm of software development.
• SemperTool
  SemperTool introduces the first open source product: Subscription Management Database - SMDB. SMDB is an Electronic Resource Management system - ERM.
• ILS Survey: Open Source vs. Proprietary
  This survey was conducted from October 30, 2007 to January 3, 2008. It was answered by libraries using the open source ILSs Koha (n=113) and Evergreen (n=119), and proprietary ILSs (n=129). The current version of Koha was 2.2.9 and Evergreen was 1.2.
• Mac4Lin
  The goal of this project is to bring the Mac OS X user interface to POSIX Operating Systems (GNU/LInux, FreeBSD, openSolaris etc.).
• Freeciv
  Freeciv is a Free and Open Source empire-building strategy game inspired by the history of human civilization.
• Lupo PenSuite
  The Suite includes over 200 highly selected portable programs and games (7-Zip, Audacity, CCleaner, eMule, FileZilla, Firefox, Foxit Reader, GIMP, IrfanView, Miranda, Notepad++, Opera, Thunderbird, µTorrent, VLC and many more). Over 5 million users have downloaded it.
• LiberKey
  LiberKey installed on your USB key (or mini external hard drive, a music player such as iPod...) can be connected on any PC. Immediately you have under hand all your familiar tools, without any installation on the host PC.
• Open Source – Open Libraries
  Open Source – Open Libraries is a consortia of libraries, library systems, and other organizations committed to pursuing Open Source Software (OSS) alternatives for libraries.
• OmCollab
  omCollab is a powerful, Enterprise 2.0 collaboration product completely built on open source software. It provides a web portal environment to create, share and search Microsoft Office content, files, shared bookmarks, blog posts and wiki articles across the enterprise. omCollab integrates some of the most powerful open source software applications into a single collaborative environment. It enables organisations to drive innovation, collaboration and community building.
• Inkscape
  An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.
• Library a la Carte
  Librarians have enough to do and maintaining static HTML pages is tedious and time-consuming. The Library à la Carte tool enables librarians to easily and quickly create dynamic web pages that integrate Web 2.0 features, such as chat and RSS feeds, with traditional library content, such as catalogs and article databases.
• LibData Project Site
  LibData is a library oriented web based application which provides authoring environments for subject pathfinders (Research QuickStart), course related pages (CourseLib) and general purpose web pages (PageScribe).
• Senayan
  Senayan is an open source Library Management System. It is build on Open source technology like PHP and MySQL. Senayan provides many features such as Bibliography database, Circulation, Membership and many more that will help "automating" library tasks.
• LimeSurvey.org
  The Leading Open Source Survey Tool
• Weminaria
  Open source screen recording software, free video capture, video recorder, capture tool, desktop recorder, software tutorial, create software demo
• EmeraldView
  EmeraldView is a lightweight front-end for the digital library software Greenstone.
• Wubi - Ubuntu Installer for Windows
  Wubi is an officially supported Ubuntu installer for Windows users that can bring you to the Linux world with a single click. Wubi allows you to install and uninstall Ubuntu as any other Windows application, in a simple and safe way. Are you curious about Linux and Ubuntu? Trying them out has never been easier!
• AmpliFeeder
  Open source lifestream platform

LITA Top Technology Trends 2009 (video)

This was streamed live on the Internet during ALA and recorded for later viewing. On the panel were Clifford Lynch, John Blyberg, Roy Tennant, Joan Frye Williams, Eric Lease Morgan, and Geert van de Boogaard. Participating online were Marshall Breeding, Sarah Houghton-Jan, and Karen Schneider.