Libraries Interact writers and friends will be covering VALA 2010 using CoveritLive. Prior to the main event, is the OCLC mashathon. A few of us are attending and our tweets and comments can be viewed here, so you can follow along as we discover a variety of OCLC-provided APIs, including the WorldCat Search API, led by Roy Tennant. Each day of VALA2010 will have a new post here at Libraries Interact. If you are attending VALA2010 and would like to contribute your tweets to the coverage – leave a comment here or send dm to @petahopkins.

As an adjunct to the VALA 2010 Conference, a series of special ‘techie’ sessions is being run under the title of VALAtech Boot Camp.

The five sessions will be run over 4 days and include:

• OCLC API Mashathon
• Video: Negotiating the Online and Mobile Space
• Semantic Web APIs
• Open Source Content Management Systems – Joomla!
• Open Source Content Management Systems – Drupal

Being techie, they require some knowledge and equipment. The sessions are individual, so you don’t have to attend them all.  All but the OCLC API Mashathon are running on VALA2010 conference days, so you need to keep this in mind also.

As places are strictly limited, I highly recommend you check out the details at the VALA Website and get your application in as soon as possible, for whichever session(s) you choose.

ALIA is offering the chance for ALIA members to win a free course placement, in several courses run by ARK, PICs and Richard Sayers.  Courses cover a wide range of topics and locations, including online.

Check out the ALIA Courses, Workshops and PD Competitions webpage, for details on the courses supported, the competition criteria and entry form.

Well worth taking a few minutes to check it out.

It’s on again, applications to attend Aurora in 2009 opened on Monday, 15 Sept 2008. Most comments I’ve heard suggest this a great learning opportunity, and particularly beneficial for those with leadership aspirations. ALIA has maintained a list of testimonials.

The Australian Committee on Cataloguing (ACOC) has released its position statement on the coverage of cataloguing in courses providing an initial qualification in library and information management.

The statement including an extract from the Educational Policy statements of the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services is available from the ACOC site.  This extract contains a list of knowledge and skills required for intellectual access and information organization.

ACOC: Overview

“ACOC holds that ALIA-recognised courses must provide their graduates with a “knowledge of cataloguing tools and sources of bibliographic records and how to use them” so that graduates can indeed use key cataloguing tools and apply basic bibliographic standards.” — Position Statement

If you feel all nostalgic about card catalogues and would like an image like this one, head over to the Catalog Card Generator from John Blyberg.

Leap into Leadership in 2008!

What are you doing with your extra day in 2008, February 29? Would you like to spend it participating in an introductory leadership workshop, whilst being exposed to the knowledge and wisdom of many leaders in the library and information industry? A group of fellow Victorian Aurorians have put together a cost recovery workshop for you to, “Leap into Leadership” that allows you to gain an experience to drive your leadership learning further. The workshop will be led by distinguished Victorian based facilitator Greg Cook, who has conducted leadership training for the State Library of Victoria and various Public Library Services across Victoria. There will be a panel session where some noteable (to be announced soon) leaders from a variety of library sectors will share their personal insights on leadership with you. The aims of the workshop are to:

• provide a framework to assist participants to identify their own leadership styles;
• provide role models by having a panel of highly experienced leaders talk about their leadership;
• provide opportunity for participants to work in small groups to discuss and consolidate their learning with the support of experienced leaders.

The workshop is aimed at participants who are new to leadership and wish to develop their leadership style. This is a rare opportunity to learn about leadership with respected industry leaders and a highly qualified facilitator. Librarians, Library Technicians, recent graduates and students from ALL sectors are encouraged to participate. Other important details:

When: 29th Februrary 2008

Where: State Library of Victoria

Time: 8.30 for 9am sharp start – till about 5pm

Cost: $130 for ALIA Members and $172 for Non ALIA Members The registration form is available at. http://www.alia.org.au/groups/aliavic/Payment will confirm your registration. Participant numbers are limited, so you will need to apply quickly The venue has been kindly sponsored by the State Library of Victoria Workshop Organisers: Margie Anderson, Tania Barry, Chris Kelly, Paula Kelly, Beth McKenzie, Jill Stephens, Michelle Thomason – the workshop is run under the ALIA Victoria Banner

For more information: email: Jill Stephens – jillcstephens@gmail.com.nospam (remove the no spam) – Subject: Leap into Leadership Workshop

There are now a number of sites which have developed their own ’23 things’ type staff development activities. In many cases these programs are openly accessible and encourage anyone to join in.

23 things

This one really got the ball rolling, with a 9-week program for staff at PLCMC. It listed 23 Things (or small exercises) that you can do on the web to explore and expand your knowledge of the Internet and Web 2.0.

