The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation presented its 2008 Access to Learning Award of US$1 million to the Vasconcelos Program in Veracruz, Mexico, for its innovative efforts to connect people to information through free access to computers, the Internet, and training using all-terrain buses equipped with mobile technology classrooms. The Vasconcelos Program has increased opportunities for communities by helping to improve education and economic conditions in the region.

ShareThis

In an effort to raise awareness of the study and draw attention to the wealth of resources public libraries are brokering for their communities to freely use online, the ALA plans to highlight this finding in its media materials.

“Licensed databases,” however, means little to people outside libraries and knowledge management. We’d like to highlight a handful of “fan favorites” – databases that get the most traffic and kudos from public library patrons – and “hidden gems” – databases that librarians love and want everyone to know about. Visit this link to participate in the survey. Based on emails from reference librarians (thanks, RUSA!), we’ve created a short menu of response options, but you can add your own in the “other” box.

Thanks in advance for helping us select a few favorites to share in future communications. If you have a memorable example of how one of your “premium Web sites” helped a library patron, we invite you to share that, as well. This survey will close Friday, August 22.

ShareThis

Public library directors and trustees - tell us your stories. We want to hear about your experiences, working together, particularly in situations where job boundaries (between directors and boards) might be overstepped. We want to hear it all, the good, the bad, and the ugly…we’d also like to hear how the situations were resolved. Send us an essay detailing your situation (anonymous submissions are okay) and maybe we’ll use it in an upcoming Perspectives column in Public Libraries. All essays must be 700 words or less, and received by September 1, 2008. We will notify authors of acceptance soon thereafter. Send essays or queries to Perspectives editor Nanci Milone-Hill, or PL editor, Kathleen Hughes, .

ShareThis

Thanks in part to events like Teen Read Week, an annual initiative of the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), teen books now enjoy unprecedented critical success and popularity. Since its inception in 1998, Teen Read Week (www.ala.org/teenread) has encouraged teens to visit their public and school libraries, select their own reading material and read for the fun of it. Teen Read Week 2008 will be celebrated in more than 4,000 libraries across the U.S. on Oct. 12-18.

Teen literature is in its golden age. The most highly anticipated book of 2008, “Breaking Dawn,” is aimed at young adults, with teen books taking up many spots on best-seller lists from USA Today and Amazon.com, among others. Many adult authors have begun writing fiction for teens, and book editors and librarians across the U.S. agree that literature aimed at young adults is better than ever. As overall book sales stagnate, young adult publishing is a bright spot; a 2008 article in Newsweek says sales for books aimed at those ages 12-18 have increased more than 25 percent.

“In the age of the Internet, people sometimes assume that teens don’t want to read when the truth is that older teens often enjoy reading – and sales statistics and circulation figures can show this,” said YALSA President Sarah Cornish Debraski. “Teens just need to get their hands on the right materials, and reading now encompasses many forms: magazines, newspapers, blogs, audio books and graphic novels. It’s important to provide teens with a wide variety of reading material and allow them to make their own selections.”

As teen literature has become more popular, teens remain regular library users. A poll conducted for ALA by Harris Interactive in 2007 found more than 78 percent of surveyed teens borrowed books and other materials for personal use from public libraries, while 60 percent sought out materials for personal use from their school library.

Libraries have responded to teen library use by increasing young adult library staff, programs and services. According to the 2007 Public Library Data Service (PLDS) Statistical Report, published by the Public Library Association (PLA), a division of ALA, nearly 90 percent of the nation’s public libraries now offer programs tailored to the needs and interests of young adults, and 51.9 percent employ at least one full-time staff equivalent in this area, up from 11 percent in 1995.

Each year, the Teen Read Week theme changes to aid libraries in their programming. The 2008 Teen Read Week theme is “Books with Bite @ your library®,” which promotes a variety of books – from vampire stories to cooking to technology (byte) – as a tool for getting young adults to read for the fun of it. During Teen Read Week, teens will also be able to participate in the Teens’ Top Ten (www.ala.org/teenstopten) , in which teens voice their choice for their favorite books. Last year teens cast more than 6,000 online votes in the Teens’ Top Ten.

Mirrorstone Books, a subsidiary of Wizards of the Coast, is the 2008 Corporate Sponsor of Teen Read Week for the second year.. Promotional Partners include ALA Graphics, Evanced solutions, Galaxy Press, Hachette Book Group USA/Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, Random House/Listening Library, Scholastic, School Library Journal and Zest Books. Nonprofit supporting organizations include the Adlit.org, American Association of School Administrators, American Booksellers Association, Cable in the Classroom, International Reading Association, Kids Care, Kidsnet, The N/Noggin, National Association of Secondary School Principals, National Education Association, National School Boards Association, SmartGirl.org, Speak Up Press, Swept Away TV/The Rock Star Stories, and TeenInk.

