Author: Robin

Big Day @ The Library, Pt. 1

Post author By Robin
Post date June 11, 2008
3 Comments on Big Day @ The Library, Pt. 1

Today, we hosted an author visit by Jim and Shannon Butcher.

They were both wonderfully entertaining as they answered questions from the 70+ people who attended the event at the Main Library (they also did a Q&A at the Linn Library, but I didn’t attend that, and don’t know how many folks showed up for it).

There were a lot of great questions and some excellent answers about books both upcoming and already published. It was a LOT of fun.

After the event, the library took the couple out for ice cream at the famous-throughout-the-Mid-Missouri-area Central Dairy ice cream parlor. We sat and continued to chat with them as we all sucked down massive portions of seriously good ice cream.

Tags Authors, Event, Jim and Shannon Butcher, Library

presentations

The last night in Jamaica and an overview of ACURIL 2008

Post author By Robin
Post date June 11, 2008
7 Comments on The last night in Jamaica and an overview of ACURIL 2008

Our last night in Jamaica, Michael, Mary and I went to an English Pub a bit down the road for a final dinner. We were joined by Loida Garcia-Febo, Tony Tallent, Carrie Gits (can’t find a blog for her – anyone else know where she can be found online?) and her husband. All were American presenters and we had fun discussing our experiences at the conference. I had the Nottingham Steak & Kidney Pie, since my boyfriend kept telling me to get it while I was in England and I never did. It was ok, but I’ve tried it, and I’ll not be ordering it again…

I got up at 4:30 the next morning and made it to the airport in plenty of time for my 7:25 flight – which, in true Island Time fashion – didn’t take off until 9:30. The rest of my travel home was on time and – mostly – worry free. We had to divert around to come into St. Louis from the west, because the southeast approach was closed due to weather and the descent was a bit rough, but I landed and got home safely!
The conference was great! One of the last sessions I attended was an informal meeting of the Academic SIG and there was a lot of discussion about Web 2.0 “stuff” as used in the Caribbean. The discussion about the differences in culture and in the way they do things, as opposed to the way us Americans do things, was eye-opening. They are starting to experiment with things like blogs and Learning 2.0, but the penetration of computers into the population is fairly low, so they aren’t focusing on those things like we do here in the states.
Overall, the people were friendly and welcoming to us American visitors – we all had a chance to really get to know some of the librarians who are working so hard in these countries to bring Internet access and books to their patrons. Between the conversations in the hallways (or outside in the coffee break area – that was where I hung out a lot!) and the videos from Eric & Jaap (you may have to be a Facebook user to see this video) giving us all a great view into the local libraries, there was a lot of learning going on, at least by me! I’ve always said that the best part of any conference is the “extra” networking that happens between sessions, and that held true for this one. It was a fabulous conference, with a bunch of great librarians who shared their cultures and their ideas with us!
Updated 6-13-08 Carrie left a comment with her blog address on it and I wanted to be sure that everyone knew that her name is now linked to her blog. The blog is at http://librarianandherblog.blogspot.com/ – go say hi to Carrie and give her some biblioblogsphere love!!

Tags ACURIL2008, conference, travel

travel

More in Jamaica

Oh goodness, where did I leave off? Yesterday, before my planned trip to Rose Hall Main House, I went back out onto the beach, where I laid out with a trashy beach-read novel in one hand and a margarita in the other. This, my friends, is how we are *supposed* to be living! I enjoyed it for a bit too long, however, and I ended up burning the bejeesus out of my legs. Oh well, it was worth it!!
After that a big thunderstorm rolled in and the Rose Hall tour was out. So I came back to my hotel room and relaxed on the balcony (without closing the door behind me…) and watched the storm roll by. After that was a quick trip down to the bar for a before dinner drink, or two. I made the mistake of getting the “special” of the night, a lethal concoction called the “Bam Bam”. It lived up to it’s name (Just about knocked me flat) – and it was the first drink of the trip served with a paper umbrella, so I had to snap a picture.

