LITA: Open Source for the Reference Librarian
Open Source for the Reference Librarian
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Sponsored by LITA Open Source Interest Group
Basically, my notes for this program consist of a list of links that they provided on a hand-out. The program started out with a brief introduction to open source software, pointing out that one major drawback was that CS programs were graduating the least number of qualified open source systems administrators (b/c there is as yet little job market for them), most graduates said that open source programs were the ones they were most interested in working with. So the future may just be free. The presenters were split between reference people and systems people, so it mostly focused on functionality rather than details. Their presentations were nicely consistent in visual style and format–each started out with a description, discussed features, touched on technical aspects, and then broke down advantages and disadvantages for their users. Here’s a slightly annotated list of stuff they covered.
General sites of interest:
Open Source Systems for Libraries
Presenters discussed the following applications in detail.
This program allows you to create, organize, and search collections of online materials. Allows manual resource adding but relies mostly on automated crawlers that comb the open web for useful stuff. They call this Expert Mode, so I’m guessing it must be fairly demanding when deciding which pages to add. Likewise, authors can supply their own metadata but the program will also extract it. This features pages explains it better than I can. The presenter also pointed out visual cues that can be added to indicate that the material is one the particular library has access to or one that you have to pay for.
The coolest one! Don’t trust my description, go to the website!! This stuck in my head. It’s an extension for Firefox developed by Virginia Tech that creates a toolbar in the Firefox browser for searching the OPAC, Electronic journals, whatever you want. It also allows the user to highlight titles on webpages and immediately search them in the library’s collection. Super-duperest of all, it has embedded cues which pop up a little your library icon (unique to each school that sets up the extension) right next to titles on Amazon.com, so that a user doesn’t have to go back to the library’s web page or even copy and paste into the toolbar to check if the library has it before ordering. As the presenter said, I don’t know how it works, so it must be magic, but it works. I personally think this is the start of what libraries have to do if they want people to take advantage. Users don’t want new destinations, they want new integrations. Bring the library to the internet, because we tried getting internet to the library and it’s not working.
Get non-commercial with your chat–choose Jabber as your open source AIM. And while you’re at it, stop having 6 different accounts and get Gaim. Gaim lets you chat w/ AIMers, MSNers, Yahooers, etc. all through the same interface.
I think we’ve all got the basic idea of wiki’s (although the presenter did not assume everyone did, which was smart I think), so I’ll just share one piece of advice mentioned about creating a wiki for your organization: only do it if it can replace something else. Creating multiple communication forums is counterproductive. Making a wiki should be an or not an and.
Open source RefWorks. Has a good GUI, but doesn’t hurt to have a little programming chops to make it do exactly what you want.
Now I just got to get me some skills and I ain’t never licensing Microsoft again!
Mold and Its Effects
Here are the notes I took. I’ll be writing it up in more detail for the ALCTS newsletter. Make sure and follow the link for Tina Mason and hopefully Nancy Kraft’s powerpoint presentations posted online.
ALCTS-Preservation and Restoration
Mold and Its Effects
Sat. June 24, 2006, 1:30pm-3:30pm, Marriott New Orleans
Tina Mason
Prevention→ Identification → Solution
*powerpoint posted on Solinet website
- Mold is around all the time, waiting for right conditions.
- Putting into bag doesn’t work.
- Active v. inactive: can’t work w/ active, inactive is powerdy and rubs off
- Mold takes hold in less than 48 hours.
- Vendors of mold remediation services can help, but library must stay in control.
Nancy E. Kraft
Case study of U. of Iowa mold outbreaks during summer of 2002
- Not sure why summer of 2002 so bad, but slightly higher temps.
- AC broke down in Spec. Collections room Friday, by Monday mold had taken hold. Visible and thick on covers of books.
- Moral of story: start fixing the problem ASAP.
- No effort to start mold prevention process b/c crying wolf reputation.
- Handling crisis requires strategic thinking about internal politics and workflow structures. Identify team. PR person good to have. Check if there are established contracts for first response (ie library v. university).
- Take personal safety precautions. It’s not worth the risk.
Emilie Leumas
- Archdiocese of New Orleans relocated to Baton Rouge, and all reocords.
- Baton Rouge staff took charge of recovery
- Confronted extremes of humidity, water damage, and fire.
- Old Ursuline sprinkler system damaged and accidentally contributed to flood.
- Sacramental registers in LA begin about 1700. Rich documents: 70k slave records, language histories, yellow fever and hurricanes.
- Triage: wet to freezing: required creativity, all the standard rules did not apply. I.e.: warm water bath for oil slick (normally cool), choosing information over book in most cases (except 15th century Bible), some air drying, freezing, using cotton tape during freezing to keep records from melding while frozen.
- If you use good ballpoint pen, paper can be wet for 5 months and still be legible.
