LISNews: Librarian News

From the Web Urbanist

"The meaning of a book goes far beyond mere printed words. Books are symbols – for knowledge, fantasy, curiosity and so many other things – and even in an increasingly digital world where many books are only available in electronic format, these collections of bound pages maintain their hold upon our collective psyche. Perhaps that’s why they make such a startlingly unexpected and emotive medium for art of all kinds, from towering art installations to delicate paper sculptures. These 12 works of book art and architecture transcend the messages contained in the pages, both celebrating the books’ intrinsic value and tearing it down to convey something new...."the rest is here - with pictures.

LIS707 – Organization of Information Materials by Cover– 3 credits
Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress classification systems are disregarded in this study that focuses on the concerns and techniques of organizing items by cover and the modern library users’ information-seeking behavior. Concentrates on the understanding and application of this in demand trend, including how to separate colors and the differences between scary and sexy vampires.

more at: http://www.closedstacks.com/?p=3258

Not really library-related but in my experience, librarians tend to be cat lovers (don't flame me....I know not everyone loves cats -- I'm speaking generally and from _my_ experience.)

Here's a chance to turn your cat loving tendencies into a travel career that might pay more than your library job...(at least for a while) courtesy of Purina. Read all about it here.

From the Chronicle of Higher Ed
March 8, 2011, 4:32 pm
By Ben Wieder

The developers of Mendeley, a research-management tool that has more than a million users, want to put more than 70 million academic papers, reader recommendations, and social-networking tags to new and innovative uses. The company announced Tuesday its “Binary Battle,” a contest for outside developers to build applications drawing from Mendeley’s collected information, with a $10,001 grand prize for the best new application.

“If you’ve ever thought, ‘You know, I really wish I could search the literature better’ or ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if I could see how this idea evolved over time?’ or just ‘I wish I had $10,001 dollars,’ well, now’s your chance,” says the company blog.....More here...

Mendeley blog

From the Brain Pickings blog
By Maria Popova
2011 is barely underway and it’s already been a tumultuous year for the evolution of publishing. As entire industries struggle to plot the future of the book, we find it important to take a step back and take a look at its past. An 8-bit unicorn tipped us off to the priceless 1947 documentary Making Books — a joint effort of Encyclopedia Britannica Films and the Library of Congress that will make you gasp and wince and gasp again as it opens its treasure chest of retro technology, matter-of-factly industrialism and unwitting vintage sexism.

Watch it here

If You Knew Then What I Know Now from Sarabande Books on Vimeo.

This book trailer got a good write up at Publisher's Weekly.

I just had an epiphany while resetting an old man's default browser to IE. He said the tech guy installed Google Earth for him but also installed Chrome and told it to be the default browser. The old guy was lost because Chrome didn't look the same and he couldn't find his favorites.

So I reset everything and explained that techies prefer Chrome. And then I had to explain what Chrome is. And then I explained again that techies hate Microsoft and prefer Google, but I didn't get into why because this old man seemed confused by the fact that there's more than one browser on his computer. And since old people get angry when they get confused, I left him to check his email and look at old lady porn.

But what I realized is that librarians are not professionals.

Librarians get along with everyone. We try to play nice. We make rules to accommodate everyone. We include everyone in the discussion. We call anyone who works in a library a librarian. We think all librarians are great and that they offer worthwhile contributions to the profession. We would never fill a sock with D batteries and beat a patron over the head for talking too loudly on his phone.

But real professionals argue with each other. When I watch those one-hour dramatic presentations on television, all the lawyers and doctors and computer guys and detectives all hate each other. The criticize other lawyers or doctors or computer guys or detectives and say how they suck at their jobs and how they're alcoholics or criminals or whores.

And that's what makes a profession. Infighting. -- Read More

I have noticed the past few days how many LIS postings are by usernames which start with B (mine included :). And some of these are very good friends of mine :). An interesting pattern which I'm probably not the only one to notice. :)

• Bearkat
  
• Bibliofuture
  
• Bibliophile Adventure
  
• Birdie
  
• Blake ("LIS News: since 1999 and still doing fine" :))

Not sure if this qualifies as a "Friday Funnies" category or not, but it is worth a shot...

This will be interesting to watch develop. I love TED talks.

From the Chronicle of Higher Ed
March 2, 2011, 12:36 pm

By Jeff Young

Long Beach, Calif.—The leaders of the annual TED conference, known for featuring short, carefully prepared talks on big ideas about technology and society, hope to apply their approach to education.....Read more here.

I downloaded the Microsoft Tags Reader for my phone and scanned one of the USA Today tags. It wasn’t in the best light and the app didn’t recognize the tag at first but in a "Blade Runner Deckard" type moment the app triangulated, centered, and focused on the tag image and then pulled up the newspaper's business headlines - wow! It makes me wonder what publishers in general and libraries could already or potentially be using these tags for. Maybe some libraries are already using MS Tags or other tags?