After dinner, I went to the talent show, which was great fun! Us Americans won a prize for being the loudest national group there. We were so proud.
After that, I came upstairs, called Mom, talked to Alex and then called in to the Uncontrolled Vocabulary show. It’s usually on while I’m putting Alex to bed, so I’d never called in before, but since I had the opportunity here…
This morning, I got up and went into Montego Bay proper after breakfast. I spent *way* too much money at a little craft fair thing (but folks are getting great souvenirs this time!) and then came back to the hotel in time to catch Erik & Jaap talk about their previous gaming in libraries tour and their current Shanachie Tour. It was an excellent show!
Now I’m getting ready to go to my last “official” session of the conference. Cliff & I agreed to sit in on an Academic SIG meeting and field questions from the members. It should be fun. After that I’ll be joining Michael and Mary for the Rose Hall tour, then possibly on to an English Pub just a bit down the street.
I’ll catch you all up later!

Tags ACURIL2008, Jamaica

presentations

Creative Commons

I just got back from Michael Sauers’ presentation on Creative Commons and it was an eye opener. I know a bit about the subject, but Michael’s presentation was entertaining as well as informative – for both a newbie to the subject and for me! I use CC for all my flickr and slideshare content that I post, but I didn’t know about the MS Office add-on that allows you to embed CC licenses directly in files created by Office software. I don’t use Word very much any more (thank you, Google Docs!), but I do start nearly all my presentations in PowerPoint, so this will come in handy for that! He also discussed the Nebraska State Library’s efforts to catalog CC material and asked the librarians in the room to do the same at their institutions. It’s a worthy effort, and Michael’s a generous guy – if you need help finding the stuff they’ve done in OCLC, he’ll send you the numbers if you just drop him an email and ask!! Handy!
Now that my work for the day is done, I’m going to enjoy this utterly beautiful day…

and hit the beach, tour the Rose Hall main plantation house and enjoy the librarian’s talent show by the pool this evening! I’ll let you all know how that goes!!

presentations travel

Jamaica – Continued

Well, today has been interesting. I got a message via the BIGWIG site today asking if I was still interested in being part of the social software showcase that happens around and at ALA. I said yes, I was interested, thank you! I’m schlepping my “Collaborating in the Cloud” presentation all over the place these days!
Speaking of, that was the presentation that I did today – and it went over very well. It was another packed room, standing room only, and the audience was very receptive! After the presentation, I got an invitation from a reference librarian at the College of Bermuda to come to them to give the talk again. I’m still unsure if I’ll be able to do that one – timing issues and all – but I’m certainly going to try!! After that, I came back to my room to check my mail and discovered that Michael Stephens, whom I had just name checked in my last post, has asked me if I’d like to post information about what the library is doing in our transition from Exchange email to Google Apps for Domains on his Tame The Web blog. I said yes to that one, definitely!! It was a busy, very productive day!
Besides my session, I also attended the forum on copyright this morning. Michael Sauers was one of the panelists and he did a great job explaining the problems with American copyright using funny (and yet sad) stories from the disasters of our copyright policies – he asked the Carribbean folks at the conference not to do what we were doing. He was followed by a lady from the Jamaican copyright office who reported on Jamaica’s attempts to do exactly what the US is doing in regards to copyright. Michael’s expressions during her talk were priceless…
I also attended Cliff Landis’ presentation on information overload. I would tell you more about it, but I don’t want to overload you… ok, I’ll overload you! He discussed a number of ways to manage information – being selective about what you choose to receive, such as listservs and the like – and 3 tools to help you manage your information and achieve balance. The slides he used are up on slideshare, so I’ll let you take a look at ’em yourself.
In between all of this activity, I spent a bit of time in my room. At one point, I decided to step out onto the balcony to smoke and see what was going on outside. I shut the balcony door – a bit too hard, apparently – and managed to lock myself on the balcony. Those of you who know me, know that I’m really bad about doing that to my hotel room – done it twice this trip and haven’t blogged about it because it’s just expected and it’s not really news. This is the first time I’ve gotten stuck on a balcony, though. I had to shout 5 floors down to the outside bar below my room to get them to send someone up to let me back into my room. Talk about embarrassing…
After the bulk of the conference day was done, we all loaded up in buses and went to the Montego Bay Civic Center, where we saw a collection of performers who gave us a great look into the culture of Jamaica. It was seriously cool!!