- Lessons learned:
o Update disaster plan: people, vital records (ie direct deposit, set contact point, agreements between dioceses about who partners with whom)
o Building Security: water main, power supply, gas
o Communication: people, rally the troops
Saturday, June 24: A little sweat, a lot to learn
Still high on Nola from the Many Voices, One Nation buzz of the night before, I woke up before my alarm with the intention of having a more leisurely breakfast than Friday’s and also having some time to blog in the convention center before the NMRT Conference Orientation Session. This plan was working out just fine until I set up my laptop in the convention center, pulled up my schedule and realized that the orientation was in the Sheraton. Yikes! I hauled it down the gauntlet of booths and blue-tote bagging hordes to catch the shuttle and walked in only a couple of minutes late, but just in time to hear a woman representing Wilson encouraging us to take advantage of freebies and food offered by vendors even if we were only students. Then she told us about a free and open breakfast the next morning, which naturally I didn’t remember any details about later on. The orientation was pretty helpful, and I had plenty of time to chat with the others sitting at my table–a recent grad, a recenter grad, and a public librarian of two years. Useful advice that I called upon throughout the rest of my stay included:
1) Don’t be a TOAD. TOAD=Tag on all day. Take your badge off when you leave the convention center or the hotel, for real. Just do it. You look like a little less of a tourist and a lot less of a dork. (Sad to attest, I saw one fellow conference attendee who did not get this advice cruising Bourbon St. at midnight, Ebsco lanyard round her neck and badge in full view. Bourbon St.!)
2) Take time out to see the city. Didn’t think I would want to, being ever conscious of how much I had invested to attend, but after my first soiree in the Quarter I couldn’t wait to walk around, so did plenty of that one my husband arrived. I probably missed a couple things that would have been interesting, but I’m glad I didn’t miss the jazz or the beignets.
3) Strike up conversations. You are surrounded by librarians. If you can’t say hi to a librarian, you must have the worst case of social anxiety in the history of mankind. Everyone goes to conferences to meet people, so start meeting. A shuttle ride can = a captive audience.
4) Don’t feel bad about talk hopping. Everyone does it. If you are bored, get out. If you want to catch the best of two worlds, split the time.
5) Go to the exhibits but remember that you’ve got to pack everything you take. This was a good message to hear, and I did manage I think to take only what I genuinely wanted or could use. Including the Google hat.
The highlight of the orientation was definitely the New Orleans Cheap and Dirty handout by Tulane librarian Paul St. Pierre, a Canuck who clearly knew what he was talking about. I relied on his list of restaurants and bars to stay off the beaten path and within my budget.
After the orienatation, I had my first mini-scheduling crisis. Before 1:30, I needed to get my stuff from the first hotel, schlep it to the convention center, get a shuttle to the second hotel, check in, reorganize, and make sure I arrived in plenty of time to the ALCTS-PAR presentation Mold and Its Effects (which I volunteered to report on for the newsletter). What to do? Try to catch part of a presentation? Cruise the tempting vendor exhibits? Go straight to schlepping, do not pass go? Blog? Well, I settled on taking a preliminary cruise of the vendor hall, which completely overwhelmed me. I managed to snag a cool graphic novel tote and a couple stress balls, but I was too shy to start actually talking to people so I could get my card swiped for those cool prizes. The moment that I wanted to cry came when a vendor approached me to ask me to help with market research but, upon finding out that I was a student, said that I wasn’t who he was looking for. Of course that was his limited vision (I’m a future customer, eh?) but at the time of course I assumed it was my personal shortcoming.
Luckily my ego got a boost when I got to help someone find their way around New Orleans using all three of the maps I had collected. He was impressed, and when I told him I was in town for the library conference he said “It figures. Who else carries three maps and cross-references all of them?” Score one for what I hope is a positive stereotype.
After much hurried walking and sweating, I got checked into my fabulous new room and had just enough time to call my husband en route before heading up the street to the Mariott for the ALCTS Mold presentation. I’ll have a separate post for it, seeing as I actually took notes. I headed back to the convention center to catch the NMRT presentation Leadership through Publication. I stayed for the first half, but found that most of what they were saying I had been fortunate enough to hear already through the librarian who mentors me and the director/professor who taught my Seminar in Academic Libraries class. I bopped back down to the exhibits to see if I could catch up with the crew for some help in cashing in, but to no avail. I was a little less overwhelmed this time, but still disappointed in my apparent lack of ability to score the coolest free stuff.
I called D one more time to find out that he had finally made it in and was resting in the hotel room after a homework all-nighter, so I didn’t feel bad about sticking around to see the Opening General Session and I’m really glad I did. This time I had better luck finding a couple of people from the crew to sit with and chat with during the proceedings. It took a second to adjust to seeing Michael Gorman’s face on 4 jumbotrons simultaneously, but the program moved at a good clip. Mayor C. Ray Nagin actually showed up to welcome us, but it was kind of hard to clap for him after what I had heard the night before from New Orleans residents. Madeline Albright completely rocked my world with her rigorously intelligent discussion of religion in US foreign policy and world affairs. I didn’t realize how much I was starving for intelligence in public discourse. She got numerous applause breaks, including when she condemned the Cuban embargo, the Patriot Act, and Guantanamo. She is officially my second hero of the year, right after Stephen Colbert.
