Digital Library Center Blog | UF

Along with thousands of other folks working in or around libraries and information services, I’ll be in Denver this weekend of the ALA Midwinter conference. ALA will have lots of great presentations and great folks who have lots to information to share! Jan. 25, update: I came down with the flu the flu on Jan. 23 (the day before my flight), but soon I’ll be better and reading all the blogs and posts from others who did go (and learning vicariously of all that I missed).

CALL FOR PAPERS:
World Library and Information Congress: 75th IFLA General Conference and Council
“Libraries create futures: Building on cultural heritage”
23-27 August 2009, Milan, Italy
Deadline Extended to 15 January 2009
CALL FOR PAPERS

The IFLA annual congress provides an opportunity to present library research and outcomes in Information Technology and Innovation in a multi-disciplinary international forum. The IFLA Information Technology Section invites technologists, librarians and other interested parties working in the field of digital library infrastructure to submit proposals for papers in a 2-hour session in Milan, Italy.

SESSION THEME

New repositories: architectures interoperability and data exchange

THE TOPIC

This theme will cover issues of (technical / data driven) interoperability for all types of libraries when dealing with the massing up of digital repositories in a manner that supports open services, including the convergence with archiving solutions and new challenges for digital libraries from the point of view of services versus user impact. In keeping with the theme of the 75th World Library and Information Congress, “Libraries create futures: Building on cultural heritage”, we invite papers that showcase:

• Successful models of interoperability between different types of digital archives and repositories.
• Various experiences in data exchange between multimedia archives.
• New services based on successful interoperability solutions, as distributed systems and federated access to digital archives/repositories.
• Development of open APIs and open source solutions which helps to facilitate advanced services based on metadata from various type s of collections and organisations.
• Case studies in open source application deployment (eg. Library Management Systems) that enhances digital archive interoperability between a diverse range of libraries.

SUBMISSIONS

1. The deadline for submitting a detailed, abstract (500 words) and full author details is 15 January 2009. Selection of papers is based on the abstract, and presenters will be notified by mid-February 2009 at the latest whether they have been successful.
2.  All submissions should be sent to Alenka Kavcic-Colic, Secretary of the Information Technology Section, e-mail: alenka.kavcic@nuk.uni-lj.si.
3. The full paper is due on 31 May 2009 and must be an original submission not published elsewhere.
4. Both abstracts and full papers should be submitted as a MS Word file by e-mail; fax or post should be used only as a last resort.
5. Papers should be of up to 4000 words.
6. Papers should be in English with an abstract, and the presenter must be fluent in English.
7. 20 minutes will be allowed for a summary delivery of the paper in the Conference.
8. The author(s) should indicate his/her personal full contact details and include a summary curriculum vitae with the paper. Also, a digital photograph would be useful.

Invited are the following types of contributions: papers, research studies and reports on practices and advances that will be presented at the conference and included on the conference Web site. The abstracts will be reviewed by members of the Information Technology Section’s Standing Committee. 15-20 minutes will be allowed for a summary delivery of the paper during the Section’s open programme in Milano.

Selected papers can be nominated by the committee for inclusion in the IFLA Congress Journal. Some papers not selected for the IT Session may be selected for publishing in ITS Newsletter.

TRAVEL & ATTENDANCE COSTS

Please note that the expenses of attending the Milano conference (including travel, expenses and conference fee) will be the responsibility of the author(s)/presenter(s) of accepted papers, and at least one of the presenters/authors must be present for the program.

Collection Development/Resource Sharing (CDRS) Conference, March 26-27, 2009
Florida State University Alumni Center; Tallahassee, Florida
Information about the CDRS conference is available online and below.

Call for Proposals
Florida State University and the Panhandle Library Access Network (PLAN) are co-sponsoring a two day event that is based on the Janus Challenges. The Steering Committee for the Collection Development/Resources Sharing Conference is accepting presentation proposals that address some aspect of the Janus Challenges.  Presentations may demonstrate projects that have been successfully implemented at a local level and have the potential to scale to multi-institutional and/or multi-type groups, or propose innovative new approaches to collection development practices and resource sharing. Panels Sessions, Project or Idea Sessions, Poster Sessions and the hosting of Roundtable Discussions will all be considered. The Call for Proposals closes on October 31, 2008.  The committee will notify applicants of the status of proposals no later than December 1, 2008. Please send inquiries and completed proposals to Roy Ziegler at: rziegler@fsu.edu.