Tags ACURIL2008 Jamaica

presentations

First “official” day of ACURIL

Post author By Robin
Post date June 2, 2008
2 Comments on First “official” day of ACURIL

Today started off with Stephen Abrams giving a wonderful, as usual, speech about libraries and innovation and the future. I sat next to Cliff, who took notes as Stephen spoke, so I’ll let him give you the details on the talk. After that, I went to lay out for a bit on the beach, since it was beautifully sunny out and I got a bit more sun – as well as a nice lunch at the beach bar & grill.
After cleaning up, I went down to my conference room to get set up for my presentation. I was a bit early (since I’m still on US time, not Jamaican time) and Michael Sauers came by early as well to keep me company, since he figured people wouldn’t really start showing up until 10 minutes or so after 2 (the session was scheduled for 2pm). He was right, and we got started promptly at 2:15.
The room was seriously HOT (and not in a Michael Stephens way), so I pretty much sailed through my slides very, very quickly. I managed to do my 90 minute presentation in just under an hour, just so I could get out of there! The room was pretty much packed – almost all the chairs were taken, so there were probably 50 or so folks in this pretty small room. That didn’t help! After questions, including a great question on copyright issues with Amazon book jackets used in catalogs that I totally handed off to Mr. Sauers (and he loves me for it, I’m sure…), the session broke up. At that point, Erik & Jaap – who are in Jamaica filming for the LBI Shanachie Tour, asked me if they could interview me about library uses of mashups. Those of you who were at Internet Librarian last year might remember them. At this point I remembered that I hadn’t put on any makeup after cleaning up when I came back from the beach. Hopefully the slight sunburn I have will keep me from looking like a dead fish on camera… I’ve been following the exploits of these two talented filmmakers for a while, via the biblioblog circuit, and was thrilled to be included in their project!
Now, it’s stormy (and I have discovered a true love for sitting on my covered balcony, smoking and drinking my cranberry juice and watching a truly warm thunderstorm go by) and I’m glad I took the time this morning to get some sun. I’ll probably not be able to do much laying out until Wed, since I want to see the panel on copyright issues tomorrow morning and I’m back into the presentation room tomorrow afternoon (and I may be heading into Montego Bay proper with Michael and his wife before my song-and-dance). After my presentation is Cliff’s session on Info Overload – I definitely want to attend that one – and then the Jamaican cultural celebration is that night.
I’m here on my own – the library isn’t sending me – but I’m managing to get in as much library-related conference stuff as I do when they do pay my way. There is something wrong with that picture. I should be spending more time on the beach! Oh well, I wouldn’t be teaching others about this crazy Web 2.0 stuff if I didn’t love it myself, so I guess I’ll come back slightly less charbroiled and slightly more informed than I’d planned!

Tags ACURIL2008, Jamaica

travel

Day 2 of my Jamaican Adventure

Post author By Robin
Post date June 1, 2008
4 Comments on Day 2 of my Jamaican Adventure

Today I shopped, then I laid on a lounge chair on the beach. That pretty much sums up my day.. I registered for the conference and cleared up the hotel room issue as well, but for the most part, I bummed around until about 6:30pm, when I attended the ACURIL opening ceremony. The ceremony part was nice – a presentation of the flags of the Carribbean nations, lots of welcoming from the various people who have worked hard to put this conference together and a speech from a representative of the Ministry of Tourism about how libraries assist in getting tourists to their destinations (with lots of facts and figures about the number of people who use the Internet to make or research travel arrangements). The real fun of the evening came with the Hatfield Folk & Cultural Group, though. They did some traditional folk songs, some drumming and some dancing. It was a really cool introduction to the Jamaican culture! We also heard the Mount Peace Mento Band do some Bob Marley tunes – which were real crowd pleasers!
After the ceremony was the reception. I sat (somewhat to the dismay of the ACURIL president, who wanted us to mingle) with most of the American presenters at the conference. Michael Sauers, Stephen Abrams and Cliff Landis – as well as Michael’s wife and a Jamaican librarian whose name I never did catch – sat around the table and discussed issues of librarianship and the sad, US-centric state of both the US and US librarians. As Stephen is a Canadian and we had a Jamaican at the table, the insights into how silly we Americans often look were enough to make us one of the loudest (laughing, not arguing) tables in the water park (where the reception was held).
Tomorrow is Stephen’s keynote speech (which I’m looking forward too – I always love hearing him speak!) and my Mashups presentation. I’ll blog about both of those tomorrow night – stay tuned!

