i'm @ ur blog salon

the blog salon always brings new friends, new conversation, and new innovations to my work in libraries. i am so proud to be working with you all in libraryland - to create change in our profession and enhance the experiences of our patrons and communities. yes. i feel lucky to be here and be a part of this.

Posts from the Blog Salon

As always...thoughts brought to you from the OCLC Blog Salon 2007, in revelers' own words:


First post of the night. Stay tuned. (tinfoil+raccoon)
Beer is better on the West coast. (eclectic librarian)


Great party, all - next time save the name tags so you have a big old list of all the bloggers who came and drank your beer (Erica, the un-cool librarian - http://www.uncoollibrarian.blogspot.com/)

How about I just save this and then it will not lock? Everyone else, save after adding, Thanks. The room is bigger and we are still packed in and do you want to know why? Bloggers are awesome. Tonight, I have talked about kids, merging a reference desk and circ desk, managing ALA programs, and people's lives. Where else can I do that (with drinks?) - Cheers and thanks OCLC, Michelle Boule (Jane)

Thanks for one L of a party! (LisforLibrary.wordpress.com)

OCLC Rocks! Thanks for making my first ALA conference a great one!

i<3>
Thanks all! A great time, as always! (photos coming soon, or on Flickr...)

Blog Salon starts in 11 minutes...or so, room 176

Hey bloggers. The blog salon is queued up and almost ready to start.
We have a BIGGER ROOM this year, so expect to have a bit more breathing and elbow room this year. The veggies are coming in, the pretzels and chips are ready and the beverages are abundant.

The Blog Salon is in the Grand Hyatt Hotel, 1st floor in room 176. Otherwise known as the Congressional Suite! Come hang out for a blog salon congress!

Starts in half an hour!

See you there...with paper in hand. Apparently because the hotel designers did not think you'd need internet access, they also did not think you'd need to plug in. I saw absolutely ZERO power outlets, although I didn't case the joint completely.

FYI, and sorry about this...

OCLC Symposium: Privacy in a Networked World

The actual title is "Is the Library Open?" and it promises to be a very engaging session, as always. What I discovered, upon making my arrival in the room, is that there is no Internet. No wired, no wireless, no mobile phone (except Verizon), and no blackberry service. I had small heart palpitations, we checked with the hotel and it's physically not possible. A connection was not to be had, for any price. Wanted to warn you now. Plan to post after...as will I.

So we will be very private at this Symposium! It is being held from 1:30 to 4:30 at the Grand Hyatt Washington, Independence Ballroom A. Which you get to by going to going to the Metro Center stop on the blue line, walking in the front door and taking 3 escalators down. So we are down somewhere close to the earth's mantle or something! But deep enough that wifi signals are not getting through.

The speakers are eager to hear what you have to say, and I know they've got the clickers set up for audience feedback again. Seems like I always leave with my head stuffed full of new ideas!

BIGWIG is cool

If you haven't heard about it, BIGWIG is ALA's blog / wiki / social networking interest group and they're doing a pretty cool program at the conference this year - bringing content and presentations to the web like never before. Yay! I just blogged about it over here and so I won't go on and on, but OCLC's very own Michael Porter (aka libraryman) just did one of the presentations (about the facebook developers platform) which you'll find hosted on WebJunction, here.

Thanks to Michelle (wanderingeyre) and others for putting this together. I'm excited to participate in the conversation on Saturday (1.30-2.30, Renaissance, Mayflower Rm), but also very, very happy to see this type of content reaching beyond the conference and onto the web in a dynamic, participatory way. Nice work!

WorldCat Lists

WorldCat.org now has list-making functionality! I have been excited to see this feature go in--and now it is available. I did a quick list search for "book" and it looks like 47 lists have already been created since Friday. And judging from the titles and descriptions, people are finding lots of creative ways to use lists. Awesome! I feel like it's like my own personal cataloging ability, powered by WorldCat. I will resist the urge (for now) to go through my entire bookshelf.