Proposal Submission Criteria:

1. Type of presentation (Panel Session, Project/Idea Session, Poster Session, Roundtable Discussion Leader)
2. Presenter(s) contact information (name, job title, institution, mailing address, e-mail address, phone)
3. Presentation title
4. Program track (Recon, Procon, Core Collections, Licensing, Archiving, Scholarly Communications, multiple tracks, other)
5. Brief program description (less than 75 words)
6. Major learning outcomes (brief statement)
7. Media requirements
8. If proposal is accepted, a full program description (less than 500 words)

About the CDRS Conference
In January 2007 a Collection Planning Committee task force was charged by the deans and directors of Florida’s statewide Council of State University Libraries (CSUL) to explore challenges and opportunities for building library collections in the digital age based on the Janus Conference held at Cornell University in October of 2005.  At that conference Ross Atkinson presented the major components that were critical for academic libraries to have a sustainable future: 1) Coordinated retrospective conversion of print collections (Recon), 2) Acceleration of transition from print to  electronic collections (Procon), 3) Importance of defining and building core collections, 4) Expansion of library partnerships and redefinition of the library marketplace for the licensing of electronic resources, 5) Development of mechanisms to archive print and digital content and 6) Creation of an infrastructure for alternative channels for scholarly communication.* Currently there are six statewide CSUL task forces working on the Janus Challenges with the goal of enhancing our ability to develop and share collections, practices and ideas beyond our individual institutions.  The goal of the CDRS Conference is to expand this collaborative discussion to all academic institutions and research libraries within the State of Florida and the Southeast region. Individuals and groups from Florida and neighboring state universities, community colleges, and private institutions are encouraged to participate.

*For additional reading on the Janus Conference, refer to the following article by Ross Atkinson, “Six Key Challenges for the Future of Collection Development,”  Library Resources & Technical Services vol. 50 (4), p.244-251.

On Monday morning, Val Davis (from the University of Florida Marston Science Library) and I presented on “Bioactive: A Library Game” (currently online here) that several UF librarians made as an alternative to the standard 40 minute library intro tutorial to increase student engagement with the actual work of learning about using library resources.

Bioactive was originally designed in Inform and it’s now moved to a web quest design, which is an even greater simplificiation from the earlier text-based Inform format. The simplicity of the design is for sustainability and ease of maintenance, but it’s more importantly used to ensure that the interface doesn’t get in the way of the learning objectives.

Our presentation was incredibly fun thanks to the wonderful crowd, and great set up from all of STS and especially Margaret Mellinger and Barbara MacApline. We were not only lucky in the great setup for our own presentation, but we also got to see Felice Frankel’s presentation. Frankel presented on her work in scientific photography, capturing the beauty and scientific information in her photographs and then using scientific photography to aid in working toward creating a visual scientific language for scientific literacy. Frankel also spoke on how many images have become too computer-focused in many senses, and this is true. Her photographs are computational, like good flowcharts and paralleling much of the current thought on computational modeling and representation (UF’s own Paul Fishwick’s work on aesthetic computing; Ian Bogost’s work on procedural rhetoric and situational/contextual modeling for interaction/testing; James Paul Gee’s work on situational learning in games; and many others). Even with all of this wonderful work, often the computer as artifice/interface seems to encourage the wrong inds of computation where computationally cleaned/corrected is favored over computationally modeled/accurately presented. Frankel’s work is especially excellent because it offers the visual equivalent of what a sound bite should be–even a glimpse and viewers are hooked into wanting to see and know more. Frankel mentioned a number of sites that showcase her work and methodology, including PicturingtoLearn.org and ImageAndMeaning.org.

Frankel also mentioned her interest in capturing the images for a book on the “science of cooking” and I can’t wait for her to do it! So much of gaming and new media is about the appropriate design of the interface to conceal and reveal the underlying structure to generate interest and to pull players/users in at a set pace. Frankel’s work pulls viewers in through its sheer beauty and then each images teaches how to look by making us want to continue looking and understanding what we’re seeing. These ways of seeing relate to aesthetics that communicate as well as the use of metaphor, with metaphor as a reduction/abstraction of information that still remains true to the integrity of the information and the image, the need for the transparency of the interface or the exposing of the interface to show context while editing noise (unnecessary/confusing information), and all to develop images that speak to multiple viewpoints and the modeled system as a method/view. Frankel’s work essentially exposes variables in play and combining this with the additional motivation of making/playing with something tasty through cooking is brilliant. The hands-on play using concepts best known from computing within real world style crafts continues to grow rapidly in popularity, including the knitting/hacking with sites like Ravelry (thanks to Merrie Davidson for pointing this out in our Library 2.0 meetings, otherwise I wouldn’t have known to read up on Ravelry and I could have missed the story on the success of Ravelry community funding drive) and on more traditionally tech-oriented sites like O’Reilly launching Makezine and on yet other sites like Boing Boing that are technologically agnostic in their fusions of hack/make cultures.

