June 16th, 2009 Brian Herzog
A quick recap of my experiment to both twitter and blog the CMS Day workshop last week: I didn’t like it.
And interestingly, while catching up with rss that night, I read Librarian by Day very nicely summing up everything I didn’t like about it.
Blogging a conference is how I take notes for myself during the sessions - I don’t know if it’s helpful to anyone else, but it is to me, and I put it out there just in case someone else is curious. But twittering a conference ultimately felt like a series of inside jokes that only people at the conference would get.
Don’t get me wrong - the conference was great, which is why I was trying to share it. So perhaps it is my lack of tweet skills, but it didn’t seem that 140 characters, without the context of the conference, is very helpful (other than a laugh or two).
I’m still new to this, so forgive me if this observation has already been made: it occurred to me that twittering is the metadata of life. I can describe the conference or what I’m doing at any random moment, but it’s still just a description of something else. Metadata absolutely serves a purpose, but when it comes to conferences, maybe the most useful tweets are those that point to resources available elsewhere (or that are humorous one-liners).
Or, perhaps more likely, I’m just doing it wrong.
Tags: blogging, conference, Conferences, libraries, Library, nela, nela-its, nelaits, public, twitter, twittering, workshop See Also
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October 23rd, 2008 Brian Herzog
I was at the NELA 2008 conference this week, and spent yesterday and today going over my notes and trying to get caught up. Lots of good stuff, but here are a few of the highlights from the sessions I attended:
Ethan Zuckerman
If you ever have a chance to see Ethan Zuckerman speak, do it. Not only is he interesting and entertaining, but his work using technology to bridge cultural divides directly relates to what we do in libraries. He also approaches things from a global “big picture” viewpoint, which is a nice change from my generally myopic “what’s going on in my community” point of view. I learned a lot from Ethan, both library-related and otherwise - read the complete notes from his “The Internet is NOT Flat” session.
Men in the Library
Being a male, I was curious about Nancy Davis’ program called “The Vanishing Male: Guy Stuff That Lures and Hooks.” It was a discussion about why men generally use the library less than women, and what libraries can do to attract more male patrons:
- Men are “seekers” and not “browsers” - they want to go in, get their stuff, and leave. Libraries should have signage that caters to this, and be more open, so men don’t have to wander around looking or ask for help
- Book groups don’t work for a lot of men because men don’t like “sharing” - to get men to a book group, have it “led” by a scholar or other authority (male book groups prefer non-fiction books), and that way the men feel they’re getting something out of it
- For programming ideas, try anything tool-based, such as “greening” your house, installing solar panels, bike repair & maintenance, etc. Men also like father/son programs, like building a bird house or a “dads and donuts” story time early Saturday morning
- To get guys to come to programs, promote them in places where guys go: the hardware store, the transfer station, etc.
- Also, make sure you have men on your staff and on your board of trustees - it’s easier to attract males if they feel comfortable in the building, and book displays are more likely to appeal to them if the books are chosen by other guys
NOTE: Keep in mind that most of these are generalizations
Genealogy Core Collection
Cindy O’Neil, a certified genealogist with the Manchester (NH) City Library, explained the resources she felt were essential for libraries to offer their patrons doing genealogical research. Her handout was a bibliography important genealogy resources, and I tried to include as many of them as possible in my session notes on the NELA conference blog. Definitely worth checking out and comparing to your resources.
Of course I got a lot more out of the conference, but these were the things that stuck with me that I wouldn’t have gotten if I didn’t go. A lot more information on the other sessions are available on the NELA 2008 conference blog.
Update: I don’t know how I could have left this out: For people wanting a real hands-on demo of how to very quickly improve their library’s website, Lichen Rancourt’s presentation on how she converted the Manchester (NH) City Library’s website from static to Library 2.0 is a must see. Even while working within the City’s content management package (which means these changes apply to any website management tool), she brought the real spirit, vibrancy and interactivity of the physical library to the website. The improvements include a flickr badge, a Wordpress blog feed for up-to-date news and information, and an events feed.
See Also
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October 21st, 2008 Brian Herzog
Right now I’m in Manchester, NH, for the 2008 NELA conference. In addition to being an attendee and a speaker, I’m also blogging the sessions I attend for the NELA conference blog (read my posts).
This year there are ten volunteer bloggers, and I think it’s great -
- great that NELA is supporting a blog
- great that people volunteer to contribute
- great that the notes we take during sessions are available for all attendees, people who couldn’t come, trustees who need to see these things, and anyone else who is interested
There are lots of worthwhile conferences and workshops every year, and I go to very few of them. I think it’s important for these conferences to extend beyond the conference dates and facility to reach the people who can’t come. Considerations for “virtual attendance” seems to be getting more common, in fits and starts, but I think it’ll happen.
Along these lines, RUSA has recently asked a small group of librarians to look at this very issue. The goal of this task force is to recommend
a suite of technology-based approaches to virtual membership, virtual attendance at conference, podcasting or videocasting conference programs, the creation of webinars to be hosted by RUSA, and a range of other approaches that would provide resources to our members – both those that attend conference and those for whom conference attendance is a barrier to participation.