A few additional creative uses I'd thought about:

• I could see bookclubs or reading groups using the list functionality to keep track of what they've already read, and to solicit potential new titles from the members.
• For the academicians among us, you could load up the required readings from a syllabus into a WorldCat list--students could see at a glance which editions/articles were available at the library, what was checked out already, available as an eBook, etc.
• Maybe a family could track their library-movie-watching together, through a WorldCat list. Or a teen could post out the coolest sounds s/he has heard from the library's eclectic music collection...

I am sure other people have more ideas, too. How do YOU think you'll use WorldCat lists?

When in Washington on Tuesday...

If you're going to ALA and you'll still be in town on Tuesday (unfortunately, I will not be...), the ALA Washington office has organized the opportunity for Library Day on the Hill. Now before you start envisioning Jack and Jill fetching a pail of water, this sounds like a great way to join forces with other librarians in your region and make your voice heard.

At the very least, it is a chance to remind your national elected official that you indeed have a voice. Here's the PDF letter you can use to invite your elected official to go to the Gold Room, see the bookmobiles or--this seems pretty cool--have their own READ poster made. Now if you could work a deal, where your elected official would ALSO provide a copy of their unique READ poster for your library...what a better way to give them a spotlight in your library, with constituents, and help remind them of why your library is so important and needs their support.

Speaking of library support, I just saw the LJXpress about the House Subcommittee slashing LSTA and IMLS funds. Not exactly a rosy outlook. But at least you'll have something to talk about, when you're on the Hill.

Serious game-playing and privacy

A quick shout out to Wandering Eyre for the Chronicle mention on gaming and libraries. Whoo-Hoo!

Speaking of serious game-playing, now that OCLC is seriously researching privacy, it seems like I can't turn around without seeing an article on privacy or hearing a radio report on a new threat. Danny Sullivan was on NPR's Marketplace tonight, talking about our relative lack of privacy in the Web world. (The Privacy International report sparked a lot of the talk, I'm sure. Matt's response.)

And thinking about privacy in the Web world leads me to thinking about privacy in libraries. One of the tenets we've been talking about with the advocacy research we're doing, is how U.S. libraries are seen (at least in some consumers' eyes) as a democratic institution, a part of the fabric of life as ingrained as voting and representative government. (Motherhood and apple pie? Death and taxes?) I started to wonder about how private our political lives are--and/or how much they should be. Certainly my vote is private (at least until I slap on a candidate sticker) and perhaps my IRS return is semi-private. What else is? What is not? Why and why not? And how did library records get mixed up in the middle of it?

These are questions that I have no idea if they'll be addressed in the privacy report or not. But I can tell you that once your consciousness is raised about it, privacy concerns are everywhere. My shredder is busy.

Trendwatching for June

The latest issue of Trendwatching is out, and it 's all about how you can have an impact in your community by staying well-rooted. From the blurb, "(This) brings us to the (STILL) MADE HERE trend: the comeback of all things local, all things with a sense of place, and how they're surfacing in a world dominated by globalization."

If you haven't subscribed yet to this newsletter, you really ought to consider signing up. It's free, it's informative, and it has a wealth of information from around the globe about how civilians (that is, non-library workers) are responding to the networked world. This is news you can use, if you're willing to do a little mental translation from the retail environment to the library world.

Well-spent time

Nice tidbit of a story from Lisa Belkin on the NYT's list of most e-mailed stories:
"Time Wasted? Perhaps It's Well Spent."

If you, too, wish you could have accomplished more with your 8 hours on the job, then read this article.

Now *that's* edutainment!

Had enough of your iPod yet? Me neither. However, now you can get something new through the ubiquitous white buds: an education.

In a news release dated May 30, Apple announced that they will be making lectures, lab demos, language lessons, campus tours, and other information available on iTunes U, a dedicated area within the iTunes store. Stanford University, UC Berkeley, Duke University and MIT are among the universities involved at the outset.

Maybe I can slide a little Lester Thurow between 5 Chinese Brothers and the original Broadway cast of Avenue Q and finish learning what I should have studied 30 years ago in college!

Saugus closing

You've probably heard it already: the public library in Saugus, Mass. is closing. Close on the heels of the Jackson County public libraries closing... Media coverage includes:

• Library Journal
• Saugus Advertiser (local paper)
• LibVib (a library-focused podcast)

An April tax-override vote failed, and now apparently the city council must approve a trash fee in order to keep the library open and funded.

