ALA2010: Capitalizing on Technology (LIRT)

The Library Instruction Round Table (LIRT) sponsored session Capitalizing on Technology: A Teaching Technology Fair, featured librarians discussing technologies they currently incorporate into instruction. With technologies ranging from open source software to free online resources, this panel had a little something for everyone. After the initial presentations were complete, individual presenters were available at tables stationed throughout the room; participants had an opportunity to discuss specific technologies with panel members (great idea!).

I'm always looking for a way to enhance my LibGuides and the IRC web site and blog, so these technologies engaged my interest. I've used Prezi and Wallwisher, have heard of but not used Animoto, and XtraNormal is a new resource option for me.

• Animoto
• XtraNormal
• Prezi
• Wallwisher

After following up on a couple of individual presentations this evening via the LIRT conference site, I sent out a few email questions to panel members hoping for additional information. A short library video created a year or so ago highlighting library resources is in need of updating, it may be a good place to start with Animoto.

ALA2010: YALSA Sessions

Opportunity to attend YALSA sponsored sessions is one of the highlights of any ALA annual, or midwinter for that matter, conference. I don't know if I was in meetings or just conference program challenged, but I managed to miss my favorite sessions, Best Fiction for Young Adults Teen Feedback. Luckily, the YALSA Blog has a nifty Cover It Live widget embedded and it's possible to review all of the titles discussed. When asked for their top two favorites, these six titles were among those highlighted. We have five of the six and I'll be sending the list to one of the children's literature professors tomorrow.

• Will Grayson, Will Grayson
  by John Green & David Levithan
• Once
  by, Morris Gleitzman
• Woods Runner
  by, Gary Paulsen
• Last Night I Sang to the Monster
  by, Benjamin Alire Saenz
• By the Time You Read This I'll Be Dead
  by, Julie Anne Peters
• Split
  by, Swati Avasthi

I attended another YALSA sponsored session Sunday afternoon; this one geared toward best practices in programming and instruction, on Sunday afternoon and was impressed by the Greater Rochester Teen Book Festival. Committee Chair, Stephanie Squicciarini, Teen Services Librarian, Fairport Public Library, is nothing short of amazing. Seeing is believing, watch the video:

ALA 2010: Emerging Technolgies (LITA)

With a nod to the old saw "time flies," I am a bit chagrined that I did not post information, thoughts, theories, and possible personal blathering, regarding sessions I attended at ALA Annual last month. The time lag is no reflection on the quality of presentations, but homage to how quickly library day in the life things take precedence; even during lunchtime blogging. LibGuides, blogs, chat, and the library and IRC web sites translate to spending an increasing amount of time with technology in the library. Using a new or emerging technology simply for the sake of using a new or emerging technology does not interest me; successfully incorporating it into the fabric of the library does, hence the LITA session focusing upon emerging technologies and the new role of emerging technology librarians caught my interest.

To say the room was full would be a drastic understatement. I arrived early and was lucky to find a seat (belated apologies to the kind people I had to maneuver around). Though somewhat concerned by the sheer number of librarians involved in the panel presentation, I congratulate session moderator Bohyun Kim, who ruthlessly followed the timetable set providing opportunity for each panelist to be heard and still have time for questions and brief audience participation.

What is Your Library Doing about Emerging Technologies?

My interest was immediately caught during the discussion of context and emerging technology. What is an emerging technology to a librarian may not be to the user, or even another librarian. Blogging, Twitter, Facebook, Chat, texting, and other social networking resources are no longer emergent, they are generally accepted and often expected. It could be argued some of these things are now thought of as passé by our users (only old people use email) and consideration should be given regarding our need to be in these communities. As one of the panelists noted, do our users want us to be on Facebook and Twitter? How are the technologies emerging beyond their traditional functions and how appropriate are they to the library or even instruction.

Beyond the library, one of the assignments in Introduction to the Principles of Instructional Technology is the creation of a wiki and subsequent review and discussion of an emergent technology. Each term I debate what technologies should be removed and/or added to the list for consideration. While I no longer consider using Wordle, or Jing in the classroom to be new or emergent technology trend, students this spring and summer felt differently. It all circles back to users and context.