Tags ACURIL2008, conference

presentations

Finally – I’m in Jamaica

I’ve finally made it to the lovely island of Jamaica – but the trip here wasn’t without it’s glitches. I got to my hotel room in St. Louis last night (plane took off for Miami this morning at 6:10 – I wasn’t driving all that way at 3am!) and realized I had *everything* – except my passport. So, I called my Dad (yep, I’m an adult) and had him meet me in Kingdom City (1/2 hour from JC, 1 hour from St. Louis airport) and bring it to me. By the time I got back to my room in St. Louis it was almost 11:30 and I went straight to bed.
I got up this morning at 4:15 and onto my plane to Miami without issue. Once I landed in Miami, I continued reading my book, “An Absolute Gentleman” until the very end. I started rooting around in my carryon, trying to find the book that I *intended* to pack in that bag and realized that at 4:30am, I wasn’t thinking very clearly and I put all my extra reading material into my checked luggage. I had to go buy another book to get me through the second half of my trip – especially since the plane to Jamaica was delayed – but only by 20 minutes… (I picked up Lisa Gardner’s “Hide” – a perfectly fine choice, I’m enjoying it). I landed in Jamaica and picked up my baggage and headed outside. While enjoying a smoke, I was approached by several men wanting to give me a taxi ride. I politely said no – I did end up taking a taxi to the hotel, but I wasn’t using anything but the official service, just to be on the safe side. One of the men, after I refused a ride in his taxi continued chatting with me and ended up asking me if I would call him if he gave me his card. I smiled, said no and he accepted it and we went on talking about the things to do in Jamaica – other than him, of course. I have the sort of figure that goes over well in poorer countries – I look wealthy (who else could afford to pack on so much *extra* onto her hips and butt?), but that still caught me by surprise.
I finally got to the hotel, only to find out that there was no reservation for me. Ooops! I went ahead and put part of the bill on my card (hey! I just got back from a vacation in England and a trip to Chicago that hasn’t been reimbursed yet – and I work in a library. I’m poor, despite what my hips have to say about it) and talked to one of the guys setting up for the conference. He said it would be cleared up tomorrow. I imagine it will be, so I’m not worried – yet.
After all that, my room wasn’t ready, so I hung about the area, checking out all the people from all over the world who are here at this resort. That was great fun. Then I found an ATM and tried to withdraw money. It wouldn’t let me have any – that was not fun. I asked at the desk and they said it was out of money. I got my room, went up and logged online. I checked – I’m not out of money. That was slightly more reassuring (especially since I just got paid yesterday!). Once I was settled in my room,

I went downstairs and got my “welcome” drink – something fruity and yummy – and went out to the outdoor bar area to sit, relax and finally enjoy being in Jamaica, looking at the Caribbean and the pool and the amazing views from the patio area.