I wonder what the larger story is, behind the April vote. Did citizens not understand what was at stake? Or were they using the only poker chip they had--the vote--to send a clear message to city council that they did not approve of the way the city's funds were being handled?

In hearing from citizens who live in Medford and surrounding towns, the library's closing didn't seem quite *real* to people. Even as the doors were already closed, many people expressed an optimism along the lines of "some how, some way, truth, justice and rightness will prevail (and the library will re-open)."

I hope this is true in both of these communities. Situations like these are exactly what we're working on, with the Gates Foundation marketing grant.

Speaking of library marketing, have you read the Worth Their Weight report from ALC yet? I've sent away for it--still need to read it. It's all about demonstrating library ROI. Some comments from Brian about it.

May's a Blur

May is the busiest month of the year in OCLC Member Services. Over the past four weeks, we've hosted the IFLA/OCLC Early Career Development Fellows here in Dublin (and in Chicago, Urbana-Champaign, and Washington DC), a Members Council meeting, a meeting of the OCLC US network and service center directors, and the first meeting of the new Governance Study committee, and I had a couple of speaking engagements just to keep me off the streets. We also had a delightful social worker from Belarus staying with Joyce and me at our home for three weeks in May, but that would need to go into a personal blog, not IAG.

This year's Fellows were an absolute delight. We shared a lot of information about libraries, children's services groups, museums, and inter-agency and international collaboration, but it is the Fellows as people I will treasure most when I reflect on this class.

Kodjo Atiso, from the Animal Research Institute in Ghana, is a natural leader. He arrived in Columbus first, and assumed the mantle of unofficial tour guide. He spent hours talking to us about the wildlife and domesticated animals of his homeland, and his program for the staff stressed the beauty of Ghana.

Alicia Esguerra, from Bulacan State University in the Philippines, (everyone calls her "Alice") developed a love of garage sales and scared the heck out us when she disappeared just before a van pick up one afternoon. She just got interested in a tag sale and lost track of time. Her quick, disarming laugh leaves everyone around her feeling refreshed.

Pauline Nicholas, from the University of the West Indies' Mona Campus in Jamaica, has the soul of a poet and the voice of a singer; she regaled us at several gatherings by breaking out just the right poem. My guess is that she'll be a Members Council delegate from OCLC Latin America and the Caribbean some day.

Elisangela Silva (whom everyone except me called "Liz") was the cinematographer I took to calling "Spielberg;" her video camera was never very far out of reach. She's the librarian for the Abrinq Foundation for the Rights of Children and Adolescents in São Paulo, Brazil, so she and Elena, our Belarusian social worker, bonded instantly.

Nevena Tomić, from the University of Belgrade's Student City in Serbia, was the Fellows' thoughtful, insightful and calm presence. She asked great questions wherever we went. She's also a part-time theological librarian, working on restoring historic religious collections in Serbian church and synagogue libraries. Needless to say, she was the hit of our visit to the American Theological Library Association (ATLA) office in Chicago. (ATLA has been a co-sponsor of this program for several years, and we include a visit to their offices and discussions with their staff on our visit to the Windy City.)

Every year, at the beginning of the Fellows program, we tell them that we are going to learn more from them than they are from us. And every year, this is true. We now have 33 graduates of the program in 23 countries. Several are working on Ph.D.s. Others are moving up in their institutions and will be leaders in their national library and information communities in the years to come. The Fellows are becoming a cadre of men and women who will shape the future of library services around the globe.

If you, your state library, your library association, or some philanthropist of your acquaintance would like to sponsor a Fellow and be part of this exciting program the way ATLA has, give me a call (800-848-5878, ext. 5173) or drop me a note (needhamg@oclc.org). I'd LOVE to talk to you!

Touch Screens on Steroids

Have you heard about Microsoft's new Surface project? Imagine a coffee table with a built-in 30" horizontal screen that lets you manipulate data by touch. Then imagine that you can put a physical object on the screen and that the system will be able to incorporate that into the data. Then start thinking about ways you could use this in a library: Gaming? Digitizing local information? Space planning?

Al Gore at SLA

If you're headed to Denver next week, you're in luck!