The embedded slide share presentation provides session highlights. For more information, including other panel questions and discussion topics, here are a few links to consider:

• ALA Connect: What is Your Library Doing About Emerging Technologies
• Slideshare: What is Your Library Doing About Emerging Technologies
• LITA Blog: What is Your Library Doing About Emerging Technologies
• Library Hat (session moderator blog): Looking Back at What is Your Library Doing About Emerging Technologies
• Hashtag Archive: ALA 2010 Emerging Technologies Panel Session

ALA 2010: Cyber Zed Shed, ACRL

Traveling into the way back, a final reflection of the 2009 ACRL Conference (Seattle) featured mention of my new favorite conference presentation option, the Cyber Zed Shed. Located near the poster sessions, it was convenient and visible. At the end of one of the shed days, a volunteer, or perhaps committee member, was collecting business cards from people who were interested in participating in the CZS for Philadelphia 2011. I gleefully handed over my card, a miracle in itself since I routinely forget them. Fast forward to ALA Annual 2010 and my Monday morning meeting ...

I attended my first Cyber Zed Shed committee meeting at ACRL "headquarters," The Renaissance Mayflower hotel. I arrived early, wandered through the lobby area for a short time, and located my committee. Several members with iPads connected to the Internet, my trusty netbook and I, sans Internet, took meeting minutes. Using ALA Connect as our cyber home, we will be able to meet virtually.

• ACRL National Conference
• ACRL Conference Tracks
• Cyber Zed Shed Presentations

Submission for CZS presentations will be open soon; I will post information here as it becomes available. We will be using Facebook and Twitter, was well as more traditional means of email and blogs, to market and solicit submissions. It's not too soon to consider presenting!

"Are you a tech savvy librarian using new technologies in innovative ways? Adapting existing technologies to reach user needs? Here is an opportunity to share your innovations with your colleagues, library administrators, and others at ACRL 2011. The ACRL 2011 Cyber Zed Shed Committee is looking for proposals that document technology-related innovations in every area of the library. Whether you are teaching in a classroom; answering questions from patrons; acquiring, cataloging, processing or preserving materials; or providing other services, we're interested. We invite you to submit your most innovative proposals to help us make Philadelphia the site of a truly groundbreaking conference. Cyber Zed Shed presentations are 20 minutes, with 15 minutes to present a demonstration, and five additional minutes for audience Q&A. Presentations should document technology-related innovations in academic and research libraries. A computer, data projector, screen, microphone, and stage will be provided in the Cyber Zed Shed theater. You will be responsible for bringing all other equipment required for your demonstration, except as agreed to in advance. The deadline for submission is November 1, 2010." -- ACRL National 2011

I excited about participating with this committee and am definitely looking forward to Philadelphia 2011.

ALA 2010: The Stacks

There is always something about entering "The Stacks" at ALA that reminds me of a carnival atmosphere. Maybe it's the sound of wheels spinning for prizes, or even the vendors pitching their sessions like barkers, regardless it is an atmosphere of fun and prizes. I convince myself not to pick up any more pens (I really do not need them) and limit the number of ARCs to what I can comfortably transport in my ALA bag.

This plan worked until I arrived in one of the children's book aisles, was offered a copy of Nikki Grimes new book, A Girl Named Mister, autographed by the author. No line. No waiting. Very gracious author signing books. A few booths away I met Janet Mullany, the author of Jane and the Damned, due out this October. One more autographed book. To the delight of my niece I found several titles of interest for eight year old girls before the bag was full.

Arriving back at AU, I compared notes with our technical services and government documents librarian who also spent quality time in The Stacks. She had opportunity to talk with the EBSCOHost vendors and learned about a new customizable search box builder now available on their support site. One of their integration tools, the Search Box Builder allows users to "Choose your search parameters and customize your search box size and style to fit your site." I have already created one for our LibGuide widget library that will search Academic Search Complete, Education Research Complete, and ERIC (for the education page). Alas, attempts to paste the code here for an example were spectacularly unsuccessful (at least visually); but it works fabulously.