The Valentine's Day webcast featured three ARL libraries—Johns Hopkins, McMaster, and the University of Washington—that have engaged the Balanced Scorecard framework, created by Harvard business professors Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, in their strategy development through an ARL collaborative community based project. Ascendant Strategy Management, a consulting firm specializing in the application of the Balanced Scorecard framework in mission-driven non-profit organizations, will present the Balanced Scorecard theory with in-depth insights from organizations they have worked with in the not-for-profit sector. Ascendant is the consulting firm working with ARL to bring the effective implementation of strategy development with the Balanced Scorecard to libraries.

Workshop presenters include:

* Martha Kyrillidou, Association of Research Libraries
* Ted Jackson, Ascendant Strategy Management
* Winston Tabb and Liz Mengel, Johns Hopkins University
* Betsy Wilson and Steve Hiller, University of Washington
* Jeffrey Trzeciak and Vivian Lewis, McMaster University

The webcast is useful both for those interested in learning more about the Balanced Scorecard and for those who are interested in engaging with ARL and Ascendant in 2011 to develop their strategy using a well-established and proven perspective.

Watch it here.

Always interesting reading....

The British Library has launched its new strategy, setting out how it plans to develop its collections and services over the next four years.

Growing Knowledge: The British Library’s Strategy 2011-2015 outlines the UK national library’s key objectives and strategic priorities to the middle of the decade, and emphasizes the need to deliver more for less in a challenging economic climate.

The new strategy follows the publication last September of the Library’s 2020 Vision, which highlighted the key trends and opportunities for the next decade. The 2020 Vision was based upon twelve months of extensive research and consultation; it presented five themes that would help deliver the Library’s ten-year vision of becoming “a leading hub in the global information network, advancing knowledge through its collections, expertise and partnerships, for the benefit of the economy and society and the enrichment of cultural life.”

The Library’s strategy for 2011-2015 contains five strategic priorities, based on the 2020 Vision’s themes:

1. Guarantee access for future generations
2. Enable access for everyone who wants to do research
3. Support research communities in key areas for social and economic benefit
4. Enrich the cultural life of the nation
5. Lead and collaborate in growing the world’s knowledge base

Read the details here.

Librarians frequently find themselves in the role of facilitator. This blog post by Chris Corrigan has some tips about giving instructions, an often overlooked art.

"I think one of the hardest things to do as a facilitator is master the art of giving instructions. Even for facilitators, public speaking can be a stressful experience, and there is nothing worse than trying to give instructions to a group while your knees are shaking and your mouth is dry. But for all facilitators, and and especially those of us who work with radically new ways of meeting, this is a whole art in itself. Giving instructions poorly leads to confusion and chaos and can quickly erode the trust of a group. Being too direct can shut people down and create a sterile meeting. The art is finding the space between the two......"

Read the rest here.

I had the pleasure of hearing David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States (and the first librarian to hold the position) speak this morning at the NFAIS conference in Philadelphia. I'll sleep better tonight knowing our national records are in good hands.

In addition to all the serious things he talked about (the twitter feed was #nfais11 and it was probably blogged somewhere) he told about a challenge put to the readers of the Prologue: Pieces of History blog: If our Founding Fathers had Twitter. Not quite The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation but still amusing.

From the Chronicle of Higher Education
February 28, 2011, 6:41 pm
By Tushar Rae

The steady growth of e-books has forced libraries to contend with how to curate and distribute materials in a way that makes them easy for increasingly technology-oriented patronage to access.

Some 150 public and academic libraries are trying to respond to that challenge through a new collaboration with the Internet Archive and Open Library. The arrangement will allow library patrons at participating institutions to access e-books owned and stored at libraries other than their home libraries. Brewster Kahle, founder and digital librarian at the Internet Archive, says the group has come up with a solution in which “the tech doesn’t suck” and “everyone will get paid.”......Read the rest here.

After over a year of wishing and several hours of searching (spread out over that year) I have finally found an app for my Android powered smartphone which will allow me to add annotations and highlights to Adobe Acrobat .PDF files. The program is called Repligo Reader from Cerience and is available on the Android Market either on your phone or on the web.

Full review at: http://www.ideationizing.com/2011/03/pdf-annotations-on-android.html

P.S. I have nothing to do with Cerience. I just found a good product that meets my demands for allowing me to maintain control over my documents and annotations, and I wanted to tell people about it.

For better or worse an operational calendar is being updated using IceOwl with Google Calendar hosting it on the back-end. To keep up with the production calendar, use this link in your calendaring package:

http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/erielookingproductions@gmail.com/public/basic.ics

A few weeks ago I pulled a number of books for a Commedia dell'arte performance course. The subject range of books I pulled for the session covered a large gamut of topics: art, dance, costume, literature, theatre, swordplay, wagons, etc. Following my presentation to the class, a student mentioned that seeing too many books gave her a headache. She further qualified that and said that not many things gave her a headache. In response I provided her the imagery of looking at the bookshelves as looking at a web page and going off in a number of different but related directions. She gave a somewhat quizzical look, but a few seconds later an approving nod. I felt like maybe, just maybe, I provided a connection that she could relate to.

Richard Curtis, veteran literary agent and president of Ereads.com, shared a few publishing predictions for 2011.

Here is a talk by Curtis in 1999 called Content Spoken Here