Al Gore opens the general session on Sunday, and Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) closes it on Wednesday. (Watch the Al Gore video from TED on SLA's site for a warm-up.) Lots of great sessions and conversations planned for in between those presentations too, I am sure.
The marketing and advertising division has events going on through Wednesday, as well. Check them out--it makes me wish I was going.

Speaking of conference events, make sure you've got the Blog Salon at Annual on your dance card for DC! Remember, it's at the Congressional Suite at the Grand Hyatt on Sunday, June 24, 2007 , right after Robert F. Kennedy (5:45pm - 8pm).

With all these political names appearing at library conferences of late--at least in the US, you'd think there was a movement afoot to align the profession with some powerful forces for national change...same movement going on globally?

Not-so-sunny CA

Here in Monterey, CA today. Have been in Southern and Central California all week and have realized that just because you pack like it's going to be sunny and gorgeous, do not mean mother nature will make it so. Cloudy, cold and chilly. It's warmer in New Hampshire!

But have been enjoying the West Coast, regardless. Am here as supportive companion for significant other, as he meets with researchers about his Ph.D. dissertation ideas. Luckily, with a laptop you can usually work from anywhere.

EXCEPT when there's no internet connections in your hotel room. "What?" you exclaim. "Are you staying in coastal monasteries, where they feed you only bread and wine?"

No actually, a really nice place in Marina, right on the ocean. But it turns out, this place is new enough that they haven't figured out how to relay the wifi signal out to the outlying buildings. So I am camped out here in the lobby for the past 7 hours. But you should have seen significant other's face drop, when he ascertained that no indeed, there was NO WIRELESS in the rooms. At the very least, they should put a sign up that explains they are working on it. Right now it looks like they remembered the fluffy bathrobes, the fancy folded towels and specially printed coffee napkins but forgot one of the mainstays of traveling life these days.

I had decided to go to the library to get online, but the branch closest to me did not have wifi enabled. The library was smart enough to let me know that upfront, so I didn't waste time driving around to find the location.

Will post photos of snoozing elephant seals, majestic redwoods and other novelties when I download the camera this weekend. For the time being, enjoy this article about the Four Habits of Highly Effective Librarians from Todd Gilman, a couple of days back in the Chronicle. His post reminded me of an insight I gained on Wednesday:

Many librarians do not feel qualified to do marketing activities, even when they know they'd like to (or need to) do them. My takeaway was to create more programs to help staff try things with little to no risk, to see successes and to devise ways to build on them. It's not so much a teaching and education thing, as a doing thing. I can read books about gardening all day long. It's no replacement for someone giving me a shovel, some seeds, and a pot to plant them in.

Just add sunshine. (Even in California in late May...)

Farewell, Alane

“Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone,
And she’s always gone too long.”

“Ain’t No Sunshine” – Bill Withers (Website ; WCid ; Wikipedia ; Soultracks)

Alane Wilson’s final post on It’s All Good noting her departure from OCLC exhibits what IAG readers have come to expect from her posts, Alane’s audiences from her presentations, and her colleagues from her interactions – an admirable eloquence, openness, and irrepressibly forward-looking view.

Alane, we shall miss your insights and voice.

I suspect that Alice, Chrystie, George, and I singly and collectively are at best only partially aware of the full scope and value of Alane’s dedication and hard work at OCLC, but first to mind is her work on the award- winning The 2003 OCLC environmental scan : pattern recognition : a report to the OCLC membership, and her follow-on work on later OCLC reports along with her many presentations about key trends and the future of libraries in so many settings. Indeed, this blog arose from the process of following up on the 2003 report. Alane has also been pivotal in the organizing and delivering of the well-received OCLC Symposium event at ALA Annual meetings, and our popular Blog Salons.

Alane, we shall miss your organizational skills and counsel.

As Alane notes in her post, Alane, Alice, Chrystie, George, and I have had more collegial contact in the last few years than we did prior. This has definitely been a good thing, and though we’ll keep the IAG co-blogger fires burning, Alane’s absence will be keenly felt – I fear the sun will shine a little less brightly on our all too infrequent gatherings.

Alane, we shall miss your comradeship and humor.