ALA 2010: EBSS Higher Education Committee

A current member of ACRL's EBSS section, my first official ALA Annual meeting was the Higher Education Committee on Saturday morning. I managed to arrive on time at the wrong hotel, luckily met and chatted with two other EBSS committee members - both curriculum materials center librarians - that made the same mistake, and then hopped a Gale shuttle bus to the correct hotel arriving with much chagrin a half hour late.



The Higher Education Committee has been working on a wiki project for the last two years. It has expanded significantly since its first inception; the wiki format was ideal for growth.

"At the 2008 ALA Midwinter Meetings in Philadelphia, PA, the Higher Education committee elected to utilize a Wiki for it's newest project, a Wiki and/or web page resource committed to supporting librarians new to working with Higher Education faculty and practitioners/administrators. This resource will be largely, but not limited to, Internet resources. Entries will include a brief supportive annotation describing significance, sponsorship, and other information as deemed necessary." -- EBSS Higher Education Wiki

One week prior to the meeting, we made our project live! It will soon be available via the ACRL web site, but I'm pleased to provide the address here for a preview. Topics included in the wiki are:

• Accreditation
• Curriculum Materials Centers
• Distance Education
• News Sources for Higher Education
• Promotion and Tenure
• Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
• Services to Administrators
• Statistics and Data Resources

I was particularly pleased to have the Curriculum Materials Centers page, it came in handy when preparing the collection and budget for the new AU Columbus Center IRC. At this point, I am not sure if there are plans to open the wiki for comments and/or additional submissions (feel free to submit recommendations as blog comments). Time will tell. Sad to see the wiki "completed," are they ever really finished, other projects are in the works for this committee.

ALA 2010: Book Cart Drill Teams!

The Sixth Annual Book Cart Drill Team World Championships, sponsored by Demco, were held on Sunday afternoon during ALA Annual Conference. Seven teams competing for the gold, silver, and bronze Demco carts performed to a packed house (the largest crowd I've seen in the last five years). We were once again entertained by master's of ceremony, Jon Scieszka and Mo Willems; they made no secret that every team was their personal favorite.

And the winners are ... Night of the Living Librarians from my alma mater, The University of Pittsburgh School of Library and Information Sciences!

Demco's You Tube channel features all of the performances, as well as the award ceremony. I was lucky enough to sit with a new librarian from Columbia, South Carolina and a library school student from Kent State University, both viewing the program for the first time. I'm pretty sure they will attend again if given the opportunity to go to ALA Annual in New Orleans next summer.

ALA Virtual Conference

Via email this afternoon, an opportunity to attend ALA virtually this summer. Pricing information and registration are available on the Virtual Conference site.

ALA 2010 Virtual Conference
Registration Now Open!

Budget tight? Can't attend the ALA 2010 Annual Conference in Washington, DC?Going to DC and ready for more? Not a problem-just register for the ALA Virtual Conference, July 7 and 8, 2010.

A full series of 11 interactive one-hour Web sessions right at your own computer! The sessions are listed at www.ala.org/annual. Each interactive program session focuses on some aspect of how to do your job better, and you will learn creative solutions for working smarter in this economy. You will have the opportunity to interact with speakers and other attendees during each session.

Each day will start with a keynote speaker, followed by the sessions, plus an optional 30-minute author lunch (followed by 30 minutes of down time). The conference runs each day from 11:00 a.m. Eastern/8:00 a.m. Pacific to 5:00 p.m. Eastern/2:00 p.m. Pacific.

Attend individually or with a group. Buy the package registration and get up to 15 IP addresses to share among employees, branches or departments. Don't miss out on one of the best bargains in continuing education in the library world today. Register now-just click the link below and you'll be on your way to a complete in-depth conference delivered right to your computer!

