Wednesday, June 30, 2010

ALA 2010 - Washington, DC

Poetry as a Community Builder: Expanding Community Outreach through Poetry

Poetry Foundation has a lot of great resources for librarians and teachers on their website: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/
Not mentioned during the session but a fun find nonetheless, the Poetry Foundation has a poetry app for iPhone.

Library Websites:
Some of the interesting programs mentioned were:
  • Poet in Residence - get a local poet to serve as poet in residence for the library, doing readings, hosting writing workshops, etc.
  • Book in a Day - Poet Kwame Alexander started working with students to put together and publish books of their poetry during day long workshops. When the poetry books arrive, there can be readings programs along with book signings.
    http://bookinaday.org/
Other recommended poetry resources:
I Need a Mentor Quick! -- Mentoring Options in Rural Public Libraries

They talked about both formal and informal mentoring programs.

LLAMA (Library Leadership and Management Association) has a formal mentoring program. There's information about it on their wiki:
http://lama.ala.org/lamawiki/index.php?title=LLAMA_Mentoring_Committee

But there was also some good advice from more informal mentoring relationships, which I think are probably more common in rural Montana.
  • Mentee should drive the relationship with their questions
  • Mentor should introduce the mentee to his/her network
  • Seek first to understand and then to be understood.
  • Help with advice such as how to do a conference on a shoestring.
  • Match like with like: example of Hawkeye and Frank from MASH (totally lost on younger attendees btw).
Broadband Adoption and the Role of the Public Library: Issues and Solutions and E-rate Task Force Meeting

The National Broadband Plan is one of those extremely long documents that I couldn't get through so it's helpful that ALA has and has spelled out its positions on various items within the plan:
American Library Association outlines positions on National Broadband Plan
We also heard from Mark Lloyd from the FCC.
One of the things libraries need to pay attention to are proposed changes to the E-rate program. ALA is currently formulating its official comments. It looks like there may finally be some much needed simplification. I'll try to stay on top of it and keep Montana libraries informed of changes and ways to have input.

Top Technology Trends
posted to the Montana Bibliotechies blog
http://mtbibliotechie.blogspot.com/2010/07/top-technology-trends-2010.html

Libraries Wanted: Dead or Alive

This was the President's Program with Eppo van Nispen tot Sevenaer. I really wish it had been recorded so I could share it with you. Very thought provoking presentation. I did find a talk he gave at TEDxRotterdam. It's shorter and partially in Dutch but, hopefully, you can get the gist of his message.

Eppo van Nispen tot Sevenaer - TEDxRotterdam 2010 from TEDxRotterdam on Vimeo.

Privacy, Libraries and the Law (somewhat ironically was filmed with Flip video camera).

Some discussion upfront about what is privacy and ALA's Choose Privacy Week. Here's the video promoting privacy. I had some problems with streaming this video. I'd recommend turning HD off:

Choose Privacy Week Video from 20K Films on Vimeo.

Two organizations were represented. Their websites provide a lot of information on privacy and are worth checking out and following by RSS, Facebook, Twitter...

EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center) http://epic.org/
CDT (Center for Democracy & Technology) http://www.cdt.org/

Some notes from the session:
  • Privacy is controlling who, what, when and why others may access information about ourselves.
  • Data mining is a challenge to privacy. Over-collection and overuse of information
Legal context
  • No baseline legal provisions for online consumer privacy.
  • Left to self-regulation.
  • Americans are worried about privacy.
  • Wide divergence between what people want and expect RE: privacy and what is provided and supported by law.
  • Location-based information – very weak laws on use and protection.
  • Cloud providers move information around so you don't know legal jurisdiction.
  • Different protections for info stored on your computer and elsewhere.
  • Under current law there is no requirement for warrant to access this data on another's computer.
  • Lobby providers for better privacy controls. Educate users as to how to control access to their data.
Privacy & Confidentiality
  • Symbiotic web as danger to privacy.
  • Librarians can help shift focus back to privacy
  • Four Images -
  • Black box – taxes, monitoring cars. Also what's going on on the web. Free web services paid for somehow. Information is being monetized.
  • Old Hammock – law has gaps you can fall through. So can black box
  • Cave – video about living a private life in a cave. Once you've shared information, no warrant is necessary - 3rd Party Doctrine.
  • Flag – Choose Privacy Week
    -Advocate for lawmakers to choose protections. How can we make good choices about our privacy when we don't understand the black box?
    -Update and strengthen library privacy policies. Opt in vs. opt out. Make more opt ins.
    -Keep info only for as long as is necessary
    -Work with vendors
    -Educate staff about non-judgmental library services.
    -Confidentiality laws mean we can wait for process before we divulge information.
Some helpful apps/sites
Open Source Software: Free Beer or Free Puppy

This intrigued me largely because of the all-star lineup: Stephen Abram, Marshall Breeding and Karen Schneider with Roy Tennant as moderator.

As expected the "ultimate debate" didn't really resolve anything. The open source software referred to was largely limited to ILS (Integrated Library Systems) or the new term seems to be "discovery systems." And, not a big surprise, it turns out you can do pretty much anything you need or want to in this area with open source or proprietary systems. What did surprise me a little was the almost religious fervor attached to open source. That somehow this was what libraries were meant to do - promote open source systems. Hmmm? So I appreciated Stephen Abram's perspective that it seemed a bit odd that librarians were willing to fight almost to the death over backend systems dealing with library work. He thought we should be focusing on the user experience instead.

Some Fun Stuff
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