At long last, D and I were reunited at the Astor. After some catching up, we started down Decatur to reach Frenchmen St.to find the food and music we were both craving. We settled on a jazz bar and restaurant called Snug Harbor. I had gumbo and an oyster sandwich, he had some kind of fish in creamy sauce, and we both sampled the local brew, Abita. We talked and lingered and got back to the hotel sometime late.
Friday, June 23: Meet Nola
Another day, another wireless network. ALA is the apt name of the one I’m hooking up to in the Morial Convention Center, where an army of people who look more or less like me or my mother-in-law have converged to talk shop and bag all the freebies we can charm out of the vendors who are here to woo. For better or for worse, I fit in with this crowd. I’ve seen more pairs of Crocs than I can count and several pairs of the bright lime green variety that I left back in Florida. I’ve seen numerous pairs olive green khaki pants and cotton print skirts. Tons of brown frame glasses, and of course a sea of blue Ebsco lanyards. Normally I feel a little out of the fashion step, but here I must sheepishly admit that I pass. Not that there’s anything wrong with the way we librarians tend to dress, but there’s a definite aesthetic at work.
I got up at 7 and slapped together a bagel-egg sandwich to devour on my way to the convention center to meet up for Libraries Build Communities, the first of two days of community service that ALA has organized for attendees who want to volunteer. I claimed my yellow shirt and waited for the Habitat for Humanity bus. We pulled onto the elevated interstate and headed I think west, towards the ninth ward. Needless to say, the barely marred if really empty Warehouse District soon gave way to scenes we all remember from CNN. The route was roundabout, and there was some speculation that the bus driver was giving us a special tour of the disaster zone, but I found out later that he really was lost. So we got to see quite a few side streets and quite a few spray painted messages that brought to life the stories that have been seeping out since the hurricane: 9-14 TFW 2 Dead Dogs. X. (I just Googled TFW and found out that it was code for Toxic Flood Water. The rest of the messages are pretty self-explanatory.) Those messages took a while to sink through the buzz of feeling like we were witnessing history. What struck me right away is how awful and deserted everything still looks. It’s been 10 months. 10 months. There is no flurry of activity or tentative stake on normalcy. There is still garbage on the streets. There are a very few homes that have been fixed up nicely and a few that haven’t been fixed up but have people living in them, back to stick it out I guess. It remains to be seen if physically being here will be enough to get them a say in what happens in their neighborhoods. All appearances point to a smoke out, in which real estate developers are simply biding their time and waiting for evacuees to sign leases elsewhere and give up on their homes. They’ll pay them dimes on the dollar and tear it all down. Everyone should see this, because my guess is that this is the future of our country. Those with private resources will be able to do whatever they want, like rebuild ruined homes, and those without will lose their stake forever because of one storm or earthquake or whatever happens to be in your neighborhood.
If there’s any reason to think that this scenario is not inevitable, it is projects like the one I worked on with Habitat for Humanity. The project’s name was the Musicians Village. They are building 75 homes in a block and encouraging as many musicians as they can find to apply to buy one. This will be neighborhood with spunk and hope. I could already feel it as I rolled white paint across the new siding. I met with a couple of the future owners and they are ecstatic. Hope was alive in this little corner.
After a shower, I joined the librarian crew for a vendor dinner at Colleen Salle’s house on Chartres (pronounced Char-ters, not the French way) which consisted of muffaletta’s and wine. Yum. The best part was the location, an old French Quarter apartment will tall ceilings and white walls, opening onto a verdant patio, tucked away from the street noise and shared among the block of apartments. All in all, an elegant introduction to the Quarter.
The other intern in our room arrived that evening. She is a Spectrum scholar from Hawaii and had already been here for two days attending a leadership workshop. We teamed up to go to Many Voices, One Nation. 13 authors, mostly from New Orleans and a few who had some other type of connection read. Strong words were had by all. Most of what I had suspected while driving the streets of the ninth ward was confirmed by their observations from the ground. They were angry but fierce in their love for the city and their refusal to lose it. If I were rich, I would have bought a copy of all of their books. There were quite a range—stories by New Orleans school kids collected by Abram Himelstein and the Neighborhood Story Project, poems by Martin Pousson (who proudly dropped the F-bomb twice, and in reference to George W—yeah library crowd), Kalamu Ya Salaam (whose harrowing performance of poetry as jazz about New Orleans and Katrina got me really stirred up), a first hand account of this wonderful life in the ninth ward projects and why it should be brought back as-was, not as some would like it, by Ashley Nelson, and more poetry by Lee Maitzen Grue. Loved it. And what better follow it up with than a midnight snack of beignets and coffee provided by the reception. They were tasty, but I’m reserving final judgment until I get to Café du Monde. I walked back to the hotel with my fellow intern and soon crawled between the covers, wondering if and how I would dream about the city I am just beginning to taste.
Way behind!
A series of posts will be forthcoming. There's plenty of wifi around here but not in my hotel room, and also so much to do. It's seemed silly to take time out of participating to keep up to date. Next week will be a heavy posting week I predict 
Okay, time to settle in for Open Source Programs for the Reference Librarian…
