LITA Forum, Day 3

Concurrent Session 6 "Participation and Power: Combining Community Features with Existing Metadata in Next Generation Public Interfaces" Dinah Sanders, Innovative Interfaces, and Kelly Vickery, University of Kentucky Sanders and Vickery discussed using community tagging to complement existing library catalogs. In 2007 the University of Kentucky installed Innovative's Encore system, which incorporates community tagging features. "[Libraries] have the best data of anyone," Sanders declared, adding that despite egregious examples like using "cookery" instead of "cooking," "Most subject headings are really useful to patrons." Even so, community tagging can fill in gaps where subject headings fall short. "The more you can support the natural search mechanism people use, the more successful they will be," Sanders noted. In an academic setting, Vickery said, tags can be used to identify course materials for easy finding or to build collaborative shared course bibliographies. Tags are also valuable when terminology is too new to be reflected in subject headings. One example he cited was when Pluto was demoted from planetary status and terms like "plutoid," "dwarf planet," and "trans-Neptunian dwarf planet" sprang up overnight. Public library applications that Sanders offered include book groups tagging their books, the provision of distinct subcategories ("Trip-hop" as an alternative to "music," for example), and the incorporation of emerging vocabulary and slang. Sanders has written an article on tagging for American Libraries. Watch for it in the December issue. Closing Session The Obligation of Leadership R. David Lankes, Syracuse University School of Information Studies In an animated talk, Lankes offered the sculptors of Florence, Italy, as an cautionary tale of leadership. Florentine sculptors considered their work to be the pinnacle of art's evolution, so the education that a new artist received was geared to replicating what had already been done. "It killed Florentine art," Lankes said, because audiences had to go elsewhere for anything new. "It was there that I realized that innovation and leadership are deeply intertwined." He exhorted the audience to create knowledge through conversation. This is "not waiting for [patrons] to come in and hope that they ask the right questions so we can find them the right book, but proactively going out and saying, 'this is what the community needs to know.'" Lankes shared leadership lessons from three of his mentors. From his father, Richard Lankes, he learned that "You cannot wait for a leader. Sometimes that person may not come." From Jeff Katzer, a colleague at Syracuse, he learned that change is scary but worth it, and from Ray von Dran, his first dean at Syracuse, Lankes took that leadership is not about careerism, and that true mentorship is wanting your mentee to do better than you. He concluded with a challenge to the crowd: "I invite you to invent the future, and I invite you to invent the future where we're the most important parts of it." Additional Total Forum registration was 321. LITA Executive Director Mary Taylor said that figure was a bit low—registration typically ranges from 350 to 375—but called it "still healthy." Watch for a video from the conference on AL Focus, planned to be uploaded Wednesday, October 22.