For more information on Teen Read Week, please visit www.ala.org/teenread, or contact Macey Morales, ALA Media Relations Manager, 312-280-4393, , or Jennifer Petersen, ALA PR Coordinator, 312-280-4393, .

ShareThis

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 pictures, video, and audio from your phone and your computer) to record the interview and post it directly to the internet. I’m *finally* cross-posting it here.

Press the play button below to listen to the interview:

I’d love to hear them speak at a PLA event someday.

ShareThis

ShareThis

“It is through the preservation and care of our collective heritage that America’s communities stay vital,” said Anne-Imelda M. Radice, Director of IMLS “These grants are intended to assist institutions, as our nation’s stewards of cultural collections, with activities that ensure the safekeeping and care of these precious artifacts and with sharing the impact of these activities with their communities.”

The grants of up to $3,000 are aimed at completing stand-alone conservation projects that convey the essential character and experience of the United States. Examples of fundable projects are provided in the grant guidelines.

The partnership builds on IMLS’s Connecting to Collections: A Call to Action, a multi-year, multi-pronged initiative to raise public awareness and inspire action on the care of America’s collections. That initiative implements recommendations of an IMLS-supported study, A Public Trust at
Risk: The Heritage Health Index Report on the State of America’s Collections, which found that nearly 190 million objects in U.S. collections are in immediate danger of deterioration and need restoration or conservation.

For questions about museum projects, please contact Christine Henry, Senior Program Officer, at 202-653-4674 to discuss your questions. For questions about library or archival projects, please contact Susan Malbin, Senior Program Officer, at 202-653-4768.

The deadline for application is September 15, 2008. IMLS and Bank of America will notify applicants of final decisions in January 2009, with projects to begin no earlier than February 1, 2009.

To learn more please visit www.imls.gov.

ShareThis

Each executive leadership program varies in length, as well as scope and focus. Once a candidate is approved by the school and the PLA Leadership Taskforce, he or she will be notified of his or her acceptance. The PLA Leadership Fellows program will cover the cost of tuition for the program, as well as housing and most meals. Transportation and any additional meals are the responsibility of the attendee.

Candidates must be PLA members who are management staff in a public library system with a minimum of five years experience in a leadership role. Anyone interested in applying should review each program to determine which one is right for you. Selected participants will be asked to share their experience at a PLA program and provide input to the Leadership Taskforce in an effort to help shape a comprehensive leadership development program for PLA. More information about the PLA Leadership Fellows, program dates, and the application process is available at www.pla.org.
.

ShareThis

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 rolling out a Scriblio-powered website in the next couple of weeks).

I had a very good meeting with Tim, and I look forward to continuing our conversation via email in the near future.

I was also invited to join the folks from Darien Library for drinks and dinner. Quoting Kate Sheehan, they’re “an incredible group of people who are building not only a stunning new library but also the future of libraries and librarianship.” Or, as Darien’s John Blyberg wrote, “From rethinking our entire classification system to planning how to use a building that is wired to the hilt, to an RFID conversion, to a major web redesign, to some other things yet-to-be-announced, we’re about to enter a period of serious metamorphosis.” It was a wonderful evening. Their patrons are fortunate to have such warm and talented people working in their behalf.

I want to talk to the folks at LibLime and those who are using Koha to see how it might help us deliver better customer service.

I attended a meeting of the nascent Koha user group, led by Meadville Public Library’s John Brice and LibLime’s Josh Ferraro. Koha is making great strides, and I look forward to working with the software and the community in the near future.

I definitely plan to talk to OCLC about exposing our records in WorldCat.

Is it rude to collar Andrew Pace and Roy Tennant when they’re drink-in-hand? Because I did it to each of them. I got Roy at the WebJunction party, Andrew at the OCLC blogger salon. There’s no question in my mind that both of them would genuinely love to have small libraries’ collections in WorldCat, and, as both pointed out, Karen Calhoun has already written about this very thing. They hear us; they’re working on it. They need to hear from more of us; they need to make it a higher priority.

Some other thoughts:

Why is it so difficult to get a vegetarian meal in Anaheim?

LITA’s Top Tech Trends needs an overhaul. It managed to be interesting at Midwinter in spite of its use of technology. But, at least for me, the brilliance of last Sunday’s panelists and moderator couldn’t overcome the myriad problems introduced by trying to include virtual panelists and Meebo/Twitter-based audience participation.

LAMA (soon to be LLAMA) 101 was interesting. It’s a welcoming group, and I look forward to joining in the fun. One bit of strangeness: no one sat in the first several rows of seats. That’s pretty typical for library conferences in general, but I thought it would be different among leaders, administrators, and managers. I guess it’s all relative.

