The PLA Blog | Official Blog of the Public Library Association
Interview with Unshelved at ALA 2008
Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum, the two very awesome guys behind the comic Unshelved, took a break from their booth duties on the ALA exhibits floor to do an interview with me. I used my Blackberry and placed a phone call to a service called Utterz (think Twitter but multimedia, with the ability to post [...]
The Los Angeles ALA of Anaheim
In my first PLA Blog guest entry, I mentioned my plans for the conference. How did I do? I plan to talk to Tim Spalding about his ideas for revamping classification, because Dewey may not be the best choice for everyone. And to colleagues who are implementing faceted interfaces for their catalogs (Collingswood will be [...]
Everyone Else Likes Having Found: 360 Minutes into the Future of the Catalog
Stephen Abram is a can’t miss panelist. He accepts, more fully than anyone else I’ve seen present at a library conference, that public speaking is theater, and theater benefits from the play of opposites, from presenters willing to play the foil. And so, last Saturday for the LITA Internet Resources and Services Interest Group’s “There’s [...]
Saturday Morning Stretch
I felt like I should show up for Saturday morning’s “Stretching Existing Staff” in disguise. Or, perhaps, in a bull’s-eye t-shirt with a “Kick Me” sign taped to my back. I mean, I know all too well that my colleagues are being stretched, and they know they’re being stretched, and they know that I know, [...]
Collection Management in Public Libraries
This was a discussion forum Monday morning primarily attended by Collection Development managers of various public library systems. Discussion topics were proposed by attendees as they introduced themselves, and floating collections was one of the big topics. Several libraries had implemented floating (including mine), and we were able to share some best practices. Other topics [...]
Who is Using Your Computers?
This session on Sunday afternoon was a discussion forum sponsored by the RUSA-MARS division of ALA. It’s subtitle was “Best practices for managing and serving public computer users.” The facilitators created a list of questions to promote discussion that fell into 3 broad categories: technology, patron behavior & needs, and policy. Technology questions focused [...]
PACs in the Library 2.0 World (PLA)
PACs in the Library 2.0 World (PLA) This session was a panel consisting of four presenters, each addressing a different aspect. Ross MacLachlan of the Phoenix Public Library Endeca: Developments in the OPAC World The Phoenix Public Library uses Endeca because: it is a search engine it harvests data it enables guided navigation it is [...]
2008 ALSC Newbery/Caldecott Banquet
This year’s Caldecott/Newbery Banquet was one of the best I’ve attended. The speeches were awesome and the entire night was delightful. Karen Breen, 2008 Caldecott chair, presented the Caldecott Honor: to Laura Vaccaro Seeger for First the Egg, published by Roaring Brook Press/Neal Porter Books to Kadir Nelson for Henry’s Freedom Box: A True Story [...]
Interview with the…
In the past two days I’ve attended two presentations, spanning six hours, on The Catalog. In that time, no one talked about one of my major concerns: users can’t search for the articles in our collection, which means they can’t find them without our help. Perhaps this is such a big issue that it’s not worth mentioning, or [...]
Going Green
I’m the Assistant Library Manager at the Perry Hall Branch of the Baltimore County Public Library (MD) http://www.bcpl.info and I’ve been a librarian with BCPL for over 25 years. This is my first time blogging for PLA, although I’ve been blogging conferences for my library all year. http://bcpltrip.blogspot.com However, I don’t have all the skills [...]