I’m too tired and jet-lagged to write more now, but the STS session was wonderful and I’m already looking forward to the next one!

I’m at ALA (still today and through some of tomorrow before a red eye flight home) and this morning I attended and presented within the OCLC Sponsored “Microfilm to Digitization Roadshow.” This included presentations from Kelly Barrall and Joan DaShiel on the ins and outs of their microfilm and microfilm digitization processing and Katherine Walter from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln on her work with the Nebraska Public Documents project. Katherine is the Co-Director for the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities and Chair of the Digital Initiatives & Special Collections Department, and my presentation on digitizing from microfilm for the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC). These were great presentations, but it was especially great to chat with the presenters and attendees both before and after. One of the projects I’m working on is an “adopt a reel” option for donors to fund microfilm digitization by reel, and learning more about Preservation Resources and processing is helping me build that project proposal which will hopefully be successful and lauch before the end of 2008. While there’s a lot to be done before that can happen, this was one more step in the process building toward that project and toward other projects as well.

“Staying Alive: Books through Print on Demand Technology,” an ALA/ALCTS/PARS Program  (Saturday, June 29, 2008, ACC Room 304a-b)

Presenters include:

• Brian from Bridgeport National Bindery
• Lynne Terhune, Wiley & Sons, Print on Demand
• Beth, New York Public Library, head of access, espresso book machine
• University Conservator from the University of Iowa, and that will be posted on the ALA wiki.

Brian from Bridgeport National Bindery
Brian began by speaking with the importance of the printing press in the history of inventions, and the lose-ability of books. With digitization, how print on demand works. Conceptually, take a collection of print files, order them, have them printed. Print file can come from many sources (author, digitization, existing electronic files), to get people interested make the lists from bookstores, catalogs, company websites, others. Printing and binding the books has to be done quickly, hours and not days. POD, customer normally doesn’t know where the book comes from.

Keys to successful POD:  rapid and high quality copies

Strengths of POD:

• Low inventories
• No/low production costs until order is placed
• Highly dynamic; allows rapid changes to content
• Allows nearly all titles to be ‘in print’

Weaknesses

• Production costs per title are more expensive
• Not as effective for instantaneous wide distribution (Harry Potter stock everywhere at once).
• Some limits in size, print quality, and binding options

What Option to Choose: Choose by cost effectiveness

Now librarians don’t need to buy a rare book when finding it. In his experience with Brittle and SlavCopy at the University of Kansas, would make multiple preservation photocopies of books using a list-serve to see who was interested.

Bridgeport doing microfilm digitization, also doing printing and binding of ETDs, and doing retrospective dissertation scanning, POD will get larger as more people want print from digital more easily.

Lynne, Wiley & Sons, Print on Demand
Lynne Terhune, spoke on Wiley’s Global POD/USR Program, and they want all items available through it. POD is not inventoried nor returnable, but USR materials are. Print on demand/Ultra-short Run Library to fill orders, materials all available, no more out of stock, order ships the same day just like it was on the shelf. Some books have increased sales when put online, cash flow has improved, working with authors, no obsolescence, green advantage. Sales are doubling or tripling by year for the items in POD, from 2004-2007 went from 5 to 50 thousand. Industry-costing means that POD is generally a penny and up per page.

Beth, New York Public Library, head of access, espresso book machine
Beth spoke on NYPL’s experiment printing books from OpenLibrary using an Espresso machine for patrons. On Demand is the company that sells the Espresso Machine. When the NYPL team visited On Demand, they knew they’d need faq sheets and they’d need to pre-select titles to keep from overwhelming the public. Ultimately, they offered 13 books, 11 from Open Content Alliance, and two contemporary books were from authors who allowed their books to be printed this way. They also limited by book length, and titles were limited because almost all needed some tweaking, and of course quality going in determines quality coming out. Before the machine is usable, need to make upfront decisions and digital files need editing. The 1.5 machine espresso version is around $150,000, but version 2.0 may be cheaper, however it’s still expensive to digitize and format materials for print.

