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I hate to post on top of Rich’s contribution about the front page Globe story on Cushing Academy’s changes to their library, but I want to make sure word gets out that the Special Library Association’s $50 discount on the 2010 Annual Conference registration ends today, Friday, September 4. The conference is in June 13-16 in New Orleans. With the discount, members pay $395 and nonmembers pay $875. (The price difference alone is incentive to join SLA, no?)

The September 4 Boston Globe is reporting that Cushing Academy is getting rid of their library books and installing electronic media equipment which includes a $12,000 cappuccino machine:

“This year, after having amassed a collection of more than 20,000 books, officials at the pristine campus about 90 minutes west of Boston have decided the 144-year-old school no longer needs a traditional library. The academy’s administrators have decided to discard all their books and have given away half of what stocked their sprawling stacks – the classics, novels, poetry, biographies, tomes on every subject from the humanities to the sciences. The future, they believe, is digital.”

“When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books,’’ said James Tracy, headmaster of Cushing and chief promoter of the bookless campus. “This isn’t ‘Fahrenheit 451’ [the 1953 Ray Bradbury novel in which books are banned]. We’re not discouraging students from reading. We see this as a natural way to shape emerging trends and optimize technology.’’

“Instead of a library, the academy is spending nearly $500,000 to create a “learning center,’’ though that is only one of the names in contention for the new space. In place of the stacks, they are spending $42,000 on three large flat-screen TVs that will project data from the Internet and $20,000 on special laptop-friendly study carrels. Where the reference desk was, they are building a $50,000 coffee shop that will include a $12,000 cappuccino machine.”

For the whole article:

http://tinyurl.com/mnn986

Posted by Rich

Ignite Boston 6 will be on Thursday, September 17, from 6pm to 9:00pm at the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology auditorium 245 Summer Street, Boston, next to South Station and on the Red Line. There is no cover charge or any sort of fee.

Since there is limited space at the venue, you must be 21 years of age and RSVP to have an opportunity to get into the event. By RSVP’ing you will also have the chance to win $300 worth of O’Reilly books of your choosing. You must be present to win. There will likely be other items like tee-shirts and other promo items for those who alert us ahead that they plan to attend. If you plan to attend, and do not RSVP you will be put in the ‘wait-list’ queue.

For more info:

http://igniteboston.eventbrite.com/

Posted by Rich

Bill Dedman, owner of the Power Reporting: Resources for journalists is offering the website for anyone who take it over:

“If a university journalism program or nonprofit association is interested in using this domain as an aid to journalists or journalism, drop me a line. Contact Bill Dedman. I don’t think whoever takes over the site has to make it what it was. The name is flexible enough that it could be used for public records, crowdsourcing, computer-assisted reporting, etc.”

For more info:

http://powerreporting.com/

Posted by Rich

The 25th Computers in Libraries 2010 Conference, April 12-14, 2009, Hyatt Regency Crystal City, Arlington, Virginia, is calling for speakers. The topic is Information Fluency: Literacy for Life:

“Information fluency goes beyond literacy (the ability to read and write), information literacy (the ability to find, evaluate and use information), media literacy (the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and create messages in a variety of forms), and digital literacy (the ability to use digital technology, communication tools or networks to locate, evaluate, use and create information). It extends to other types of literacy necessary to grow, learn and live – cultural literacy, global literacy, news literacy, scientific literacy, economic literacy, social literacy, health literacy, multimedia literacy, computer literacy, social online literacy, and more. Information, and fluency with it, permeates every part of our lives. Developing skills to become fluent with information is the key to our success individually as well as in groups, teams and communities.”

“This year’s tracks and themes encompass: People (skills, organizations, roles); Learning & Literacy; Places (virtual & physical); Digital/Virtual Library Services; Research Implementation and Implications; Social Media; Innovation; Community Building; Integrating Systems & Strategies; Information Discovery & Search; Technology Planning; Managing Content & eResrouces; Web Tools & Leading Edge Technology; Intranets & Portals; Search Engines, Case Studies of Internet & Intranet Librarians, Library Automation & Infrastructure, Managing Information and Knowledge Assets, eLearning & Training, Web Design & Development, Streaming Multimedia, Managing Digitally, and more. Speakers are knowledgeable, authoritative and focus on practical applications, “how to” solutions, and case studies as well as technical and managerial issues. Please consider sharing your knowledge and ideas; send us a proposal to speak. Below are some of the topics we hope to cover, but don’t let this list limit your imagination! We look forward to hearing from you.”