Tags ACURIL2008, Jamaica

presentations

RSS & Databases Workshop

I spent the last few days in Chicago, first being a tourist with my SO who had never been to Chicago before, then giving a workshop for the Metropolitan Library System (MLS) on the use of Database RSS feeds in library websites. I have few pictures from the tourist part of the trip – I took a BUNCH on Sunday, while we were at the Field Museum, but then managed, due to tiredness and wonky wi-fi, lose the entire batch. That irritated me enough that I kept my camera in my purse for the rest of the trip! We did the Field Museum, the Magnificent Mile and the Navy Pier while we were touring – it was fun, but pretty much exhausting…
The reason for the trip, however, was to lead the workshop on how to use RSS alerts to create dynamic web pages that change regularly with no ongoing updating work from the webmaster! I’ve stuck my “virtual handout” on my newest PBWiki page, but that may be moving – I can’t seem to figure out how to allow anonymous comments to the page, and I’d really like to be able to do that. The presentation, stored at Slideshare, is available on that page as well.
The workshop went very well – there were 8 attendees and it was a hands-on, talk about it and try it, kind of session. We covered the basics of the RSS standard, how to get at the RSS alerts in Ebsco and a couple of other database and web providers, and how to use incorporate those RSS files in a web page. The participants used an RSS feed from the MLS site, ran it through a Javascript RSS parser and copied the text into a basic web page to find out just how easy the process is and how much control you can have over the output. We also discussed PHP, ASP, ColdFusion and Ruby on Rails options and what sort of access you have to have to the server to make use of the many libraries available in each language to parse RSS.
There were lots of questions during the session and I stayed for about 45 minutes after the workshop answering questions from attendees who wanted more one-on-one help. I haven’t received any evaluations yet (they do electronic evaluations of their workshops and classes and I should be getting them in about 2 weeks – while I’m in Jamaica), but the general “feeling” I got from the class was very positive. The attendees got information they needed, understood and will be able to use in their jobs. Which, actually, is one of the reasons I wanted public commenting on the virtual handout page – I’d love for them to link to the results of their attendance at this workshop on that handout! Oh well…
The MLS offices & laptop lab was REALLY nice and made the mechanics of presenting a breeze! I loved giving the workshop and hope that I can go back sometime and do it (or anther one) again!

presentations

My .02 cents on the library speaking gigs issue

Post author By Robin
Post date May 16, 2008
2 Comments on My .02 cents on the library speaking gigs issue

I’ve been reading Meredith Farkas‘ comments on speaking gigs in libraryland and the compensation that speakers at library conferences & events receive. I thought about commenting on her blog, but I have a lot to say about more than just her post, so I’ll just throw my comments out here and let ’em stand on their own!
There has been the occasional bit of information about library speaking gigs that comes out, there is some discussion about it, then it dies down again. Rachel Singer Gordon did a survey about library conference speaking and posted her results in two blog posts. The first describes the results of the survey in numerical form, the second goes deeper into the comments left by the survey respondents. The comments are, for me, the most interesting part of the survey. As someone who speaks at conferences occasionally, I’m always interested to know what others are getting in compensation for the same kind of work (if any, really). One of the things I noticed in all of these conversations is that another regular library-world speaker who is also going to be in Jamaica in June is getting a different deal than I’m getting for the same conference. Without some openness in this topic (which is touchy because it involves money), we’ll never know how to evaluate the opportunities that come our way!
I’m speaking this year at several different events and conferences for several different fee structures. Two of the conferences I’m speaking at I’m paying for travel, some part of the conference registration and all incidentals – out of my own pocket. MPOW (My Place Of Work) is economizing on conferences this year (can anyone say gas prices?) and they can’t afford to pay for all of the things *I* want to do – so I pay for some of them myself. I see it as paying my dues, honestly. Other conferences are paying all of my travel, hotel, registration and food costs – but nothing more. A few are paying all travel expenses as well as an honorarium beyond that. I’m just about going to come out even this year (if you don’t count the 8 day vacation in London – that was freakin’ expensive!!) between the conferences I’m paying to speak at and the ones that are paying me to speak, but as I said earlier – I like to travel, I love to present and I feel that I’m just starting out in this area of my career and I need to pay some dues before I can reasonably expect to make money off this. I did the same thing with my web design work – I did some free and some really deeply discounted sites before I got to the point where I was comfortable asking for real money to design a site.
Because this topic is one that I’m interested in (and I’ve been known to just ask library-land speakers what they charge for particular gigs – cause I’m classy that way…) I wanted to post this here to both get my .02 cents out and to get out some links to some of the discussions that are going on now. Meredith just posted (or rather I just saw – I’m getting so behind on my RSS reading…) a followup to her post I linked to above about compensation for speakers. I’ll be following the comments on this post, too and I’ll be keeping an eye on the wiki that she’s linking to in that post as well that will, hopefully, give some transparency and clarity to the issue of speaker compensation in libraryland.