Imagine…. our bloggers here at Computers in Libraries made it on national news.Check it out. First article about a Toronto blogger, but third story about CIL!

Patterns emerge through research say Mary Lee Kennedy & Stephen Abram (see last post. Personas help us understand through discovery:* With lots of data we are able to idenfity possible “anchors” or persona in a community or organization. * We also observe behavior * and see patterns start to emerge through narrative (stories). More on that from David Snowden, The Cynefin Centre, who says:

You know more than you can say; and you can say more than you can writie.

Two years ago at ALA/CLA in Toronto Cliff Lynch talked about the importance of collaborative stewardship among organizations to manage and preserve content. It got me, and many of us, thinking about the issue of giving up individual institutional ownership to safeguard collective content preservation and access. So I am increasingly drawn to anything on institutional repositories. This took me to Frank Cervone’s presentation today. Excellent, as usual. Frank outlined the open source and commercial repository options and highlighted many of the repositories under construction (they may be built, but simply by definition, they are ongoing….) I’ll come back here to link to this presentation directly as soon as Frank posts it.

Then I was off to hear James King talk about the Naval Research Laboratory. James has that great vantage point of having been in computer science for 15 years prior to gaining his MLIS and responsibility of the Library. He too talked about the collaborative repositories underway among University of Toronto, Los Alamos, NRL and….(I have to get the 4th one – I’ll be back!).

Then, of course, the wrap up at the Wednesday night “Dead Technology” panel. The good news: e-mail is out (which most of us who can no longer bear the weight have known for a long time) and phones are back in. Thank goodness. Nothing like the tone of voice to temper a message that’s otherwise taken completely out of context.

Oops – gotta go; phone’s ringing!

Rebecca (I’d rather talk than type

Continue reading Computers in Libraries: More from March 16

Several years ago friends, colleagues and speakers at Informaiton Today conferences, Stephen Abram and Darlene Fichter were named by Library Journal as Movers & Shakers. The Library Journal’s 2005 Movers & Shakers list is out and two new friends, colleagues and speakers are on the list. Congratulations Aaron Schmidt and Michael Stephens!!

This is Rebecca J. Jones reporting live from the International Ballroom, where Clifford Lynch is about to give the keynote speech opening the 20th CIL conference. I couldn’t resist with that opening, since that is how “Kermit T. Frog” always began his reports. That will hopefully be a bridge between the generation that grew up watching Sesame Street as kids and those of us who watched our kids growing up with Kermit and friends.

Since this is an anniversary year, the informal theme is that of bridging and reflection. Tom Hogan, CEO of Information Today, welcomed the massive crowd. In his usual calm, self-effacing manner, he reminded the audience that CIL began as Small Computers in Libraries and acknowledged Nancy Melin Nelson as first organizer. In those days our “small computers” weighed about 35 lbs., resembled small sewing machines and had lovely green screens. No one had those on their laps during a keynote. Yet today the front row has at least 8 of us typing away into blogs on an array of notebooks, with screens customized to our what is acstetically pleasing for us. And since we range in age from 25 – 50, our screens do differ.

Clifford Lynch of CNI led the audience through a reflection of trends that arc thru the past 20 years, what we might learn from these trends and where things are headed. He began by reminding us that online catalogues began in 1985. Those early online catalogue deployments were in an

Continue reading Computers in Libraries, March 15