Blogging Section of SLA-IT

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

IT and Twitter - part 2

The IT Division now has a presence on Twitter at http://twitter.com/slait . While you don't need an account to see that page, you can create one for the full effect (it's free). It's a great way to keep updated as to what is going on with the Division. It's also a quick and alternate way of getting access to the content of the Divisions' two blogs.

 

#slait is also the hash tag for the Division, for your own tweets.

 

(What is Twitter? It's like a mini-blog. You have 140 characters to give your friends, and followers, an update on what you are doing. You can link to webpages or post pictures. Posts are called tweets. The hash character (#) serves as a tag. It makes it easier to search the Twitter content for a particular topic. For example, you could tweet: "Wow, I had a great time at the IT Dance Party last night #slait" . The IT program planner can search #slait in Twitter after the conference to look for comments and your tweet will come up).

 

Thank you for all of you who have commented and the IT Board for its enthusiastic support.

Technical Support Roundtable

As in previous years, Stacey Greenwell led a great tech support roundtable, Tuesday the 17th at 11am.  I always find these sessions to be very useful - just to be able to sit down with other systems/IT librarians and shoot the breeze, see who's doing what, and what tools folks find useful, is great.  As such, though, the conversation flowed all over the place; this is a summary of what we talked about.

• Vista and all the fun we're having implementing (or not implementing) it
• Office 2007 and the same - Microsoft emulators provide a 2003 -> 2007 remapping for actions (Anna Burke provided a link to her great summary page at Babson!)
• MS Communicator presence in new libraries? (Other folks using other telepresence tools?)
• Twitter in real life and real libraries
• Cloud computing (nifty stuff happening here!)
• OpenOffice versus MSOffice
• Implementation of new info delivery systems at university level (static site now, want blog/rss feed etc, can't get the IT dept to do it) - suggestions?  If you have any, please share with Joe Kraus at Denver University.

Next year it looks like I'll be leading this off as an Info Systems section event; we have yet to see if it'll be a scheduled event or a social one. Lemme know what you'd prefer! We're also toying with the idea of changing the title of the session to better reflect what it covers, although we do have a length limit!  If you have suggestions, please drop me a line.

Blogging Section Year-in-Review (2007)

With the end of the year nearly upon us, I thought I'd take a few minutes for an informal year-in-review.

THE BLOG

The number of posts in this blog continue to grow and now we're over 300 posts.  Generally, you're seeing a couple new posts per week from our growing list of authors:

• Nicole Engard
• Stacey Greenwell
• Jill Hurst-Wahl
• Steven Kaye
• Cynthia Larson
• Catherine Lavallée-Welch
• Tracy Z. Maleeff
• Steve Oberg

This is a very knowledgeable group and I'm pleased to be among them.  (And thanks to all of you...this blog would be nothing without you.)

Of course, a blog needs readers and we know from our statistics that our readership has grown this year.  On Jan. 12, we were averaging 24 pageviews per day. On May 30, that number had increased to 34 per day, and I would suspect that it is continuing to increase.  In addition to people reading the blog by going to the blog itself, we have people who are reading it through an RSS reader.  For example, at least 70 people are reading this blog through Bloglines.  HQ tells us that we're one of the more heavily read blogs in the Association!

OTHER SECTION ACTIVITIES

Besides the blog, our only other major activity is the bloggers get together at the SLA Annual Conference.  For several years, this has been an informal activity and a lot of fun! With more people interested in blogging, a question we should ask is whether we should do something more formal at the Annual Conference.  I'll leave that question to the next chair of the Blogging Section.

THE NEXT CHAIR

Yes, I'm passing the torch (or should it be the keyboard) to Nicole Engard, who will chair this section in 2008.  Nicole is very knowledgeable, highly respected and a great blogger.  I look forward to the direction she'll take this section in!

EXIT STAGE LEFT

Yes, I am stepping down as chair of the section, but I am not going far.  I'll be staying on the Board and I'll keep blogging.  And surely I'll be at whatever blogging event happens at the Annual Conference in Seattle!

Best Wishes,

Jill

Chair-Elect for the Section

It is my pleasure to announce that Jill Hurst-Wahl, contributor to this weblog, has become Chair-Elect of the Blogging Section. Her term as Chair will begin in January at the Leadership Summit in Reno. Congratulations to Jill and thanks go to her for rising up to the challenge!

CE class at SLA Baltimore and Get-Together

Unfortunately, the CE class I was going to teach on Sunday June 11th, "Continuing Education Course- Weblogging for Beginners: A Practical Approach", was cancelled due to low number of registrations. It's just too bad because we were going to have hands-on activities for the participants. I guess the incredibly high prices for the equipment and Internet access, forcing us to put a higher price on the class registration, did us in...

But fear not, the Webloggers Get-Together is still on! See you there!

---

Technorati tag: sla2006

Bloggers get-together in Baltimore

The Blogging Section invites all bloggers and those interested in blogging to join us for a get-together at the Annual Conference in Baltimore. On Monday, June 12th, from 1:30pm to 3:30pm, we will meet at Edgar's Billiards Club & Restaurant (htt://www.edgarsclub.com) on the outdoor patio. Look for the sign "SLA Bloggers Get-Together". Restaurant and bar service will be available for you to order refreshments (each pay his/her own). A pool table will be reserved inside for us.

Edgar's offers 10% off the tab for conventioneers so don't forget to bring your conference badge with you. The club is conveniently located between the Baltimore Convention Center and the Hyatt Regency on the Baltimore Inner Harbor Skywalk, above Pratt and Light streets.

So, come relax, practice your eight-ball and talk about blogging with us!

Thursday evening, Houston meeting

Well, the Texas Chapter sure can put up a nice reception!Great view up the top of a nearby hotel, great food and a nice opportunity to meet other information professionals.

While there, I met Marydee Ojala, editor of Online Magazine. Marydee is blogging about the meeting over at the Online Insider blog.

Tomorrow is "association" day. One of the highlights will be the luncheon with the various candidates for the SLA board. Among them, several IT members: Baltimore planner James Manasco and Libby Truddell who are running both for Chapter Cabinet Chair-Elect; Blogging Section member Dav Robertson and Stephen Abram both for President-Elect; “Buzzy” Basch  for Treasurer and LaJean Humphries for Director.

CORRECTION: I failed to mention that Libby Truddell, candidate for Chapter Cabinet Chair, is the Chair of the IT division's Public Relations Committee. My apologies for the omission.

Off to Houston

I'm off this morning to Houston to the SLA Leadership Meeting. It will be my first winter meeting, and it is as chair of the Section. If Section members are going to be present in Houston, please look me up. It will be my pleasure to meet you!

SLA Leadership Summit 2006

Registration is open for the SLA Leadership Summit in Houston, January 18-21, 2006.  Blogging section members, IT division members, anyone who is involved in SLA--this is a great meeting to get to know your association and its leadership.  I've attended the past three summits and have found the meeting to be valuable, particularly in terms of networking and in getting the opportunity to speak to SLA leadership.