And if Alane’s work has been instructive in no other way, she has taught us that transitions are opportunities, and transitions are also needful things. Moving a continent’s width away to try something new is exciting and invigorating. Bravo for you, Alane. We’ll look forward to reading what you have to say about what you learn perched as you will be on the Pacific Rim.

Alane, dear friend, we send our best wishes to you and yours.

And so it goes; in the end, it all changes, but ultimately it’s all good.

Sunday Members Council

We shall all miss Alane, here at IAG. Especially me! But we do wish her the best and I am sure she'll have a blog of her own set up in no time.

Those of you attuned to the OCLC universe know that today (Sunday) was the opening session of the May Members Council meeting. Members Council is such a rich tradition and I won't go into it here, but I love the fact it gives us all time to reflect on what we're doing as a group, here in libraryland and beyond.

And it's the beyond that was the main topic of conversation this evening.

As you may know, OCLC set out a few years ago to move beyond libraries and include all sorts of information, knowledge and culture-related industries under the umbrella of "furthering access to the world's information." Cultural heritage institutions such as archives, museums, historical societies were the sorts of groups we (as librarians) wanted to fold into the knowledge-seeking experience of using a library.

You may also know that OCLC has been making great strides to put some significant emphasis on the "world" part of "A worldwide library cooperative" and "WorldCat, the world's most comprehensive bibliographic database." In other words, we've been working on being more global and less US-centric.

The discussion this evening centered around these topics, among others, as delegates contemplated what the organization's values were. What are they now? What do we want them to be in the future?

It was eye-opening to remember that words such as "nonprofit" connote very different things in different parts of the world. In the US, the fact that OCLC is nonprofit is a large part of our identity. When the word means something different in South Africa, for example, how do we describe it? How can we be flexible enough to make room for local variation while being defined enough to stay unique?

Dinner was delightful. I sat down with Jean, a NYLINK librarian from Cornell and found that she had grown up in the next town over from me! Small world. As we always seem to discover when international librarians get together...

And so it goes, and so it goes*

This is my very last post for It's All Good. It also happens to be my last day as an employee of the House That Fred Built where I've spent ten years. My husband and I are relocating to Vancouver, British Columbia (which is where I lived while I did my library degree twenty years ago) and I am going to take the summer off, and decide what I want to do next. I could have kept my OCLC job, because OCLC is a very flexible organization with regard to where employees do their work, and my boss is a flexible person who would have supported my move, as she has supported other changes over the past several years.

But I like change. I like the feeling of embarking on a new adventure, of starting things, and of new challenges. So, it just felt right to step through this particular door and close it gently behind me, as different ones open up.

I've had a terrific ten years at OCLC and had opportunities that I thoroughly enjoyed and from which I learned a great deal. I have worked with great people at OCLC and got to meet many more great people through workshops and presentations I've participated in. And my co-bloggers Alice, Eric, George and Chrystie have been a large part of my last few years at OCLC, and have been the best co-authors and pals a person could hope for. Thanks. And thanks to all of you in the biblioblogosphere, who have become friends and colleagues through this not-so-new publishing medium.

I am not going to write my final thoughts on libraries and their futures because I will be starting up my own blog as soon as I have a chance to do so, and I am sure one of my IAG buddies will blog about it when I do and so provide a link. Also, it would be sort of anti-climatic as I will be at ALA in June, stage-managing the OCLC Symposium and making sure there are anough pretzels at the Blog Salon. I hope to have a chance to see many of you there.

I am going to leave you with a quote from Miss Gratia Alta Countryman's 1905 address to the Minnesota Library Association because I think it's as "web 2.0" as anything written this week and so is a fitting coda to my IAG career.

“Many of our libraries are now housed in beautiful buildings, in which case, the building as well as the books become a means of social influence. The whole building at all times should be managed in the broadest spirit of hospitality…do away with all unnecessary restrictions, take down all bars, and try to put face to face our friends the books and our friends the people. Introduce them cordially, then stand aside and let them make each other’s acquaintance.”

*And so it goes, and so it goes. This is the title of a Billy Joel song (although my favourite version of the song is by Jennifer Warnes on The Well) as well as the phrase Kurt Vonnegut used like a litany in Slaughterhouse Five to denote transformation

Thanks for the fish.