Nomenclature for non-Librarians reading this blog:

ALA is the acronym for American Library Association
ACRL – Association of College and Research Libraries, division of ALA
LITA – Library and Information Technology
YALSA – Young Adult Library Services Association
AASL – American Association of School Librarians

2010 ALA Annual Conference in Washington DC – WOW…that was a big – hot – conference [25,444 attendess and temperatures seldom below 95 degrees for the 6 day conference.]  Here is where you will get all the  “good stuff” links wise. I guess you had to be there to actually get the good stuff if the multiple bulging bags of books and the lines in the mail/shipping  center were any indication of getting good stuff. The exhibition area was huge, unwieldly and like another planet without basic provisions like food and water and coffee!  I navigated with due caution (and probably missed out on lots of good stuff – fondly known in Librarian parlance as “swag”. ) I never learned how to do swag in Library school. By Monday afternoon, after attending an author “tea” I did figure out that if I stood in the hall after the talks the publisher reps just handed me books – then I got them signed and I will give them away to deserving homes – after I read them!

It looked to me – a “newbie” first time attender – like the conference was many things to many people. Will Manley saw it this way – book people and machine people.

It was an organizational meeting grounds. I spoke with other Librarians who attended and were on ALA committees and they used much of the times attending ALA meetings. I did sit in on the YALSA  Best Fiction for Young Adults meeting and realized… ah ha, that’s how they pick the best books lists.

The conference was a showcase for best practices in libraries – but I have to say I was somewhat dismayed by most of the Librarians presentation styles. Bad powerpoints abounded. I tried to stick with my division of ALA – ACRL; but, discovered the LITA presentations had much more thought,  content and presentation panache. [More on the best, most thoughtful session of ALA DC 2010 Top Tech Trends soon.] Some intrepid Librarians know that presenting the  message is important and they practice with hilarity at Battledecks!

Be inspired at your conference, seemed to be another theme for me at the ALA Conference. I caught some (but unfortunately, not all) of the big name speakers. Toni Morrison spoke Saturday evening and was quietly eloquent. I did get to hear Mr. Eppo van Nispen tot Sevenaer (Director of DOK Delft – The Most Modern Library in the World) and so appreciated his F^5 approach to design and services. [Stay tuned and I will link my presentation describing this – here, soon] See him  at  TedxRotterdam 2010 here.

I was reminded everywhere during the conference…  Libraries are all about FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY! Librarians are teachers -all the time- and information literacy is a challenge and a calling. But, I always knew that Libraries are all about READING!

And though I attended sessions on Mobile Reference, eBooks, Marketing your Library services, and Tech Trends, as well as, talking and networking with our vendors like a good academic librarian should – I loved the time I got to spend with the authors and editors who were so eloquent and passionate about their books and reading.

Don’t forget Libraries are all about READING!

“There is nothing more beautiful than a beautiful story.”  (Eppo’s father!) ALA DC 2010 was the story of Libraries in all their organizations, contradictions, beauty and necessity.

I learn so much reading blogs. Who thinks reading blogs is declining? I was reading Is Twitter Replacing the RSS Feeder? – while cleaning out my RSS feeds in prep for going being out of the office for five days. If you think blog reading is declining, check out John Dupuis doing great work with blogs and instruction!

I’m trying to catch up on all my work…submitting time sheets, processing new books, finalizing performance reviews and clearing my RSS feeds so I can attend the ALA Annual Conference guilt free. How serendipitous to read this blog entry by Nancy Pearl written by her husband, Joe about a book – Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe by Simon Singh- and then to just get up from my desk and find the book in my Physics Library at CUA. So. my RSS feeds and blog reading led me to this book! I love good books and I’m checking this one out. But I won’t be reading it this weekend…I’ll be at ALA.

Nancy Pearl is going to ALA, too!

From the ALA Wiki:

ALA Auditorium Speaker Series

Nancy Pearl with Mary McDonagh Murphy

Saturday, June 26, 8:00 -9:00 am
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of To Kill a Mockingbird, an American classic, Nancy Pearl will interview Mary McDonagh Murphy, Emmy award-winning filmmaker and author of the upcoming book, Scout, Atticus and Boo: A Celebration of Fify Years of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Nancy Pearl speaks about the pleasures of reading to library and community groups throughout the world and comments on books regularly on NPR’s Morning Edition. She’s the author of Book Crush: For Kids and Teens: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment and Interest; Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment and Reason; and More Book Lust: 1,000 New Reading Recommendations for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason, all published by Sasquatch Books. In 2004, she was awarded the Women’s National Book Association Award, given to ” a living American woman who… has done meritorious work in the world of books beyond the duties or responsibilities of her profession or occupation.” In 1998, Library Journal named her Fiction Reviewer of the Year. She is the model for the Librarian Action Figure. On her monthly television show, Book Lust with Nancy Pearl, she has interviewed authors as diverse as E.L. Doctorow, Ann Patchett and Terry Pratchett.