Now this is an organization moving in the direction of its members. Thank you, RUSA. I’m not sure what the end result of the task force will be, but just the fact that a large, member-based organization like this is paying attention to the needs of its members is a step in the right direction.
And hopefully, once RUSA develops and implements a good model, it will spread to the rest of the ALA.
But for the time being, don’t be afraid to let your consortia, library associations, or other conference groups know what works and doesn’t work for you, and where your needs are and aren’t being met. That’s the best way to get the resources tailored to our needs.
Update: I forgot to mention that the Internet Librarian conference is also going on right now - check out blog posts tagged with il2008 on google blog search.
Tags: blog, blogging, blogs, conference, Conferences, librarians, libraries, Library, nela, nela2008, new england library association, notes, rusa, sessions See Also
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October 14th, 2008 Brian Herzog
The New England Library Association’s 2008 Annual Conference starts this weekend, Oct. 19-21st. This year’s conference is in Manchester, NH, and there is still time to register if you’d like to attend.
To supplement the conference sessions for people who can’t attend, there will be a conference blog again this year. Last year, volunteers posted notes from the sessions they attended, and there were so many positive comments that NELA is doing it again. The blog is sponsored by Plymouth Rocket and is available at http://nelib.wordpress.com.
If you are interested in being a conference blogger, please contact Kathy Lussier at klussier@semls.org with questions or to sign up. Here’s a bit of an overview:
What do you need to be a conference blogger?
- Bloggers need some degree of writing ability and must feel comfortable posting with an online form (posting to a blog is as easy as sending an e-mail)
- You do not need your own blog, since NELA will be hosting the conference blog
- Bloggers can post about conference sessions, meetings or events. You can post notes from a session or write about what you took away from the session. We do ask that you commit to a minimum of two posts for each day you are blogging
- If you aren’t a blogger, but prefer taking photos, we have also created a NELA group on Flickr where you can post your conference snapshots. The group is available at http://flickr.com/groups/nela
Even if you aren’t going to blog, please do check it out and let us know what you think. The goal is to make this blog as useful as possible, and all comments and suggestions are appreciated.
And if you’re going, I hope you enjoy the conference. It’s always a great place to network with librarians, learning about what’s happening in the library world (such as Work Like A Patron Day), or attend a panel discussion (such as Library 2.0 For You).
I’ll be there, and if you see me, please say hi.
Tags: blog, blogging, conference, Conferences, libraries, Library, nela, nela2008, nelib, new england library association, public See Also
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April 17th, 2007 Brian Herzog
Even though cil2007 has already been going on for two days, today felt like things really got started. I ended up spending as much time in the exhibit hall as in the sessions, talking to vendors and other librarians. Which is unusual for me, but I learned quite a bit today.
Today’s sessions were good. The first was about the South Carolina State Library’s experience with migrating their website to the Joomla CMS. It wasn’t as in-depth and “here’s how we did it” as I had hoped, but they did talk a bit about frustrations and surprises they encountered along the way, which is good to hear before starting a project. I am hoping to sometime in the future help convert my library’s website from static html to something more dynamic, rssy and all 2.0′d out, and seeing what CMSs are out there helps.
This session complimented nicely the next two I attended – Comments in Catalogs, and then an overview of LibraryThing (and the new LibraryThing for Libraries). This entire track focused on modernizing libraries’ approach to web stuff, and how we can best communicate with patrons – primarily by making sure we look at this communication as a two-way street.
For instance, opening up our websites and catalogs to allow for patrons to comment directly on our materials not only involves patrons in their libraries by giving them ownership, but also provides us with invaluable social data on how and why our materials are used.
And it was this social data that Tim Spaulding is mining and using with LibraryThing. Regular people know what they think of books. Tim’s entire approach has been to let people associate keywords with specific books, and then let the groupings of those keywords speak for themselves. With the widget that is the basis of LibraryThing for Libraries, those groupings, (in the form of tags generating lists of similar books, suggested reading lists, etc) speaks loudly.
If we would only listen. As Tim pointed out, library ILSs and opacs, and the traditional vendors that supply them, are not really listening. Neither is Amazon. These are all companies trying to make money (which is why Amazon is not the ultimate book website. LibraryThing is for readers and about books, whereas Amazon is for booksellers and about making money). But improving the usefulness of our catalogs with third-party plug-ins is a step in the right directions, and hopefully these obviously necessary add-ins will soon becomes standard fare of the big ILS interfaces – or smaller solutions like Scriblio.
Interspersed between sessions I was talking to exhibitors, learning more about what library systems could replace Horizon, and what public pc/print station management software options are out there. I talked to quite a few, and need to sift through my notes (some other time) before I remember what’s what.
After the conference we got a personal tour of Alexandria, VA, dinner in the Old Town at the Union Street Public House, and then enjoyed Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry’s. Tomorrow is much more conferencing, and then flying back to Boston, if the weather allows.
alexandria va, cil 2007, cil2007, conference, conferences, libraries, library, library thing, librarything, public libraries, public library, scriblio, social data, tim spaulding
Tags: alexandria va, cil 2007, cil2007, conference, Conferences, libraries, Library, library thing, librarything, public libraries, public library, scriblio, social data, tim spaulding See Also
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