ACRL President, Jule Todaro, and keynote speaker, Dan Ariely, did a fantastic job at Monday’s President’s Program, as did my fellow panelists. Everyone involved was kind and brilliant and a joy to work with and get to know. I’m very excited about PLA and L(L)AMA and the folks who have become colleagues now that I’m working at Collingswood Public Library. But I’m going to miss having a formal relationship with ACRL.

ShareThis

The following are a few of the many highlights from this program. Listen to the MP3 for more.

What are catalogs good for? What are they not good for?

Coyle: The original card catalogs were the Google of their day. Now just 3% of all searches start at the library.
Abram: Catalogs are everything we want, nothing that users want. Librarians aren’t going to give you what you want, they’re going to give you what they’ve got.
Coyle: Why shouldn’t users discover library resources on Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, etc.? And why is the library catalog a dead-end, a place that has links to it, but no links out?
Abram: Why don’t you have a Meebo widget or another live Ask a Librarian option on every failed search?

What about WorldCat Local and the Open Library: the one big catalog in the sky approach?

Coyle: One big catalog is nonsense. All data should be exposed on the web, not as an inventory, but as a bibliography consisting of a million little catalogs, all resource-oriented. Do not start with place. And we need to let other people do things with the data, even things we don’t like.
Schneider: I envision lots of big catalogs. But sometimes place does matter. Sometimes you want to go into a building and check out a book.
Abram: WorldCat is not a catalog. It’s a registry for data.
Janes: WorldCat is a catalog. It’s the University of Washington catalog.

What should catalogers do going forward?

Schneider: We need to celebrate what is good about cataloging. So many techies end up reinventing cataloging.
Janes: I taught the class that resulted in the founding of the Internet Public Library. As it grew, we needed metadata and better organization. There was a computer science student in the class who handled the back-end. Basically, he ended up reinventing Dewey.
Abram: Catalogers have reinvented themselves over the past 20 years. They’re informing Google, Yahoo, etc. But not library interfaces.
Coyle: We’ve forgotten why we do what we do. For instance, why don’t we use title case? Are the things we’re doing serving our needs today?
Schneider: This is part of a larger problem. Libraries are dogma driven. Very little that we do is based on evidence.

What would you like to have happen in the library software market?

Schneider: I’d like it if every product were open source.
Abram: I’d like everyone to catch up with the latest release of the software they’re running. You need to upgrade every year.
Coyle: I’d like systems to separate library management from user services.
Janes: I wish the market were bigger, because greater demand would increase the supply of good stuff. Much of what we use feels homespun. Shouldn’t we merit major software players’ attention? I’m talking Apple. Nintendo. Our largest enemy is indifference.

If there’s really an anti-Stephen Abram, it’s Martha Yee. Quiet and dignified, a cataloger’s cataloger, Yee can work an ALCTS room into a hand-clapping, foot-stomping frenzy by pushing up the sleeves on her cardigan or asking if anyone might like some tea. At least that’s how it feels. And when you’re sharing a stage with futurists like Jennifer Bowen, Dianne Hillman, Tim Spalding, and Roy Tennant (along with moderator Robert Wolven), as Yee did at last Sunday’s “Creating the Future of the Catalog and Cataloging,” sometimes you need someone who speaks for the people, who shares their past, who lives in the moment. However, while Yee is anything but a techno-utopian, she is also anything but reactionary.

Her presentation was on the Semantic Web. To her credit, she’s put more time into figuring out how RDF really works, instead of how it promises to work, than anyone else I’ve encountered. And she has questions—smart, thorny questions. They aren’t intended to derail the project, but to make it better. Her most important: Can all catalogers do be reduced to a set of pulldown menus? (Queue thunderous applause.)

Tennant presented on WorldCat, Bowen on the eXtensible cAtalog pRoject, Spalding on LibraryThing, and Hillman on how catalogers need to reinvent themselves as metadata librarians. Each presentation was strong, though in each case I’m sure you either already know about these projects/movements or you don’t much care. Rather than summarize, I’ll finish with a few highlights:

Tennant: When I’m looking for a library book, I want to know: How many clicks am I from having the book sent to my house?

Tennant: Data is a collective asset. OCLC is a membership collective for this data.

Yee: You need to tie the acquisitions budget to the processing budget or you get a backlog. Digitization only magnifies this relationship.

Bowen: We need to distinguish between granularity and complexity. We need to create interoperable granularity.

Spalding: The tag war is over. Tags are not better than subject headings, but they’re useful. We have ample evidence.

Hillman: The day of the ILS may not be entirely dead, but it’s on life support. We’re looking at the disintegrated library system. Discovery is the first piece that’s being dis-integrated. Soon metadata will be managed in different databases.

Yee: Good metadata is never going to be free. We have to figure out who is going to be paid for it.

ShareThis