Sponsored by HarperCollins

I have a new techno-toy, a netbook. Now, I will type on the train. Will it make my writing any better? Will it make my commute any better? I’ll let you be the judge of the first and I’ll keep you posted on the second. I hope it will add to my blogging prowess ?!

I had a recent comment on one of my blog posts that I should include more video links in my blog, because there is too much to read. I started this whole blogging adventure four years ago – to improve my writing. So, if I find a good video, which enhances the message of the blog, I will put it in. But, for the most part, this is a blog of prose and if I’m inspired and very, very lucky…poetry.

I also hope to read books on my netbook – ebooks and audio books I download from my favorite public library. (The truth is I have never met a public library I haven’t liked.) The Fairfax County Public Library uses the Overdrive software to deliver ebooks, so I will begin with that. I also hope to be printing a lot less – so I can now read journal articles on the train on the netbook, articles about how to help students and faculty with mobile literacies. Ah, biblio-irony!

In this increasingly mobile- technology-enhanced  world, I am now a mobile writer and reader. But, I keep thinking how do we afford all this mobility?  And what are mobile thoughts? And what are my mobile aspirations?

Mobile posts to come…

I think April’s big question is…will this semester ever end? But, others think April’s big question is:

Isn’t this an ever-expanding universe of tech goodies? Will we be forced to chase hot tools and social platforms to stay competitive? How the heck are we supposed to stay up to speed on all the latest stuff and be successful using it personally and professionally?

How do we keep up?

I like new technology tools. I love getting my “news feeds” from twitter. Have you seen Neil deGrasse Tyson’s tweets on aliens? They makes me smile! So, we all learn and use technology tools to “keep up.”  My newest tool is  Prezi – I learned it works better in Firefox than in IE; and, if you put in graphics, they need to be very high quality to project well. I also learned about QR codes, but am still figuring out which is the best software to use on my phone to read all QR codes. All QR creator sites are not created equally good.  So, yes, I use technology tools to keep up.

But, as it is the end of the semester here at the Catholic University of America, and the end of my first academic year on the job. I need to find time to reflect about what worked this year…and what didn’t. To learn my new job I’ve read management books, built LibGuides, “selected” for subject areas, kept track of seven subject budgets and two  staff budgets, all the while, still learning how to commute. And I’m thinking, maybe – every now and then – I need to step back to keep up.

It was kismet then today when I read a lecture [delivered to the plebe class at the United States Military Academy at West Point in October of last year reprinted in theAmericanScholar.org Spring 2010] by William Deresiewicz (essayist and critic) on Solitude and Leadership: If you want others to follow, learn to be alone with your thoughts .

So it’s perfectly natural to have doubts, or questions, or even just difficulties. The question is, what do you do with them? Do you suppress them, do you distract yourself from them, do you pretend they don’t exist? Or do you confront them directly, honestly, courageously? If you decide to do so, you will find that the answers to these dilemmas are not to be found on Twitter or Comedy Central or even in The New York Times. They can only be found within—without distractions, without peer pressure, in solitude.

It reminded me of the Thomas Merton quote that I have always loved and think of often:

“It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers. The more solitary I am the more affection I have for them…. Solitude and silence teach me to love my brothers for what they are, not for what they say.”

Deresiewicz talks about the new technology tools – and why reading books is better than reading tweets. [Though I love the heavenly irony that I found this lecture through a tweet.] When  he rhapsodizes about the importance of solitude and friendship… well, I am still reflecting about why this speaks to me…but it does!  Read the whole essay…and then reflect about it for a while.

On tweets and books…

So why is reading books any better than reading tweets or wall posts? Well, sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes, you need to put down your book, if only to think about what you’re reading, what you think about what you’re reading. But a book has two advantages over a tweet. First, the person who wrote it thought about it a lot more carefully. The book is the result of his solitude, his attempt to think for himself.