ALA 2010 Annual Virtual Conference

Annual 2008 Wrap Up

"Live" from YouTube, the ALA Annual Conference wrap-up video featuring Mickey, Minnie, Doc, Grumpy, and the gang, as well as a few librarians and notable speakers. Special thanks to the ALSC Blog (Association for Library Services for Children) for posting about the video.

Now, if only I could find video on YouTube from this year's Book Cart Drill Team competition!

Libraries Build Communities

Photograph c. ALA 2007

Don Wood, Program Officer Chapter Relations with ALA, sent 2008 Libraries Build Communities volunteers this photograph yesterday along with his thanks (you are welcome),a project evaluation form (I completed and returned it), and a request for photographs from individual sites (coming soon). This is the same picture featured in ALA Cognotes, Saturday, June 28 at ALA in Anaheim.

More than 100 conference attendees await their assignments before the kick of of Friday's "Libraries Build Communities" community service event. Volunteers were dispatched to 13 project sites in the Anaheim area to illustrte the importancer and influence local libraries can have on their communitries. Projects included helping a high school archive 115 years of its history, create a puppet show for grades K-4 (8-25 students) at a library serving a chilren's shelter and update another library's 20-year-old collection. "Libraries do help build communities," said Michael Dowling, director of ALA Chapter Relations Office. "We're excited to support the community and libraries in Anaheim and surrounding areas while we network to improve4 library services to millions of Americans across the country." - ALA Cognotes, Issue
1, 6/28/08

I selected Morse Elementary School from the listing of available locations. Upon arrival on Friday, I learned our task was to be cataloging! It's been years (eight or nine at least) since I have done any cataloging so I quickly volunteered for tech duties adding spine labels, reading levels, stamps, and library markings to cataloged titles. Team captain Rhonda Marker from Rutgers University, who contacted me via Facebook before ALA, led the way and our small group successfully cataloged eight boxes of Scholastic Book Fair titles for the library.

This is the second time I have been able to participate in the Libraries Build Communities effort, the first was in New Orleans; I highly recommend the volunteer experience. I hope to have a Picassa web album to share soon.

And yes, that is me in the front row holding my camera.

Visiting ALA Annual as a Newbie

Having been back from the Annual Conference in California for almost a week now I am settled back into the daily routine and ready to review my first time at ALA. As a new academic librarian and first timer to anything ALA related I was so excited to get there and see what brings 20,000 plus librarians away from their desks and out to the pacific coast. Of course I did the early bird registration and had been pouring over the preliminary program, trying to plan my conference time with appropriate sessions. As the conference grew closer I received much welcomed advice from my fellow colleagues also attending. One of the best pieces of advice, other than wear comfy shoes (which I of course only packed sandals with heels and ended up at Target in search of flip flops), was to leave yourself some breathing room. Often times there are additional events, sessions or just networking with others that pop up and will become a valuable resource. Also it is a good idea, if pre-planning your sessions, to pick back up options. Unfortunately, I was closed out of a session that filled up quickly only to find myself walking across the hall to attend my second choice. This turned out to be a wonderful session called Protecting Planet Earth sponsored by AFL FOLUSA, where each author not only captured my attention but gave away signed copies of their books!
Overall as a newbie, I think I did fairly well. I was happy with all of my selected sessions, only got lost once, took home 5 wonderful new books, and met some great people and decided to join a few organizations. The only thing I may not have done as well as others, is take full advantage of grabbing low cost and free items from the exhibit booths. Next time I'll be ready.
I would like to make mention of a great ALA organization called New Members Round Table (NMRT). I learned about this group at the conference and wished I would have discovered them sooner. They provide great resources and programs for new librarians or new ALA conference attendees or both. I recommend taking a look at their website. I know I will.

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.

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

Read the Words: audio from text

I found an interesting web site, ReadTheWords.com, via the Infodoodads blog post Read the Words: Text to Speech for Everyonethis morning.

This site, currently in Beta, allows registered users to upload text from sources such as Word, PDF, HTML, and RSS feeds, select a reader (several languages are available), and it creates an audio file in MP3 format that may be downloaded to a audio player, posted online, or embedded into a blog. Naturally, this is something I had to try for myself.

