EBSS @ ALA Annual

Just a reminder, if you are attending ALA Annual be sure to consider attending the EBSS program Knowledge Wants to Be Known: Open Access for the Behavioral & Social Sciences.

Tags: ACRL, EBSS, Open Access, ALA Annual

ALA Conference bound

Like many other librarians attending ALA Annual, I am scheduled to leave tomorrow. My journey begins early morning at the American Airlines gate, Port Columbus International Airport in Columbus, Ohio; I am bound for Anaheim, California via Chicago's O'Hare Airport. My departure time has fluctuated during the last week and to that point I have scheduled cell phone alerts with the airlines and text alerts with ALA.

For the first time I have not scheduled myself with a massive amount of activities, I want to try "winging it" with sessions upon arrival at the conference venue. I have obligations on Friday with Libraries Build Communities, will be working with the EBSS program committee on Saturday for the Knowledge Wants to Be Known: Open Access for the Behavioral Sciences session (a scheduled reminder post will appear here tomorrow), a lunch meeting on Sunday, and naturally time to visit the stacks, but beyond that look forward to perusing my program for sessions on children's literature, technology, academic libraries, and anything else that might catch my attention professionally.

I am traveling blissfully unencumbered by technology and do not know that I will actually take time to blog from ALA, so I have not added the blogger badge here. If there is opportunity, who knows? I need to load my MP3 with new tunes, pack my in-flight reading material, Fearless Fourteen, and put fresh batteries and new memory card in my camera. California, here I come.

Goodbye, George

George Carlin has died but I doubt that he will be gone from our memories. I was not a big fan of George. I thought he was rather coarse in his language (the famous 7 words???) and rather controversial. But it is because of that that many of our current comics have learned and molded their own careers. How wonderful to know that you had an impact in someone's life.

So George, here's my tribute to you. A colleague sent this to our campus and I find it rather fitting.

HOW TO STAY YOUNG - by George Carlin (1937 - 2008)

1. Throw out nonessential numbers. This includes age, weight and height. Let the doctor worry about them. That is why you pay him.

2. Keep only cheerful friends. The grouches pull you down.

3. Keep learning. Learn more about the computer, crafts, gardening, whatever. Never let the brain idle. “An idle mind is the devil's workshop." And the devil's name is Alzheimer's.

4. Enjoy the simple things.

5. Laugh often, long and loud. Laugh until you gasp for breath.

6. The tears happen. Endure, grieve, and move on. The only person who is with us our entire life is ourselves. Be ALIVE while you are alive.

7. Surround yourself with what you love, whether it's family, pets, keepsakes, music, plants, hobbies, whatever. Your home is your refuge.

8. Cherish your health: If it is good, preserve it. If it is unstable, improve it. If it is beyond what you can improve, get help.

9. Don't take guilt trips. Take a trip to the mall, to the next county, to a foreign country, but NOT to where the guilt is.

10. Tell the people you love that you love them at every opportunity.

AND ALWAYS REMEMBER:

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

READ posters abound

I've been mulling over trying to see how my small staff might be able to create some local READ posters for our campus for some time now. The CDs have been gathering dust in my desk for too long! Personally, I think they are neat and have great outreach appeal, especially for small schools. I can see three distinct ways to use them: on campus among the students and faculty, using students (scholars and/or athletes) to give back by creating one of them and allowing them to give them to their home schools and finally, out in the community, featuring local celebrities or government officials with their favorite reads. Many libraries have already been doing such things.

Wow! What a great way to involve a whole community in the simple act of reading!

I just received in the mail today two READ posters from the State Library of Ohio. The featured persons are none other than our Governor, Ted Strickland, and his wife, Frances. How nifty and how generous that they sent a set to all libraries in Ohio! Check out the posters.

We are considering experimenting in developing one as part of our Constitution Day activities. Might be interesting. If only I knew Adobe Photoshop ........