Second, most books are old. This is not a disadvantage: this is precisely what makes them valuable. They stand against the conventional wisdom of today simply because they’re not from today. Even if they merely reflect the conventional wisdom of their own day, they say something different from what you hear all the time. But the great books, the ones you find on a syllabus, the ones people have continued to read, don’t reflect the conventional wisdom of their day. They say things that have the permanent power to disrupt our habits of thought. They were revolutionary in their own time, and they are still revolutionary today. And when I say “revolutionary,” I am deliberately evoking the American Revolution, because it was a result of precisely this kind of independent thinking. Without solitude—the solitude of Adams and Jefferson and Hamilton and Madison and Thomas Paine—there would be no America.

On solitude and friendship…

So solitude can mean introspection, it can mean the concentration of focused work, and it can mean sustained reading. All of these help you to know yourself better. But there’s one more thing I’m going to include as a form of solitude, and it will seem counterintuitive: friendship. Of course friendship is the opposite of solitude; it means being with other people. But I’m talking about one kind of friendship in particular, the deep friendship of intimate conversation. Long, uninterrupted talk with one other person. Not Skyping with three people and texting with two others at the same time while you hang out in a friend’s room listening to music and studying. That’s what Emerson meant when he said that “the soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude.”

And, in this reflective mode I have checked out the book Thoughts in Solitude by Thomas Merton and will leave you with his prayer [because I often have no idea where I am going] as I reflect and hope, as my friend Adele says, that the big guy/gal is indeed pleased.

I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. - from “Thoughts in Solitude” by Thomas Merton

End of semester craziness back here on the job …great conference, lots of good stuff to go back and use, following lots of new folk on Twitter and Blogs and how cool is it that we will all be in the Library of Congress as they collect our tweets…or will we?!  See David Ferriero’s take in AOTUS: Collector in Chief weighs in on why Twitter archives.

This will be a short post, but I don’t want to lose valuable information from CIL2010 Day 3.

Ken Haycock in his keynote address on Wednesday says “public good is dead” …SAY IT ISN’T SO!

The next thing… After the 23 Things see what Nebraska is doing for the 24 thing and beyond.

Lori Reed says the next thing is scary and bad news for libraries. Help  SaveLibraries.org !

Productivity Tools

And presenting right from his blog LibraryStuff on What’s Hot in RSS was Steven Cohen.

E-Books Landscape: Brian Hulsey ; Bobbi Newman [http://url4.eu/2jqvq] ; Jason Griffey

Saved the Day: Megan K. Fox on  Mobile Practices & Search: What’s Hot! In Mobile Technologies.

Hey, did you learn about QR codes? I did – here is the QR code for this blog.

I’m now following David Ferriero [dferriero] on Twitter. I’ll add his blog AOTUS: Collector in Chief to my RSS feeds. Dr. Ferriero, Archivist of the US, was interviewed by Paul Holdengraber [no lightwieght, himself - Director of Public Programs at the New York Public Library(known as "LIVE from the NYPL"] as the keynote activity at today’s CiL2010 Conference. Holdengraber teased Ferriero, describing him as the “most powerful librarian.”

Dr. Ferriero noted, “It’s nice having a boss down the street, but not in your face.” But Dr. Ferriero has his orders – as in  Executive Orders signed by his boss, Barack Obama – the Open Government Initiative where every Feredal Agency will demonstrate transparency, collaboration and participation; and the Classified National Security Information which will attempt to de-classify over 400 million documents. “You can’t have open government if you don’t have good records.”

Dr. Ferriero outlined  two main goals of his job. 1) To improve the quality of workplace for employees of the National Archives (I think he mentioned in 42 locations around the US); and 2) To “open up the archives” with robust education programs, content rich web sites for K-12 education and new exhibits to encourage kids (of all ages) to be excited about records and encourage all Americans to be “Citizen Archivists.”

I applaud his passion for records and the freedom implied in open information. He lives the  National Archives mantra “Democracy Starts Here.” I was also impressed by his managerial vision which “recognizes the value in every piece of the job employees do that bring value to the agency.”

Best interview question this morning – what keeps Dr. Ferriero up at night – electronic records management  which is the largest, messiest and most expensive challenge. And to be fair , his greatest joy is working with the staff of the National Archives and “great records.” Dr. Ferriero charmed the audience this morning when he shared his current reading, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith and Now the Drum of War: Walt Whitman and His Brothers in the Civil War by Robert Roper. We should ask every presenter what they are currently reading!

