01.25.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:11 pm by Leonard Kniffel
During today’s Planning and Budget Assembly, ALA Executive Director Keith Michael Fiels and President-elect Camila Alire fielded questions from members. One ALAer representing ACRL brought up an issue that has been much commented on in Inside Scoop: What’s the future of print journals? And she wanted to know what ALA was doing about the issue of print vs. electronic association-wide, especially given the current budget climate.
ALA Executive Director Keith Michael Fiels said we are making decisions on an individual basis, based on the economics of the operation. American Libraries has been working with Membership to respond to the demand from some members for an opt-out choice in the personalized membership communication preferences. That is coming.
It was also clear to me that most people in the room had not noticed that American Libraries published its first-ever digital supplement this month, focused on CE and library education. We are planning another for spring around library architecture, interior design, and furnishings. We need to see how readers respond and advertisers as well.
ALA Treasurer Rod Hersberger talked about the three major areas of revenue for ALA: conferences, publication, and dues, calling them “mature businesses.” That’s not a problem, he said, until you consider the amount of new money ALA needs each year. Current products are for current markets, he said, and we have to take a look at cost-cutting that could be achieved by, for example, bundling the journals. Are we going to look at new products for current markets, he asked, or current products for new markets? Do we have services and products that could appeal to other associations?
Jim Neal, chair of the Budget Analysis and Review Committee, asked if ALA had a global strategy for its brand. “It’s going to require some freer thinking than we have done,” he said, adding that this involves recognizing our assets, capitalizing new ventures, and building a competitive sense.
There was a good deal of complaining about the ALA website, mostly centering around the Collage CMS. “We’re not looking very nimble and agile,” said one person. Others suggested that ALA simply has to put more emphasis on IT, maybe even by outsourcing it. Collage has been a nightmare, said representatives from round tables who noted that it was a lot to expect that volunteers had to take extensive training to be able to post and then find the site down far too frequently.
As an ALA insider, I can tell you that Collage has been equally frustrating for staff, especially with IT responsibility spread all over the building, involving people with varying degrees of skill. Part of the solution is no doubt to get all the Web workers on staff to talk to each other regularly and set out the week’s goals in a coordinated fashion. We are working on that in a marketing working group that is setting out goals for cross-unit collaboration under the leadership of ALA Associate Executive Director for Communications Cathleen Bourdon.
Everyone is concerned about the financial outlook, that goes without saying, but while the Planning and Budget Assembly provided good guidance for staff, the future seems to be anyone’s guess. ALA Associate Executive Director for Finance Greg Calloway told me at the meeting that we will look at preregistration numbers for Annual Conference on March 1, “and that will be a key indicator of potential fiscal issues we may have to face.” Spring numbers will indicate if further cuts are necessary, he said, in addition to the 3% cut across the board (10% in Publishing) that is already being implemented. Our investment income is down” said Calloway, but fortunately we are not dependent on long-term investments for operating expenses, so the impact right now is not as great as it’s been for other organizations. “Our membership is steady at the personal dues level, and in a strained economic time,” he said, “that loyalty is a very positive note.”
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Posted in Uncategorized at 10:50 pm by Greg Landgraf
LITA’s traditional Top Tech Trends discussion played to a standing-room-only crowd this morning, although the event was briefly delayed by a fire alarm in the hotel.
Participants and attendees ignored the alarm, which proved to be nothing, and focused on four topics: the management of open-source software, the growth of geolocational technologies, linked data, and the effect of the economy on technology choices in libraries.
Open Source
Karen Coombs, head of web services at the University of Houston, observed the number of companies being formed to manage open-source software. “That’s a really big change. In the past, open-source has always required your own developers and staff to support.”
Karen Schneider, community librarian at Equinox, said that when libraries were developing their own integrated library systems in the 1970s and 80s, they tended to follow the same model: Development would stay within the library, and the ILS would continually get harder to maintain, until it got complicated enough that the library had no choice but to buy a vendor product. “Now, the test for the open source community is, ‘Can you move past your founding library or founding community?’”
Clifford Lynch, director of the Coalition for Networked Information, discussed the successes of the Flickr Commons, particularly the unanticipated benefit that when libraries posted photos online, users returned narratives about those images that go beyond “the trivialities of tagging.” Participants are now looking at ways to take that data and put it into their own databases, although Lynch warned that no model has been developed yet that would scale to large numbers of issues.
Geolocation
Panelists saw two distinct applications for the ubiquity of geographic information. Library consultant Karen Coyle sees the ability to deliver information based on where someone is on the earth; for example, seeing a building and having information about it delivered to them. Coyle also called for an Open Street Map for libraries, although one audience member announced that she had just finished geocoding every library in Texas and suggested that other state library associations might have similar projects underway.
