Inside ZSR
Here are a few notes from my first LITA National Forum: Subjective perceptions. From the opening keynote (an epistemological discussion of Wikipedia), a couple questions resonated with me – one in particular. How do we know how to resolve conflict when we don’t really agree on reality? Legitimate peripheral participation. “Through peripheral activities, novices become... more ›
The iPad with 3G is an amazing productivity tool at a conference! Quick intros from Barry and JP were extremely helpful in getting me started — thanks, guys! The 3G was absolutely key, because wifi in the convention center was spotty and the added mobility created opportunities. For example, I showed info to a new... more ›
In what was a quick two-day abbreviation of the ALA Annual conference (my first), the same observation kept recurring: there are a lot of librarians here. For every session I attended, there were more librarians than the chairs (and walls and floors) could accommodate. Erik’s Saturday morning cloud computing session was a case in point:... more ›
Cristina and I have had a taste of the wild life in Virginia Beach in our first 24 hours at the ILLiad International Conference. When we arrived at our hotel on Tuesday, we were greeted by a bird that was camped right outside our door. While surprised, we managed to scare it away so we... more ›
On Friday, March 5, Leslie, Heather and I attended the first panel discussion entitled “Who is Right? Comparing and Contrasting the Interests of Artists/Broadcasters, Assignees, Academics, and the Public“. The first panelist was Kimberliann Podlas, a Assistant Professor of Law and Media Ethics from UNCG. Kimberliann asserted that in the war on illegal downloading of... more ›
This morning, Heather, Steve, Leslie and I (and I saw Lynn in the audience too) all attended the keynote speech given by Lolly Gasaway at the WFU Law School’s symposium “Copyleft vs. Copyright: Artist and Author Rights in Tomorrow’s Digital Age.” The focus of her keynote was to give some copyright context and layout the... more ›
Asheville hosted a fantastic code4lib. Here are a few highlights: Tuesday’s keynote. Cathy Marshall (Senior Researcher, Microsoft Research) discussed the nature of living digitally, where, for many, loss is an acceptable means of culling collections, where benign neglect is the de facto stewardship technique. Galactic glitter glue with space debris. There was a proposal for... more ›
Ellen and I attended the second of six sessions offered by the PDC on Public Speaking and Presenting today. Because I was the only one who hadn’t given my 3 minute speech on an assigned topic yet, I gave my speech today. (The rest of the 15 attendees had to give their speech with very... more ›
Redesigning Technical Services Workflows, Saturday morning, July 11, 2009: Here are some brief highlights — please feel free to chat with me if you want to know more. Please note that these speakers are both from much larger libraries than ZSR. Arlene Klair, Adaptive Cataloging & Database Mgmt Group Leader, University of Maryland Libraries Original... more ›
In addition to a nice blur of technologies and acronyms, here, in distilled form, are a few key ideas I gathered from code4lib 2009: libraries vs. museums of books (or how the ecosystem of information will become all electronic) a chair in a room, a catalog on the web (or how design requires context) linked... more ›