See this interview streamed live at  CiLlive on USTREAM.

You can listen to a Dr. Ferriero lecture Are We Losing Our Memory? The View from the National Archives presented at Duke University Provost Lecture Series. [Hear Audio of Dr. Ferriero’s Presentation Here.]

Other ideas from today…

Critical Thinking for Decision Making with Rebecca Jones and Deb Wallace (HBS)

WOW (not WoW)! See this very huge project  presented as Reference for a Digital World, but was realy VoIP and SKYPE Reference Service. Talk about vision! Thanks, Jan Dawson.

Lori Reed and eLearning tools.

Crafting Online Personas with Craig J. Anderson, Reference Librarian, Kean University and JP Porcaro, Virtual Services Librarian, New Jersey City University – Can library staff create a professional online persona without adopting a new, secret identity? Jury is still out – but these guys suggest branding yourself, controlling the message and, oh yeah, filter! But, maybe, being a responsible librarian means showing up and being where your users are. See their blog.

Great April 13 blog post on WoW [World of Warcraft] session later in the day. Thanks libraryguy!

Libraries and Transliteracy at Computers in Libraries #cil2010

I’m still thinking about  Chad Mairn’s presentation on Information Fluency Strategies – very cool use of twitter posts in powerpoint presentation. I need to learn how to do that.

I missed this one yesterday  Gen X Librarians: Leading From the Middle.

For those of you not at Computers in Libraries 2010 see John Kennerly’s post  “Going to the Conference without being there.”

And just for fun… Free Lookups.

I’m attending the Computers in Libraries 2010 Conference in Arlington, VA this week. [They are streaming, see it here.]  Many thanks to the library adminstrators who sent me! I’m in a muddle, though. I have tech envy as I watch my seat mates thumb their phones with one hand and type furiously on their netbooks or laptops with the other as the presentation goes on. Are they really listening? How many tasks make multitasking undo one? My Blackberry (carrier unspecified) doesn’t have access in the meeting rooms. I need to climb two levels in the Hyatt Regenccy to add my two cents (KMH_nowinVA) to the collective wisdom on Twitter (#CiL2010). So, my apologies to the presenters who want Twitter feedback, alas, mine won’t be immediate. I’m the one taking notes …with pen and blogging after the fact.

Lee Rainie, Director, Pew Internet and American Life Project coined himself an internet archeologist. He noted that GenX are the predominant Tweeters, students are “life-logging” by picture, and 20% of online creators are in health content. He led us to  New Literacies by Henry Jenkins  (read his blog). As Rainie explained that “links are social currency” I am linking here so as not to lose this information and to share information with my library colleagues.

Other things I don’t want to lose…

E101: Information Fluency Strategies & Practices by Chad Mairn

• See also  “Elements and Standards” Online Model
• Uses TRAILS (tool from KSU) with freshman as info lit pre-test.

Possible use for IM Reference: see our screens (no logins – just a link)

• Yuuguu
• LogMeInExpress

C102: Achieving Org 2.0 by Meredith G. Farkas

A103: New & Hot: The Best of Resource Shelf by Gary Price

• Did you know you could find your neighbors in White Pages?

A104: Innovative Applications of Federated Search Technology

• Best line of the day …Jeff Wisniewski, University of Pittsburgh, on federated search…”one box to search them all” – we’re not there yet!

E105: LibGuides: Web Tools to Enhance Information Fluency? Diane L. Schrecker, Ashland University LibGuides

I’m liking those Ohio connections and now resting up for tomorrow and more conference fun.

You may have read about the High School Library in MA that is completely electronic and and has no physical books. How very sad. Now, I am not a Luddite (…yet) and I believe in technology as a force for good in the world, but I also believe in curiosity and serendipity and where better to discover those entities than a bookshelf.

Yesterday, I moved books. It was wonderful, a little dusty and real.

Between the LC Call Numbers G and GA (Class G — Geography. Anthropology. Recreation) on a shelf in the Engineering & Architecture Library at the Catholic University of America I was delighted to find…

Object-Based Image Analysis and Treaty Verification : New Approaches in Remote Sensing – Applied to Nuclear Facilities in Iran by Sven Nussbaum and Gunter Menz.