Lynch and Coombs focused instead on what Lynch termed “fine geolocation” to provide GPS-type data within an individual library. For example, a cellphone-based system that “can tell you you’re in the wrong shelf; you need to be two shelves over,” Lynch explained. An audience member said the National Library of Singapore is already testing this kind of system.
Linked data
Roy Tennant of OCLC Research said that linked data may make him “eat half of my hat” regarding his skepticism toward the Semantic Web, although there are not yet specific examples. “First we have to make it possible to do things and then see what happens,” he said, noting that the Library of Congress is planning to put up a site using linked data in the next 4-6 weeks.
Economic considerations
“In rank-and-file libraries, I’m seeing a controlled burn,” Schneider said. “Libraries are looking much harder at their processes. Ideally, that would lead to getting rid of the silly stuff and focussing on the useful stuff.” The panel agreed that the poor economy may encourage more libraries to install self-check capabilities.
The panel also discussed the problem of getting broadband access to rural areas. “It’s not even a money problem, it’s an end-of-the-road problem,” Schneider said. Coombs illustrated the point with the plight of her parents, who have to connect to the internet with a 28.8 modem because the cable company doesn’t think it would be cost-effective to run cable to their house.
Lynch called for “a considerably more nuanced and fluid public policy here,” and urged rural libraries not to frame the lack of broadband as solely a library issue. “It’s a much broader economic and development problem and should be taken on as a municipal or regional issue.”
The LITA Blog liveblogged the session (see me sideways with computer at 8:22), and the session was streamed at www.ustream.tv/channel/griffey.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 2:31 pm by Leonard Kniffel
Emceed by Tina Jordan of HarperCollins, this morning’s breakfast program offering from the Association of American Publishers’ Trade Libraries Committee turned out to be a surprise treat amidst the business meetings. Eight authors shared stories about their writing lives, their latest books, and their love of libraries: Eli Gottlieb, Now You See Him (Harper Perennial); Brian Dennis Monaghan and Geraldine V. Monaghan, The Power of Two (Workman); P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast, Hunted (St. Martin’s Griffin); Craig Johnson, Another Man’s Moccasins (Viking Penguin); Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone (Alfred A. Knopf); and Luis Alberto Urrea, Into the Beautiful North (Little, Brown and Company). A selection of quotes from the authors:
Gottlieb: “Films will never be able to show the nuance and subtleties of human relationships the way a book can.”
Geraldine Monaghan: On dealing with her husband’s serious illness: “No one ever tells you to be courageous unless you’re going to need it.”
“We approached it as if this were a war, cancer was the enemy, and we were going to defeat it.”
Johnson: On his willingness to accept a six-pack as stipend for library appearances: “The library wasn’t big enough to hold the event so they held it in a bar on Main Street.” “I haven’t bought beer in three years.”
On being caught speeding in a small town and recognized as an author by the officer who said: ”We wish you would slow down, Mr. Johnson, we’d like to get some more books out of you.”
Verghese: On being a physician called to write: “At the age of 12 my true calling to medicine came, and it came in a book, Of Human Bondage.”
“Fiction is the great lie that tells the truth about how the world lives.”
Urrea: “If not for librarians I wouldn’t be here.”
“Librarians don’t distribute books, they distribute hope.”
On living in a tough neighborhood as a child: “I learned very early that it was better to stay home and read than to go out and get beat up.”
The meeting was cosponsored by HarperCollins, Hachette Book Group, Workman, Macmillan, Random House/Bertelsmann, and Get Caught Reading.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 1:15 am by Greg Landgraf
The full breadth of ALA’s membership was on display at the well-attended and generally upbeat Membership Town Hall Meeting sponsored by ALA’s Executive Board and Membership Meeting Committee. Dozens of members offered their voices on the topic “What Do Library Staff Want President Obama to Know?” Members asked ALA President Jim Rettig to remind the president of the needs of libraries of all types, from public, academic, and school libraries to those serving more specialized populations like military, tribal, or federal libraries.
Bernie Margolis, state librarian of New York, expressed his hope that the technology-friendly president would support the reading of books as well. “We’ve seen him with his Barackberry, we’ve seen him in front of computers. Can we create an opportunity for him to help us and us to help him build on the knowledge economy that is such an important part of moving this country forward?”
Sam Hastings declared “I think we should remind the Pres that the Institute of Museum and Library Services is up for reauthorization, the home of the Library Services and Technology Act, and that the research endeavors out of that institution are what lead us into future and better solutions.”
Arizona State Librarian Gladys Ann Wells suggested simply a thank-you, “Because [President Obama has] done more for public records in two days than many administrations did in 12 months.”
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