Last week I had the pleasure of presenting a short talk at the second virtual meeting of the NISO effort to reach a Consensus Framework to Support Patron Privacy in Digital Library and Information Systems. The slides from the presentation are below and on SlideShare, followed by a cleaned-up transcript …

During the American Library Association meeting in Chicago in 2013 I gave an "ignite" talk on open source software in libraries. (The "ignite talk" format, if you're not familiar, is one in which "each speaker is allocated five minutes of presentation time and is accompanied by 20 presentation slides. During …

The end-of-year holidays are behind us and (in the northern parts of the northern hemisphere) the cold days of winter in front of us. What better time to bag it all and head to the warm(er) temperatures of San Diego, California for the ALA Midwinter meeting. I mean -- come'on …

This week I sat in on the first of the three "Using RDA: Moving into the Metadata Future" webinars being hosted by ALA. This one was hosted by Karen Coyle with the title New Models of Metadata where she talked about library-specific efforts such asRDA and FRBR as well …

The year is coming to a close, so that must mean that the midwinter meeting of the American Library Association is right around the corner. Yep, there it is -- just two and a half weeks away in Boston. A conference in Boston in January -- the rates have got to be …

Ah, it is the beginning of September when thoughts turn to going back to school, the days turn a little colder (in the northern hemisphere) and the smell of lawsuit briefs is in the air. Well, okay -- the latter might not be what you expect, but this is a special …

Today was to be the deadline for objecting to, opting out of, and/or filing briefs with the court on the Google Book Search Settlement. That was the plan, at least, when the preliminary approval statement from the court was issued last year. That deadline changed, and that is part …

The American Library Association (through the Association's Washington Office and the Association of College and Research Libraries Division) and the Association of Research Libraries filed a brief [PDF] with the court in support of the Google Book Search Settlement while asking the judge to "exercise vigorous oversight" over details the …

Earlier this week, LITA announced its unconference event: LITACamp. The meeting is scheduled for May 7-8, 2009 at the OCLC Conference Center in Dublin, Ohio. (Map of conference center and surrounding facilities.)

For those that don't know, the unconference meeting format is one where the topics are picked by those …

First, kudos to the vendor that runs the ALA Meeting Planner website. They listened to suggestions and now include a way to download your event planner information to your desktop/handheld device using the iCalendar standard. It is available from the "Downloads and Printing" page of your meeting planner homepage …

Here is a map of official conference hotels and a link to download the KML file into Google Earth.
ALA Midwinter 2008 Hotel KML Location file

I'm somewhat disappointed by the display of the KML file through the Google Maps API. The KML file contains

The American Library Association Committee on Professional Ethics is proposing changes to the Code of Ethics. ((Do those outside the profession know that librarians have an ethical code? We do! And it is part of what makes us special as a culture.)) Other than two minor changes (adding commas where …

Jenny Emanuel, Electronic Services Librarian at University of Central Missouri, posted an invitation to complete a survey on how library professionals think of themselves to several mailing lists. As part of the ALA Emerging Leaders 2007 program, she is part of a team look for options on rebranding the librarian …

A note on the LITA-L mailing list from M. Claire Stewart (a member of the American Library Association Office of Information Technology Policy Task Force on Digitization Policy) announces the availability of the Draft Principles for Digitized Content in the form of a series of blog postings on the ALA …