OLSSI 2008

OLSSI 2008
The Hidden Treasure of Libraries:

SUPPORT STAFF!

The Ohio Library Support Staff Institute is almost here !
Sunday, July 27th – Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

The University of Toledo.

Ahoy Mateys! The 2008 Ohio Library Support Staff Institute will set sail July 27 – 29, 2008 at the University of Toledo. OLSSI has planned outstanding programs, interesting lectures, and fun activities for participants.

Lodgings for all attendees and scallywags will be at the Crossings, which features air-conditioned 3-bedroom suites. Each attendee will have his or her own bedroom.

The University of Toledo has a beautiful campus, including Centennial Mall. This picturesque lawn area in the heart of campus was named “One of the 100 most beautifully landscaped places in the country" by the American Society of Landscape Architects.

Add in the 47-acre Stranahan Arboretum, the Center for the Visual Arts, six libraries, and the shops and restaurants of Toledo and nearby Sylvania, Ohio, and OLSSI 2008 is shaping up to be the best ever!

Grab the opportunity to network with peers, be exposed to new job-related skills and knowledge, and gain a sense of community and support from other library assistants throughout the state and region!

Classes include:

• Audiobooks, eBooks, Music, & Video: Digital Downloads Without Pirating!
• No Need to Draw Yer Cutlass! How Facebook Can Work for Libraries
• Putting the Rrrrrr in PublisheR: Making a Brochure from a Template
• Sail Ho! WorldCat Local and Resource Discovery
• Charting the Frontier of the Internet: Web 2.0

So come and be a part of the fun and learning that is OLSSI !
To register & find out more, visit us online at: http://www.olssi.org/

Michael Bradshaw, Vice-Chair Ohio Library Support Staff Institute

EBSS @ ALA in Anaheim

An invitation for those attending ALA Annual in Anaheim!

Want to know more about how open access is playing out in the social and behavioral sciences? Can’t learn enough about emerging academic publishing models? EBSS has scheduled two events you will want to attend:

Knowledge Wants to be Known:
Open Access for the Behavioral and Social Sciences
Education and Behavioral Sciences Section Conference Program
Saturday, June 28, 1:30 – 3:30 pm
Disneyland Hotel, Magic Kingdom 4

Open access is not one-size-fits-all; disciplines have unique publishing histories and requirements. Learn how to energize behavioral science faculty and connect access issues with the “publish or perish” imperative. Prominent educator and open-access advocate John Willinsky (Stanford University) will frame the issue; Alison Mudditt (Sage Publications) and Ray English (Oberlin College) will help place this in context from a publisher and librarian perspective respectively.

For more information on this program, including a video explaining open access by Dr. Willinsky and the program flyer, visit EBSS's ALA Annual 2008 Program page.

This program is co-sponsored by Science and Technology Section and ACRL Scholarly Communication Committee.

Follow up with the EBSS Psychology/Psychiatry Discussion Forum

Practical Aspects of Open Access Publishing in the
Behavioral Sciences
Sunday, June 29, 1:30 – 3:30 pm
Hilton Anaheim (Manhattan)

A panel of practitioner experts will briefly outline publishing models from three perspectives after which open discussion will be encouraged.

• Linda Beebe, (Senior Director, PsycINFO) will talk briefly about APA policies for indexing open-access journals and touch on publishing models currently in use by the various APA divisions.


• Lorelei Tanji (Associate University Librarian, University of California, Irvine) and Brenda Johnson-Grau (Managing Editor, UCLA Center for the Study of Women) will share their experiences with the eScholarship IR sponsored by the University of California, particularly their work to encourage faculty members to post to the IR and the reactions they have received from them.


• Jennifer Laherty (Reference/Digital Services Librarian, Indiana University Bloomington) will talk about her experience with Museum Anthropology Review, an online open access journal published through the IU library.


• Laura Mullen (Behavioral Sciences Librarian, Rutgers University) will moderate the panel.

Hope to see you there!