The registration process was minimal (name, age, location, and email) and a valid email and password needs to be established. Creating the audio was as simple as advertised, enter your text and desired audio title, pick the reader, and create the audio. When the reading is complete it displays in a table providing a list of recorded files by name and includes informational links pertaining to audio length, download MP3, embed on website or blog, and podcast. Status will be displayed with a bright green check mark signifying it is complete and there is an option for deleting any or all of your recordings. Additionally, it appears options to categorize readings, something a librarian will enjoy, exists.

With registration complete, I chose to use the text from the EBSS's 2008 ALA Annual Program: Knowledge Wants to Be Known, Open Access for the Behavioral Sciences. I made sure to have paragraph breaks appropriately placed, as well as punctuation. Here are the results:



Overall the sound quality is not too shabby and for anyone needing to create a quick audio file for a web page, say directions in a library or audio of a course handout for the visually impaired, this is ideal. A disappointment, it is audio only; avatar's do not actually read your text when choosing the blog embed option (the voice I selected to read is pictured above). To that point I am hoping the Beta version has a few upgrades planned. The only other thing I noticed is a few oddities with Blogger when I embedded it into a post, several times IE and Mozilla crashed as I was editing the post. I finally chose to add post text and then embed the code. Hopefully this was an issue with our campus computers and not something of concern.

If I can be sure the bugs are out, I may send the audio file to the EBSS webmaster and see if it can be added to the EBSS site for program announcements at ALA Annual.

Tags: Read the Words, infodoodads.com, EBSS, ALA Annual

New from AL Focus

Two new conference video links arrived in my AL Direct email this morning. Since instructions to embed the videos on a blog, "Copy and paste this code (make sure you get all of it) into your blog to embed it," are provided I'll post both of them here. Word of warning, I have had little luck viewing either of these in real time this morning. Even with Flash 9 downloaded there was a significant wait time while the videos loaded from Blip TV.

And yes, ALA is aware of this because they already have video help posted on the page.

Either way, there is a lot of traffic signifying a great deal of interest in these videos and/or our network connection is slow; regardless it is requiring more patience and time to view than I have available this morning. I will stop back later.

5 Days in 3 1/2 Minutes: Annual 2007 Wrap Up
AL Focus - July 16, 2007 - posted by Daniel

The Greg Show #1
AL Focus - July 13, 2007 - posted by Greg

Updated: 7/20/07

I removed the embedded shows late Friday afternoon; the slow connections with BlipTV were dragging down general load times for other page elements in the blog, including sidebar widgets and photographs. Links to these videos still work and will take you directly to AL Focus for viewing.


Tags: ALA Direct, American Libraries, AL Focus, ALA Conference

ALA Conference: Technical Services 2.0

Though not a technical services librarian, cataloger, systems librarian or any meaningful derivative thereof, I am an academic librarian interested in wikis, blogs, RSS feeds, social bookmarking and various other technologies included in the program description for the last session I attended at ALA Annual; Technical Services 2.0: Using Social Software for Collaboration, sponsored by Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALACTS) and Acquisitions Section (AS) was held Monday, June 25th from 1:30 to 3:30 pm. Moderated by Rick Lugg of R2 Consulting, this session featured:

• Matt Barnes, VP of Sales & Marketing, Blackwell Book Services
• Beth Picknally Camden, Director, Goldstein Information Processing Center, University of Pennsylvania Library
• Elizabeth L. Winter, Electronic Resources Coordinator, Acquisitions, Georgia Institute of Technology

All three speakers were well versed in their subject areas and presented appealing information regarding the use of 2.0 technologies in libraries. However, I have to admit I was most interested, actually intrigued is more accurate, with the library social bookmarking project presented by Picknally Camden.

