TechSource Webinar Available Online

February 17, 2010

Cosponsored by American Libraries, SirsiDynix Insititute, and ALA's Library and Information Technology Association, the TechTrends: Midwinter 2010 webinar produced by ALA Tech Source attracted about 850 participants. "We had some great presentations and some lively discussion," says Tech Source editor Dan Freeman. The webinar tackled topics related to the new wares being touted in the exhibit hall during ALA's Midwinter Meeting in Boston in January:

Vendor presence at the webinar–who was there and, just as importantly, who wasn't there.
Exciting new eBook platforms/software and their potential for libraries
Augmented reality
Mobile PACs and library mobile services in general
Discovery systems
Libraries adopting open source software
FourSquare and its potential for libraries

"Discussion wove in and out of these and other topics, and we wrapped up with a vibrant Q&A. Discussion on twitter (#TTWebinar) was also lively," Freeman notes.

American Libraries editors Sean Fitzpatrick and Greg Landgraf were on the panel along with Tech Source bloggers Kate Sheehan and Jason Griffey, who is also AL's new Pepetual Beta blogger. Griffey is head of library information technology at the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga; Sheehan is open source implementation coordinator for Bibliomation.

An archive of the webinar is available on the Tech Source website.

Tagged Under

technology

Julie Powell, author of Julie and Julia, talks to AL Focus at the 2010 ALA Midwinter Meeting about Julia Child, Meryl Streep, the merits of writing at the New York Public Library, and her new book Cleaving. More ALA videos available at https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/al_focus/videos.

Exclusive Interview with FakeAACR2

Latest Library Links

54m

Genevieve Trainor writes: “The Guinness World Record holder for Most Prolific Book Thief is Ottumwa (Iowa’s) Stephen Blumberg. The 23,600 volumes he accumulated between the 1970s and his arrest in March of 1990 were all stashed in his 17-room home. Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, got involved with Blumberg as part of the FBI’s efforts to return the stolen manuscripts and rare books to their museums and libraries. Referred to as the Omaha Project, the information science proving ground involved four weeks, 44 catalogers and reference librarians and 600 volunteer hours to determine who might be the rightful owners.”

Little Village (Dubuque, Iowa), Dec. 4
5h

Casey Newton writes: “At the moment, no one knows for sure whether the large language models that are now under development will achieve superintelligence and transform the world. And in that uncertainty, two primary camps of criticism have emerged. The first camp, which I associate with the external critics, holds that artificial intelligence (AI) is fake and sucks. The second camp, which I associate more with the internal critics, believes that AI is real and dangerous. Today I want to lay out why I believe AI is real and dangerous.”

Platformer, Dec. 5
1d

Latia Ward writes: “One way to keep current with what students think of the library and its services is through Student Library Advisory Committee meetings. These meetings are a way to gather feedback and reinforce the library as a welcoming place. How do librarians create a welcoming environment within Student Library Advisory Committee meetings? Librarians create a welcoming environment through community, purpose, and dedicated space.” Also see part 1 of this blog post.

RIPS Law Librarian Blog, Nov. 13, Dec. 5
1d

Eleanor Hecks writes: “Few things are as frustrating to a user as when a site won’t respond. Unfortunately, it’s also an all-too-common scenario. Graceful degradation is a design approach that ensures the basics of a website will still function even if specific individual parts of it stop working. The approach removes single points of failure: just because one thing stops working doesn’t mean the system as a whole fails. A site following this principle fails in pieces instead of all at once, so the most important features remain available when some components encounter an error.”

Smashing Magazine, Dec. 6
2d

Camruinn Morgan-Rumsey and Lexi Lepof write: “On December 3, Knox County (Tenn.) schools received a list from the district of books to be removed from school libraries under Tennessee’s Age-Appropriate Materials Act. Knox County’s board of education voted in July, passing a policy to remove ‘explicit’ books from everyday student access in response to the new law. Some of the books on the list of nearly 50 titles might surprise parents. Among those to be removed are Shel Silverstein’s A Light in the Attic and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.”

WVLT-TV (Knoxville, Tenn.), Dec. 4
2d

Joe Foley writes: “Copyright rules vary from country to country and have changed over time. In the US, works created between 1929 and 1963 that gave notice and renewed copyright have 95 years from their first publication date. That means that on January 1, 2025, a host of works from 1929 will enter the public domain. This means that copyright will expire on Buck Rogers, Captain Easy, Horace Horsecollar, Tintin, Hal Foster’s first Tarzan comic strips and, yes, Popeye.” Other notable works entering public domain in the United States include the Marx Brothers’ first film, The Cocoanuts, contralto Marian Anderson’s first record, and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.

Creative Bloq, Dec. 7; Everybody’s Libraries, Dec. 3, Dec. 7; Public Domain Review, Dec. 10
3d

Brittany Adams writes: “The digital landscape of libraries is expanding rapidly, with an increasing shift towards electronic resources and online services. As members of the library community, we’re witnessing a transformative era where physical collections are complemented—and sometimes replaced—by digital ones. This transition offers new opportunities for enhancing accessibility and engagement, but it also presents challenges, especially for young patrons and their families. It is essential to equip children and their caregivers with the tools and knowledge they need to navigate this evolving space confidently.”

ALSC Blog, Dec. 9