Tags: ALA Annual, ACRL, EBSS, ACRL STS, Scholarly communication

CMCIG Spring Workshop

ALAO's Curriculum Materials Center Interest Group (CMCIG) held their spring workshop on May 23, 2008 at OhioNET in Columbus. This year's workshop theme was Virtual Education Collections: Issues & Best Practices and focused upon "virtual collection development knowledge and experiences" of speakers and workshop attendees. Below is a brief synopsis of the workshop and speaker topics.

Anne Gilliland
Head, Copyright Management Office
Prior Health Sciences Library and Center for Knowledge Management
Ohio State University

Formerly the Assistant Director of Library Systems & Database Management at OhioLINK, Anne spoke about Best Practices for Developing a Virtual Collection detailing various aspects involved with developing individual virtual collections, as well as basic information concerning OhioLINK plans to increase their digital holdings. Highlighted within the presentation were topics of acquiring, cataloging, circulating, and maintaining a digital collection.

Cynthia DuChane
Project Coordinator
INFOhio

Cynthia provided an overview of the INFOhio and OhioLINK Special Task Force "Preparing 21st Century Ohio Learners for Success: The Role of Information Literacy and Libraries" as well as an preview of the current INFOhio and OhioLINK 12-13 transition project. A timely reminder to participants, the INFOhio password changes on July 1, 2008; be sure to download new toolkit, updates, and flyer's from the INFOhio site!

Mary Conroy
Electronic Resources Coordinator
OhioNet

Mary's presentation, OhioNet Library Services and Electronic Resources Programs, highlighted OhioNet mission, history, continuing education resources, workshop opportunities, and electronic resources available to Ohio academic, public, school, and special libraries.

Mary Cummings, Librarian
Clark Memorial Library
Shawnee State University

Mary's presentation, Virtual Education Collections: Issues and Best Practices, focused on both free and commercial multimedia resources available to libraries and curriculum materials centers. Highlights of Mary's session included live demonstrations of BookFlix and TumbleBooks, electronic books for children.

Thanks to Ann Raney and Greg Martin, CMCIG Co-Chairs, for their efforts preparing this workshop. It is always a pleasure and day well spent to attend a CMCIG spring workshop. And, plans are already underway for the CMCIG sponsored session at the ALAO conference in October!

The Picassa Web album featured at the beginning of this post includes photographs of the workshop. Please note, this slide show is also located on the CMCIG blog post CMCIG Spring Workshop.

Tags: Academic Library Association of Ohio, ALAO, Curriculum Materials Center Interest Group, CMCIG, CMCIG Spring Workshop 2008

ALAO on Facebook!

Hot off the press from the ALAO Leadership Retreat; ALAO now has a Facebook page, Academic Library Association of Ohio (ALAO). Administered by ALAO Communications editor Lindsay Midkiff-Miller, it features ALAO information, news, photos, discussion board, and is open to anyone interested in joining to talk about academic libraries. A nice supplement to the ALAO Newsletter and ALAO News blog, it will definitely appeal to younger librarians.

Probably one of a dwindling number of people without a Facebook profile, I'm old and anti-social (*smile*), this morning I ventured forth and created an account (check out my Facebook badge, yes another widget). I struggled with "how much is too much information" and settled upon entering mostly professional information with a bit of my Pittsburgh sports mania thrown in for good measure. It was not difficult to set up the account and create my profile, as usual I was intrigued by the concept of adding a badge to the blog, joining groups, and wondering if I had time to search for friends from the ALAO page. Today I joined my first group, ALAO, and thanks to Rob Withers attending day two of the ALAO leadership retreat today, I also have a friend.

Visit ALAO on Facebook, view recently added photos from the leadership retreat, follow a link to the current ALAO Newsletter, join in the current discussion topic "What would you like to see on the ALAO Facebook Page?", post your comments to the wall, and make a new friend.

Tags: Academic Library Association of Ohio, ALAO, Facebook, Academic libraries