Saturday, June 30, 2007

Washington Post on the "Modern Librarian"

Washington Post "Style" section of June 24th has an article by Monica Hesse entitled: "The Modern Librarian: A Role Worth Checking out." Here's the lead paragraph:

Men in tuxes and women in gowns smartly walk the red carpet at the Washington Convention Center, to the "woo-hoo!" of adoring fans. A cameraman records the procession, photographers angle for close-ups. One carpet-walker, a woman in blue sequins, strikes a come-hither pose, and a security guard taps a female spectator on the shoulder.

"Are they famous?" he asks.

"No," she replies. "They're librarians."

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Thursday, June 28, 2007

I-751

Removing Conditions On Permanent Residence. Form I-751 [pdf] and a copy of I-551, along with documents such as mortgage receipts, to be submitted within 90 days of second anniversary of I-551. So, some time between Nov. 6 2007 and Feb. 6, 2008.

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Monday, June 11, 2007

ALA 2007 Washington D.C.

The ALA 2007 wiki has a nice "Unofficial Events" page. LIS-News gathering not listed there though.

Here's the agenda for the Subject Analysis Committee (but most of the meeting times conflict with CCDA). Some items of potential interest:

  • 2.2.1 Vote to approve the revised charge of the SAC Subcommittee on the Future of Subject Headings.

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Improving the SFX menu

Xerxes article (podcast, actually) on Cal State redesign of SFX menu. As it appears 'out of the box' is confusing. One way to test Web page usability is to squint at it. Notice how certain things pop out and other elements recede. Designer should make sure that the most important items are the ones that jump out. In this case, why are "Ebsco Host" and "Innovative InnOPAC" highlighted in red? Students typically don't know what these mean. Better to highlight and hyperlink the words "full text". Moreover, bands of variant shades of gray in background should be removed. Font face should be Verdana. Citation info should be offset at top to give it more prominence. Get rid of "full text available" boxes which probably not well understood and take up a lot of space. Section headings are redundant, since often only one item per section, and in any case self-explanatory. Template files (.zip 14k) are provided.

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Friday, June 08, 2007

De Lange Conference on Emerging Libraries

Kenny cites a Conference held March 5-7, 2007, at Rice University. Speakers include Brewster Kahle, John Seeley Brown (former head of Xerox PARC), Paul Ginsparg (arXiv), Michael Keller (Highwire Press founder), Donald Kennedy (ed-in-chief, Science)̲, Deanna Marcum, Harold Varmus (nobel recipient, re genetic basis of cancer), William Wulf, president of the National Academy of Engineering), and other major leaders in technology and library science.

Summary:

The traditional concept of a library has been rendered obsolescent by the unprecedented confluence of the Internet, changes in scholarly publication models, increasing alliances between the humanities and the sciences, and the rise of large-scale digital library projects. The old ways of organizing and preserving knowledge to transmit our cultural and intellectual heritage have converged with the most advanced technologies of science and engineering and research methodologies. Such rapid and overwhelming changes to a millennia-old tradition pose significant challenges not only to university research libraries, but to every citizen. If the traditional library is undergoing a profound metamorphosis, it is not clear what new model will take its place. More information has been produced in the last several years than in the entire previous history of humanity, and most of this has been in digital format. Libraries are not storage places any more; they are less and less a place. The critical issues now include: How can that information be efficiently accessed and used? How do we extract knowledge from such an abundance of often poorly organized information? How might these enormous digital resources affect our concept of identity, our privacy, and the way we conduct business in the new century? Insight from many disciplines and perspectives is requisite to begin to understand this phenomenon to identify ways to help chart a future course.

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Wednesday, June 06, 2007

AJL 2007

AJL to hold its 42nd annual convention at Hilton Scottsdale Resort & Villas, June 17 - 20, 2007. David Hirsch [email] is programming chair for RAS. Here's the preliminary program [pdf] and registration form [pdf]. See also my committee site.

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