There is a long list of sites that are doing similar programs and many of these will be helpful for the motivated self-learner or for those tailoring a similar program for their library. On the list are a heap of Australian sites, including those participating in the state-wide program in Victoria.

This is a sample of sites from different sectors that have modified the 23 things program (not all Australian)..

• St. Michaels Primary School (School)
• Murdoch University Library (Academic)
• Mornington Peninsular Library (Public) – this one is part of a Victoria-wide program.
• Sutherland Shire (Public)
• Library of the Marine Corps (Special)

Other useful resources are:

Learn More Series « from the LibraryStream Blog

“Learn More is a series of self-paced discovery entries for library staff interested in venturing out on the social web. Each post is meant as a short introduction to a different social website, tool, or concept. It might not be ground-breaking information to veteran readers of the blogosphere, but I hope each brief summary will act as a gentle nudge for newcomers to social networking.”

Currently, the series includes:

• Avatars
• Flickr
• Youtube

CommonCraft Show

This is a series of short explanatory videos covering social media.

On the day before the unconference, the Queensland University Libraries Office of Cooperation ICT Working Party is hosting a seminar on Social Software and Libraries at Queensland University of Technology Library - Details

On behalf of the Organising Committee, we wish to announce that Registration for the ALIA National Library and Information Association Technicians Conference 2007 is now open.

The Conference will address key issues affecting the library and information professions in this rapidly changing digital age and offer a stimulating program featuring leaders in their fields of expertise and based on the Conference themes ‘Inform, Innovate, Initiate and Inspire’.

The Early Bird Registration Deadline is Friday, 27 July 2007 and the easiest method of registration is on-line via the Conference website. We invite you to visit the Conference website www.alia07.com for information regarding registration and the Conference program. We look forward to welcoming you to Melbourne for ALIA 07.

Tania Barry

Marketing and Promotions

ALIA National Library & Information Technicians Conference 2007www.alia07.com/

It’s wonderful to see that so many librarians from Queensland and nearby regions are so keen to learn about the use of emerging technologies to communicate with their clients. Following last year’s sell-out seminar “New Communication Technologies in Libraries”, the QULOC ICT working party arranged a reprise ” Communicating With Clients Using New Technologies”. This too had a waiting list.

The format for the seminar was a morning session of presentations, lunch, afternoon hands-on workshops on using an RSS aggregator, contributing to a wiki and a demonstration session of Voice Over IP and Optical Character Recognition to text. The seminar was then rounded off with a lively panel session reviewing some of the themes and issues discussed during the day.

 The flier (pdf) is available if you are interested in the full program.

 The presentations included:

Chelsea Harper and Kate Watson’s research into the use of blogs and wikis by libraries. Kate and Chelsea have a wiki they are using to support their research project and invite libraries to contribute stories about their success stories in the use of these technologies. There are some very useful links to practical examples.

Cathy Slaven of QUT talked about designing web resources for mobile phones and other handheld devices. If your clientele has a high level of ownership and use of web-enabled phones and PDAs (most of us) then Cathy’s presentation will get you started thinking about some of the difficulties and principles to consider before you launch into a website redesign.

Crystal Plowman of UNE covered the issues arising from a project to podcast for special client groups. Some of the myths about podcasting were dispelled and some thought provoking ideas about the psychology of different user groups arose. It was suggested that for indigenous students, they would prefer to listen to a voice of the same gender. Librarian Kathryn attended this seminar too – she wondered whether that was something that also affected the majority of the population. That got me pondering if that is something I’d subconsciously be tuned into as well, my conscious voice tells me I don’t really have a preference one way or the other. Or maybe it would depend on the topic.

Anna Raunik (Queensland State Library) shared a shorter version of her VALA paper on webcasting and web conferencing. It’s great that these opportunities come up for those who often find it difficult to attend interstate conferences. Anna’s presentation covered the experience of using these technologies in libraries in the US and museums and local councils in the UK.

One of the great things about these ICT seminars is that they focus on the client perspective rather than the technology itself and how they are used in libraries and allied organisations specifically.

“Sound” bites with apologies if not transcribed exactly as spoken…

“The real value was in having the archives available” — Anna Raunik on web conferencing

“We are taking a popular medium and using it to feed them a message they don’t want to eat” — Crystal Plowman on podcasting

“Find out where your students are and deliver there” — Chelsea Harper on library 2.0

“Core competencies over time become core rigidities” — Andrew Bennett on sticking to your knitting.

“If a site doesn’t provide an RSS feed, I can hardly be bothered with it any more” — Me on keeping current.

Link to presentations – more will be added in the next couple of days.

Were you there? What did you think?