This book describes recent progress in object-based image interpretation, and also presents many new results in its application to verification of nuclear non-proliferation. A comprehensive workflow and newly developed algorithms for object-based high resolution image (pre-) processing, feature extraction, change detection, classification and interpretation are developed, applied and evaluated. The entire analysis chain is demonstrated with high resolution imagery acquired over Iranian nuclear facilities. [Publisher book description: Springer]

Atlas of Medieval Europe edited by David Ditchburn, Simon MacLean and Angus Mackay.

The Atlas of Medieval Europe covers the period from the fall of the Roman Empire through to the beginnings of the Renaissance, spreading from the Atlantic coast to the Russian steppes. Each map approaches a separate issue or series of events in medieval history, and a commentary locates it in its broader context.
This second edition has over forty new maps covering a variety of topics including:

* the Moravian Empire
* environmental change
* the travels and correspondence of Froissart and travellers in the east
* the layout of great castles and palaces. [From Amazon product description]

and

Cosmography: a Posthumous Scenario for the Future of Humanity by R. Buckminster Fuller

Fuller was one of the truly original thinkers of the 20th century. This book is a collection of his thoughts about life, progress, and humanity’s role in the universe as he voiced them during the last four years of his life. Transcribed by his “adjuvant” Kiyoshi Kuromiya, they range over a panoply of topics. Among other things, he attempts to explain politics, sociology, economics, and history by metaphorically extending physical and mathematical structures to describe human behavior. Although modesty was not his strongest point, Fuller was undeniably an exceptional person. His fame alone suggests that libraries should add this book to their collection. However, most readers will find it difficult to understand. – Harold D. Shane, Baruch Coll., CUNY Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. [From Library Journal]

The mind boggles…what’s on your bookshelf?

Isn’t Facebook fun? I can keep up with friends from afar – especially my students. Those interesting kids from the Class of 2009 are now posting their thoughts and worries about going to college. They are shopping for dorm stuff, some can’t wait to leave home, they wonder and worry about new roommates, and they ask “am I smart enough for college?” This summer, I can relate. I, too, made the transition from high school to college.

In May, the last question of my day long interview for a university librarian position was “you’ve talked about helping the 1st year students make the transition to college, how are you going to make the transition from high school librarian to college librarian?” Good question. I began my new position as an academic librarian on a college campus on July 6.

One month in – how am I handling that transition? Some days are better than others. I, too, ask the question…am I smart enough?

Being on a college campus is – fun. Being in a community of fellow academic librarians is – fun. [Beware*****Library humor*****What is a group of librarians called...a shelf of librarians?] I had the opportunity to attend a Journal Club meeting – how cool is it that a bunch of librarians all read the same scholarly articles and then get together to discuss them and talk about how the topic impacts their university community? I smiled about that meeting for days! That was fun.

I would advise my students just beginning college to re-configure their personal learning networks. I read many blogs and am in email contact with other librarians from public libraries, high school libraries and university libraries. My emphasis has necessarily changed and I search out other academic science librarians to see what they are reading and what they are doing and recommending. The tools I use to do this are constantly changing – though I wiki, tweet, facebook, igoogle for calendars and documents, and IM; I now need to do it [m] on my mobile phone as I’m a commuter for three hours a day.

I still read some favorite blogs as they have become my learning network for technology in education, and I am wondering if the integration of tech tools moves faster in high schools than it does in college? Jeff Utrecht on his blog The Thinking Stick gives an international perspective and speaks of stages of learning networks. Doug Johnson and Joyce Valenza are prolific bloggers about technology and education and libraries.

But my online reading is more content specific these days:
EurekaAlert!
NSF Discoveries
Confessions of a Science Librarian
ACRLog
Humanities, Librarianship and Technology
Points of Reference
Marginal Revolution

My professional memberships have changed as well to include ACSA (Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture) and ASEE (American Society for Engineering Education,) as well as SLA (Special Libraries Association – which has the best list-serv ever!) and ALA (American Library Association.)

Going to college for me means the job is bigger. The campus and community are bigger and more diverse. The subject matter is, well, college level – undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral research level.

The needs of my library users are the much the same. They need the library open. They need qualified people to answer questions, even if they only need to know how to make copies. The need service, instruction, quality materials, and a place to think and work.

Oh, yeah! I’d also advise my high school students and friends to go to the bookstore and buy a college shirt. I like the red one.

Please see the following link for my presenation for the position of Coordinator of Science Libraries at CUA. Please find the slide presentation, references page and web links used in this presentation.

Kimberly Hoffman Portfolio Page