pafa.net

Not heading to Anaheim for ALA? That doesn’t mean you have to miss out on everything. LITA’s BIGWIG Social Software Showcase web page already has a number of videos and screencasts of presentations posted to it. There will also be some live webcasts and discussions during the conference. Check the Showcase page for times and details.

Among the many excellent presentations, Jason Griffey’s Video 2.0 and the New Media Revolution really caught my attention. In a delightful bit of recursiveness, Jason presents a video about new video tools that will make virtual participation in meetings, presentations and such much easier. In themselves, they’re very interesting, useful tools. But what happens to privacy when it becomes possible to broadcast anything, anytime, anywhere? How do we process the onslaught of media madness? Jason poses questions about what this media revolution will mean for society and what it means for libraries.

Note from the final section of the video:

We talk a lot in libraries about information literacy. We need to move beyond text. Text led the first media revolution. We need to prepare for the next revolution. You can use these tools to participate in the future of expression. If you don’t, your patrons certinaly will.

Think of how many schools, libraries and other learning organizations block internet video  altogether. Where will they be in this revolution?

I’m in Arlington, Virginia this week for the 2008 Computers in Libraries conference. I had really good intentions of  blogging about the sessions I’d been too.  But at the end of the day, I’ve just been too tired to think or write coherently. And live blogging from the conference sessions is way more than my brain can cope with!

Thank goodness for better brains than mine.  There are tons of people blogging the conference sessions (technorati tag cil2008). Some are indeed blogging live from the sessions, so you can read about a session while it’s happening. Slide presentations are being posted to slideshare.net.  There are lots of pictures on flickr. The twitterverse is alive an hopping with chatter. Follow all that and it might almost feel like being here.

What can’t be replaced are the opportunities to meet face to face.  For me, that’s always the best part of most meetings and certainly has been true of this meeting. I’ve met flickr friends, facebook friends, twitter friends and even, yes really, people I only know “in real life” to begin with.  Still, with such a big conference, there have been people I’ve wanted to talk to and just haven’t had time to connect with them or have seen them in passing and not had time to stop between sessions. Still hoping to meet up with people tomorrow and Thursday.

Jenny Levine and Aaron Schmidt put on a great night of gaming at the Computers in Libraries 2008 conference. What a great way to start the conference. There were wii’s and ddr and guitar hero and board games and card games and lots of tun and laughter. I tried my hand at Brain Age on a nintendo ds. Wasn’t feeling energetic enough for ddr. Well my brain wasn’t up to much on brain age either. 3 of us were trying it out and collectively we came up with an F+! Not sure what our brain age really was, but I think we need to do some homework!

Michael Stephens, John Blyberg and Jen Maney gave a terrific presentation at PLA last week:   The Cutting Edge: The Latest Information on Web 2.0.  I wasn’t there, but I watched and listened to the talks thanks to the presenters sharing their slides and audio.

These are the links as posted by Michael Stephens’ on Tame the Web

• Audio: http://www.library.pima.gov/audio/pla2008/PLA2008.mp3
• Jen Maney’s Slides: http://www.library.pima.gov/about/presentations/PLA2008.pdf
• Michael Stephens’ Slides:
  http://tametheweb.com/talks08/Web2.0StephensPLA.pdf
• John Blyberg’s Slides:http://www.blyberg.net/downloads/PLA-032808.pdf

Open up the audio and follow along with the PDF of the slides as they talk. Almost as good as being there. Maybe even better if you pour a glass of wine to enjoy while you listen.

Thanks to Jill Hurst-Wahl for the heads up on the WAMC radio interview about the Library Camp/Unconference held in Syracuse last week. Great interview with Penelope Klein and Jean Sheviak.

The Upstate New York Library Camp was held yesterday and today. Despite bad weather that threatened to nix my trip, I did get to attend most of the first day. And what a great day it was. Despite the gloom of wintry weather, there were more than 80 people from all over upstate NY gathered for day 1 - Unconference on the Future of Libraries. I won’t write up all the scribbly notes I took, there are more detailed notes on the wiki, on Jill Hurst’s enetworking101 blog.

The well organized day ran smoothly and lots of interesting conversations took place. And lots of sharing of perspectives, I think that was one of the best parts of the day. It was great to hear school and college librarians talking about the challenges they each face in working with students. And in particular, for the school librarians to share how few of these technology tools their schools will let them use. It seemed that many non-school librarians weren’t aware of how restricted the access is in many K-12 schools. And it was interesting to hear the public librarians share their perspectives on helping patrons with technology, training and providing information.

Great job by all involved: the Central New York Library Resources Council, the South Central Regional Library Council, and the Syracuse University School of Information Studies, with the collaboration of Jill Hurst-Wahl