The ALA Annual Conference begins tomorrow in Anaheim. I’ve been too busy to put together my schedule thus far, but I’ll soon have my days planned out and I’ll add them here. In case anyone else is still reading and re-reading the schedules (and for my own quick reference), LITA has a quick list here and ALCTS has a quick list here.

In my last post on the Digital Library of the Caribbean presenting at ACURIL, the title for Brooke Wooldridge and Marilyn Ochoa’s presentation was incorrectly listed as “dLOC Toolkit and Usability Testing: A User-­Centered Approach to Improve Electronic Resource Design” when it should have been “A User-Centered Approach to Improve Electronic Resource Design.” More importantly, I failed to list (or even realize) that Mark Sullivan from the University of Florida presented twice on the dLOC Toolkit, “dLOC Toolkit: Create Your Own Electronic Resources.”

Mark’s presentation will soon be online within dLOC here and an earlier presentation, “dLOC Technical Overview,” is already online within dLOC here.

The annual University of Florida Comics Conference will be this Friday and Saturday. The conference events will be held at Emerson Alumni Hall (on University Avenue, across from the stadium) and the program is on the conference website and posted below. The keynote speakers are the incredible Phoebe Gloeckner, Gail Simone, and Sally Cruikshank.

Friday, March 21st

• 9-10:15 AM – Panel 1: The “Body” of the Text
  “‘Time is a Man / Space is a Woman’: Narrative + Visual Pleasure = Gender Confusion,” Aaron Kashtan
  “Eggs, Birds and ‘an Hour for Lunch’: A Vision of the Grotesque Body in Clyde Fans: Book 1 by Seth,” John Kennett
  “Love in the Binding,” Laurie Taylor
• 10:30-11:45 – Panel 2: Groensteen’s Networked Relations
  “Memory and Sexuality: An Arthrological Study of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic,” Adrielle Mitchell
  “The Joy of Plex: Erotic Arthrology, Tromplographic Intercourse, and ‘Interspecies Romances’ in Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg,” Daniel Yezbick
  “Our Minds in the Gutters: Native American Women, Sexuality, and George O’Connor’s Graphic Novel Journey into Mohawk Country,” Melissa Mellon
• 11:45-1:15 – Lunch
• 1:15-2:30 – Panel 3: Women on Top
  “Buxom Moebius Strip: The Hyperreal World of Gilbert Hernandez’s Fantastic Women,” Sacha Krader and Austin Rich
  “‘Are You Ready?’: Renee Montoya and the Question of Lesbian Identity,” Karen Burrows
  “Just One Damned Dildo After Another: Pornographic Space in the Work of Colleen Coover and Molly Kiely,” Lyndsay Brown
• 2:45-4:00 – Panel 4: Performance and Positions
  “The Queering of Haruhi Fujioka: Cross-Dressing, Camp and Commoner Culture in Ouran High School Host Club,” Tania Darlington
  “She-Rambos in Lipstick: Authorial and Artistic Depictions of Androgyny and Femininity in Comics,” Hannah Dame
  “Reading between the (Panty) Lines: The Body as Ethnographic Text in Jaime Hernandez’s Recent Narratives,” Derek Royal
• 4-6 PM – Dinner
• 6-7:30 – Phoebe Gloeckner Keynote
• 7:30-9:30 – Reception Ustler Hall

Saturday, March 22nd

• 9-10:15 – Panel 5: The Figure on the Page
  “‘Gimme Gimme This, Gimme Gimme That’: Confused Sexualities and Genres in Cooper and Myerson’s Horror Hospital Unplugged,” James Newlin
  “How to Draw the (DC and) Marvel Way: How Changes in Representation of Female Bodies and Attitudes are Changing ‘Superheroine Chic,’” Mollie Dezern
  “‘The Muse or the Viper: Excessive Depictions of the Female in Les Bas-Bleus and Cerebus,’” Tof Eklund
• 10:30-11:45 – Panel 7: Let’s Transgress
  “I for Integrity: Futurity, (Inter)Subjectivities, and Sidekicks in Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta and Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns,” Jordana Greenblatt
  “The Joker Wears Purple: Gender Transgressive Villains and Trickster Archetypes in Superhero Comics,” Rachel Edidin
  “Otherness, Perversion and the Transformed Male Body in Seinen and Shounen Manga,” Katherine Schaeffer
• 11:45-1:15 – Lunch
• 1:30-3:00 – Sally Cruikshank Keynote
• 3:30-4:45 – Library Exhibit of UF: National Obsessions: Twentieth Century Pop Culture, Comics and Cross-Promotional Merchandizing. Featuring comics, movies/TV, and pop culture items from Star Wars, Peanuts, Walt Disney, and Superman and Batman
• 5-6:30 – Gail Simone Keynote