Proposal Deadline: September 15, 2009

For more info:

http://www.infotoday.com/cil2010/CallForSpeakers.asp

Posted by Rich

Jenny Levine of the Shifted Librarian library blog started to use WordPress’ Lifestream plugin which allows her to post feeds from her major sites such as Flickr, delicious, Twitter, Google Reader, and Youtube onto her blog. It also allows her to add any other RSS feeds not listed.

This looks like an interesting experiment using blogging software, RSS feeds and social media.

For more info:

http://theshiftedlibrarian.com/

Posted by Rich

NELINET, OCLC’s New England regional network, is offering $200 off the regular conference price at the 2009 Internet Librarian Conference on October 26 – 28, 2009 at the Monterey Conference Center in Monterey, CA.

- Costs*: Internet Librarian (October 26 – 28, 2009) – $279.00
- Internet@Schools (October 26 – 27, 2009) – $169.00
- Combo Conference (Internet Librarian and Internet@Schools) – $279.00
*This is savings of $200.00 off the regular registration price.

Registration Deadline
To receive the NELINET discount, registrations must be received no later than Monday, September 21, 2009. No refunds or cancellations can be made after Wednesday, September 23, 2009.

You can get this and other discounts by joining one of the Massachusetts Regional Library Systems.
Special libraries are welcome!

For more info on joining MRLS:

http://mblc.state.ma.us/mblc/regional/index.php

For more info on the NELINET Internet Librarian Conference Discount:

http://www3.nelinet.net/node/590

For more info on the Internet Librarian Conference:

http://www.infotoday.com/il2009/

Posted by Rich

Jessamyn West of the librarian.net blog has two library related presentation proposals for the SXSW 2010 Conference in Austin, Texas:

“I have proposed two presentations for the SXSW conference in Austin Texas next March. There is a complicated series of steps to determining which of the proposals will actually get picked. Part of this determination (30%) is a very basic voting thing where you can thumbs-up or thumbs-down a particular presentation. Voting is now open. We are encouraged to use our powers of persuasion to get you to vote for our ideas. I would like you to vote for my ideas. Here is a link to all of the proposals. There are over 2000 of them and 300 or so will get chosen.”

How The Other 1/2 Lives-Touring The Digital Divide

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/4128

The other proposal:

Curating Cultural Content-Libraries Save Your Ass & Etchings:

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/3654

“Voting involved signing up on the website and then clicking the thumbs up. I’d appreciate it if you’d consider doing this. I’m pretty into both topics but the first one is nearer and dearer to my heart, while the second one seems to fit in more nicely with the SXSW gestalt. A few other library-themed things you shoudl check out”

She listed other library-related proposals you might want to consider voting on:

http://www.librarian.net/

Here’s a chance to get library-related themes into other web and social media conferences.

Here’s more info on the SXSW Conference:
“The South by Southwest (SXSW) Conferences & Festivals offer the unique convergence of original music, independent films, and emerging technologies.”

http://sxsw.com/

Posted by Rich

Issue 7 of the Code4Lib Journal is out:

How Hard Can It Be? : Developing in Open Source
Extracting User Interaction Information from the Transaction Logs of a Faceted Navigation OPAC
Using a Web Services Architecture with Me, Myself and I
Deciphering Journal Abbreviations with JAbbr
Repurposing ProQuest Metadata for Batch Ingesting ETDs into an Institutional Repository
Bibliographic Metadata Extraction from Theses

For the whole issue:

http://journal.code4lib.org/issues/issue7

Posted by Rich

The Boston Public Library is holding a panel discussion on the Google Book Search Settlement called Expanding Access to Books: Implications of the Google Books Settlement Agreement on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 6 pm:

Speakers:
* Daniel Clancy, Engineering Director, Google Books
* John Palfrey, Henry N. Ess III Professor of Law and Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources, Harvard Law School
* Ann Wolpert, Director of Libraries, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
* Hal Abelson, Class of 1922 Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Moderated by Maura Marx, Executive Director, Open Knowledge Commons

For more info:

http://tinyurl.com/lk3xef

Posted by Rich