Rowan's Round of Days

Marshall Breeding Library technology guide. Lots of stuff on the scale of academic or large public libraries. He was advocating a Salesforce-like cloud structure for library catalogs. With from "local" discovery to "web scale". ILS were made in a time of print and have been evolved by adding modules in very inefficient ways. No longer sensible to use differnet software platforms for managing different types of materials. He wants a Library Services Platform instead of an ILS. Since most libraries keep their systems for 10+ years, make sure it is interoperatable and extensible with open APIs. We are at the beginning of a new model of library automation.

50 Great Mobile Apps for Librarians by Richard Le of San Rafael PL and Tom Duffy of SFPL. Presentation and info on the site.

I have about 1/4 of the apps mentioned and there are a few I have to go check out. Neat session!

I went back to Ambrosia and had their lunch buffet before heading home. There was no way I was going to last through to the end of the closing keynote at 4:30pm. (After all, I slept through the afternoon session Mon-Tues.) The sore throat I have been fighting is definitely winning. And several friends seem to have the same/similar thing. I hope I am well enough for the NROOGD Samhain on Saturday. I have been really looking forward to it.

When I got home and jumped into WoW, Kurt was in his hotel room in North Carolina and we took our Mage and Paladin through the candy buckets of Pandaria (except for one we are phased from due to being too low). Then he went to dinner and I fell over.

Today, since I spent most of the day sleeping and since there is a remarkable lack of food in the house (esp things soft enough for my throat and I am entirely out of diet Dr Pepper), I decided to give Safeway's delivery service a try. Hopefully tomorrow morning they will bring me sodas and stuff. I really hope I can swallow (and talk comfortably) soon.

I took exactly one snapshot the whole time I was there, a picture of one of Breeding's slides. But I am too lazy to upload it for this post. I really think I did some good networking and I attended some interesting sessions... but it was a very low energy IL for me.

There was an interesting talk on "Self-Service: Help Customers Help Themselves" by Moe Hosseini-Ara, Director of Markham Public Library in Canada. They have self-checkout kiosks and library sorting machines that automate a fair bit of the circulation process and free library staff for more customer service and interactions. They have also doubled their circulation and added a branch in the last decade without adding more circ staff. And they cut down on repetitive injuries from book sorting. They also ditched Dewey and created a customer-centric cataloging scheme that groups things more like you'd find in a book store (for instance nautical GPS is with boating rather than with GPSes). And they have taken a fair bit of merchandising from book stores too. It was an interesting talk.

Digitally Engage Your Community & Campus with Michael Sauers and Christa Burns was mostly about their video/podcast program at Nebraska Library Commission. I remember hearing about it back when they were starting it... sounds like the program has been a great success. They provide links to all the software and examples mentioned in the talk.


This was followed by a really boring guy from Massachusetts talking about Blackboard 9.1 so I went to lunch early. Rosine's again. Yum!!! Then another afternoon nap. I have a terrible sore throat.

Kathleen & Philip Gust, Stanford University Libraries hosted a dine-around on ebooks at Epsilon Greek Restaurant. We didn't do much talking about ebooks but it was another lively table and I gave them my card. I hope we can meet up in the Bay Area.

I went to the evening session which was on non-traditional careers but it devolved into arguing about whether an MLS was necessary to work in a library and I was ready to slit my wrists. Back to the hotel and a bit of WoW and a phone call with Russell before bed. I did not sleep very well and am dragging this morning but here I am, fed, checked out of my hotel and waiting for the keynote. Go me. I figure I'll head home after the morning sessions. No way I am leaving at 4:30 after the evening keynote.

I am now in the Marriot for keynote for internet librarian. The intro says that we have about 960 pre-reg at the 16th Internet Libarian. With on-site reg is probably about 1K. 43 states and DC, 11 countries other than US.

David Weinberger Keynote - Transforming Knowledge in the Age of the Net. He talked about all kinds of things - Library as Platform, Reddit and the Enlightment Ideal, ways of dealing with disagreements that are evovling on the web (as it becomes clear everyone has a different point of view). Much talking. He is very hard to follow. Johotheblog - http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/

Then I went to David Lee King's 7 Weird Goals and Six Hot Tips (for library websites). They were interesting and I think I will get his new book, Face2Face. (I flipped through it at the author signing time but just couldn't bring myself to buy it in paper.)

Walked between the web design track and the search track - yikes it is raining out there! And my umbrella is back in my hotel room.

The new room has really sucky wifi compared to the Steinbeck Auditorium. I know I shouldn't prefer things tracked in Steinbeck... but I do. If two tracks are equally interesting and one is in the Steinbeck I go there. But I really wanted to hear the Google Tips Greg Notess will offer since I'm writing google guides. His 50 tips were interesting but not the same ones I would give for the audiences I'm planning on working with (he was focussed on academic). But at least I feel like I'm not missing anything!

At the lunch break I grabbed some ham and cheese and Dr. Pepper at the deli and went back to my room to play WoW. Then I thought I'd just rest my eyes for a minute. And then it was 5pm. I am still fighting this sore throat thing and I guess my body just didn't think web design and such was important. Bah. I am sorry to have missed the Drupal session.

I went over for the 5pm opening of the exhibits and had a glass of wine and a crab cake and talked to various folks. There really aren't that many vendors this year but we are in a smaller exhibit area than usual and it felt crowded with a large fraction of our thousand attendees in line for crab cakes. *grin*

Then I went to dinner for the "mobile app" dine-around at Jacks. There was no moderator and we did very little talking about mobile but we had some good conversations and I met a guy from CSU Hayward who says they need a business librarian if I was interested. He lives in San Jose Japantown and plays WoW... we had lots of talk about!

I got to the hotel about 9:30 and played WoW for a bit (Roszantha is a Zen Master Archaeology and about 1/3 of the way through 86.) I wish I could sleep for stretches longer than 4 hours at a time but I did probably get 7 hours. I got up at 6, played WoW until 7 when the hotel wifi died and I moved over to the convention center until 8. Now I am waiting in the Marriott for Tuesday's keynote.