Like many other librarians, I’m going to the ALA Midwinter conference. ALA is the American Libraries Association and its conferences are massive. I’m really excited to attend both this conference and the annual conference. I’m more excited about this conference because I’ll be there tomorrow and because the midwinter conference deals with more of the business-meeting concerns and so it’s smaller than the annual conference. For a first-time attendee and a feral librarian (who are librarians without official library training), the smaller conference size will be helpful. Even with the smaller size the conference has loads of great programs, many of which run simultaneously.

I’m hoping to attend as many of the great meetings as possible and I’ve currently narrowed my schedule to the list below. While I hope to make all of these meetings and more, I’m likely to miss many of them for other meetings or for the things that always come up at conferences like getting lost in good conversation or while searching for coffee. Despite that, I’m including my schedule below to see how my blogging during or after the conference compares to my plans.

Saturday

• 8:00-10am: NMRT: Pennsylvania Convention Center 111A/B (after check in to pick up meeting guide and badge holder, Grand Hall, Level 2, Pennsylvania Convention Center)
• 10:30-12pm: Web 2.0, RUSA MARS: PCC (Pennsylvania Convention Center-PCC, Room: 201 B/C)
• 12-1:30pm: E-Science@Your Library (Radisson Plaza Warwick, 11: Grand Ballroom)
• 1:30-3:30: Digital Media Discussion Group (Sheraton Philadelphia City Center in Logans 2)
  OR: Preservation Reformatting Discussion Group (Ritz Carlton; Petite Ballroom)
  OR: Emerging Technologies (Philadelphia Convention Center-PCC, Room 108A)
• 4-6pm: Collaborative Digitization Discussion Group; Convention Center Room 202A
  (I wish I didn’t have to miss the ALA Virtual Communities and Libraries, Member Initiative Group, in Franklin 10 Room; Philadelphia Marriott Hotel, 1201 Market Street.)
• 5:30-7:30pm: NMRT Midwinter Social; Off-site

Sunday, January 13

• 8-10am: PARS Digital Preservation Discussion Group (Radisson, Crystal Ballroom)
• 10:30-1pm: LITA: Digital Library Technologies Interest Group (DLTIG); Marriot in Salon K/L.
• 1:30-3:30pm: NMRT All-Committee Meeting
  OR: LSTA Coordinators Discussion Group, Pennsylvania Convention Center in 202
  OR: AAUP Book Selection Committee Meeting; Pennsylvania Convention Center in 309
  OR: OCLC CONTENTdm User Showcase: Digital Collections Delivered; Pennsylvania Convention Center in 307 A
  OR: University of Michigan Text Creation Partnership - Project Update; Marriott Philadelphia in Room 406
• 2:30-4:30pm: ACRL Copyright Meeting; Loews Philadelphia in Regency BR B
  OR: ACRL Marketing Libraries; Loews Philadelphia in Regency BR C2
• 4-6pm: Diversity Research Tea & Poster Sessions (Four Seasons, Adams Room)
  OR: PARS Preservation Forum; Pennsylvania Convention Center in 103 C
  OR: Scholarly Communication Disc. Group; Marriott Philadelphia in Franklin 11
• 6:30-8:30pm: Ex Libris Reception; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; Samuel M. V. Hamilton Building; 128 N. Broad Street; Philadelphia, PA 19102 (One block from the Convention Center at the corner of N. Broad St. and Cherry St.)
  

Monday, January 14

• 8-10am: (Re)thinking Subject Guides: Interactivity Unbound (Loews Phil., Lescaze)
  OR: LITA Town Meeting; Pennsylvania Convention Center in 103 A
• 10:30-12pm: LITA ITAL Editorial Committee (Loews Philadelphia in Tubman)
  OR: ALCTS Forum; Pennsylvania Convention Center in 108 A
  OR: Virtual Library; Marriott Philadelphia in Room 307
• 12-1:30pm: Exhibit floor exploration
• 1:30-3:30pm: LITA Emerging Technology Interest Group; Penn Convention Center in 109A
  OR: ALCTS Scholarly Communications Interest Group; Marriott Philadelphia in Franklin 6
• Leave for airport