The PLA Blog | Official Blog of the Public Library Association
Last minute CALL FOR BLOGGERS at PLA SPRING SYMPOSIUM!!!
Greetings my friends! The PLA Spring Symposium is running from Thursday, April 2 to Saturday April 4 in Nashville, Tennessee! If you are going to be there, we’d be awfully happy to have you share your experiences on the blog so that everyone at home can follow along. I’ll be attending a workshop called “Silk [...]
CIL 2009: Unconferences
While I had planned to attend “Library Website and Library Catalog: One Stop!” I accidentally went to the room for “Unconferences.” The panelists (the vivacious Kathryn Greenhill from Murdoch University Library, Steve Lawson from Colorado College, Stephen Francoeur from Baruch College, and John Blyberg from Darien Library) and the track moderator (Steven Cohen from Law [...]
CIL 2009: New Strategies for Digital Natives
Helene Blowers, Director of Digital Strategy at the Columbus Metropolitan Library — aka the mastermind behind the ubiquitous 23 Things program — talked about digital natives, those born 1980 or after. The first web was built on the idea of “find” while the second was built on the idea of “connect.” Top 5 Social Networking [...]
ASCLA/RUSA Seeks Executive Director
The American Library Association (ALA) is seeking to fill the position of Executive Director for the Association of Specialized and Cooperative Library Agencies (ASCLA) and the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA), divisions of ALA, with a combined membership of over 6,000. The ASCLA-RUSA Executive Director is responsible for day-to-day management of each division, including [...]
CIL 2009: Tiny Libraries, Tiny Tech, Innovative Services
I’m attending this conference on a tattered shoe string. I’m originally from the Baltimore Washington area, so I’m crashing on the futon of some friends who live in DC. My library ponied up the funds for registration and I traveled down 95 on Bolt, a discount bus that comes with wi-fi. (It seemed appropriate to [...]
CIL 2009: Infotoday Blog
They’re covering a lot of the sessions over at the Infotoday Blog, and the blog mentioned that tomorrow morning’s keynote speech/interview with Erik Boekesteijn and NYPL’s Paul Hodergraber will be streamed live. Tune in at 9 am.
CIL 2009: Website Redesign Pitfalls
We’re gearing up for a website redesign at Queens Library, so I headed to hear Jeff Wisniewski, Web Services Librarian at the University of Pittsburgh, speak about things to avoid and things to embrace in the overhaul process. Wisniewski started off by noting bad reasons and good reasons to initiate redesign. Bad ones included boredom [...]
Computers in Libraries 2009
Greetings. I’m Karen Keys from Queens Library in New York and I’ll be checking in and posting from the Computers in Libraries 2009 conference. I’ve got some sessions I plan to attend over the next three days, but take a look at the program and comment if you’d like me to report on anything in [...]
Meme Factory at 3rd Ward
Last Tuesday I went to 3rd Ward for the Meme Factory event. I’d love to see an auditorium full of librarians grit their teeth and sit through the Meme Factory presentation and its brutally pornographic, racist, twisted moments and struggle to understand the idea that the internet can be about *attention* and not *content*. It [...]
Threats to Newspapers are Opportunities for Libraries
An interesting idea blows in with the spring breeze this Monday in a guest post from Scott Nicholson, Associate Professor at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies and director of the MSLIS program. Nicholson also heads up the Library Game Lab of Syracuse where he does research on the intersection of games and libraries. Check [...]