Penn Tags is “a social bookmarking tool for locating, organizing, and sharing your favorite online resources. Members of the Penn Community can collect and maintain URLs, links to journal articles, and records in Franklin, our online catalog and VCat, our online video catalog.”(About Penn Tags)

Developed in-house at UPenn, anyone may view the project but only authorized users, UPenn login is required, are able to create and maintain tags. This process promotes a sense of ownership and responsibility for individuals involved in the folksonomy of tagging. As with many social bookmarking products, the more people using any given tag, the larger font used to display it within the over all tag cloud (at the time of this post, items in the cloud were tags used at least 66 times). It was my understanding that the project has yet to undergo a serious marketing push, but users have found it via the best grass roots marketing tool possible, word-of-mouth. What a great indication that Penn Tags has filled a niche within the 2.0 library.

Tags: ALA conference, Technical Services 2.0, Penn Tags, ALCTS, ALCTS, AS

ALA: Poster Sessions

This year marked the 26th Annual ALA Poster Session. The 2007 Annual Poster Session Abstracts booklet presents a history of the sessions stating that they "cover a broad range of subjects grouped according to such areas as management, collection development, technology, reference, and library services to special groups." (More information about poster sessions may be found here.)

There were six specific sessions of twenty posters scheduled throughout a three day period, June 23rd - 25th, totalling 120 posters of different ideas and topics from a diverse group of presenters. Poster sessions were in the exhibit hall, and even though a last minute change of location from one end of the hall to the other made finding them a bit challenging, I was very pleased with the interest generated.

My first poster session, Keep Blogging Along: Side by Side Library Blogs, was 1:00 - 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, June 24th, part of Poster Session IV: Outreach: Posters on Interlibrary Cooperation, Library Services to Special Groups, and Reference, and Information Services.



Presenting a poster is a great opportunity to converse one-on-one with people who are interested in your session topic. I had occasion to talk at length with current and budding bloggers about projects that worked, ones that did not live up to their potential, and how to determine the difference. There was significant interest in the blog widgets, particularly in how I was using LibraryThing in conjunction with the library specific blogs in IRC (unbeknownst to me, there was a session prior to poster time slot featuring a speaker from LibraryThing), as well as time management and blog purpose.

A Tale of Collaboration: The Art of the Picture Book Conference was 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Monday, June 25, part of Session V: Connections: Posters on Cooperation with Non-Library Institutions and Agencies, Interlibrary Loan, Library Use Instruction, and Public Awareness.



Thanks to everyone who stopped to talk and my apologies, again, to the last dozen or so people who did not get one of the blog poster session information/handout CD's. As promised, I have posted the CD information from both sessions online:

• Keep Blogging Along: Side By Side Library Blogs
• A Tale of Collaboration: The Art of the Picture Book Conference

Tags: 2007 ALA Annual Washington, D.C., Poster sessions, ALA, Academic Library Blogs, Academic Libraries and collaboration

American Libraries video

American Libraries debuted a video history at the opening session in D.C. last week. After seeing it fly by in less than five minutes, I was pleased to see the video posted at American Libraries, inside ALA. And, since they offered, I added it here:

Enjoy! More ALA conference program insights and comments to follow.

Tag: ALA Conference 2007, American Libraries, American Libraries 100 Years video, ALA

ALA in Washington, DC

It is that time of year, I will be taking a break from blogging for vacation and to attend ALA's Annual Conference in Washtington, DC. ALA annual is always a great experience with opportunity to attend not only ACRL meetings and sessions, but also children and young adult literature sessions by YALSA and ALSC, and various technology sessions by LITA.

Falling under the shameless self promotion category, I will also be presenting two poster sessions at the conference:

• Keep Blogging Along: Side By Side Library Blogs
  Sunday, June 24th: Session IV, Table 19
  1:00 pm – 2:30 pm

• A Tale of Collaboration: Art of the Picture Book Conference
  Monday, June 25th: Session V, Table 10
  11:00 am – 12:30 pm

Focusing mainly on blogs currently used for the IRC, the blogging poster session will also briefly discuss Library Cloud as a professional development tool. Stop by and say "hello."

Tags: ALA, ALA Annual Conference, ALA poster sessions