Monday, July 18, 2011

ALA Virtual Conference: July 13/14, 2011

Privacy in an era of social media with Danah Boyd
  • very energetic speaker, great start to the day
  • was tuned in to "chat" trends and spoke to them
  • Danah is an ethnographer who studies privacy and young people
  • has found that teens use a variety of personal strategies to "hack" FB to make it work for them (do this far more than use the built-in privacy settings)
  • "FB as a scrapbook of your social life"
  • "networked privacy"
  • discussion evolved around the Library's role in social media education and I mentioned how we offer FB Coach and the Road Show (which generated some interest)
  • check out www.danah.org and follow @zephoria
Download this! How one library embraced its downloadable future (Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County)
  • problem: lack of awareness / knowledge (in patrons and staff) about ebooks
  • set up a committee to review / fix / market
  • (I think we are doing a good job of this at TBPL)
  • do we have a holds/copy ratio for eBooks? (*ask RHD / SR!)
  • "Virtual Information Centre" established
  • what % of our book budget is allocated to eBooks?...find out and compare to % of circs
Seriously social: Leveraging social media
  • Web branch manager from Grand Rapids P.L.
  • how libs can use FB, Twitter etc. (mostly a review pour moi)
  • used Prezi which did not work well for the VC
  • David Lee King from Topeka and Shawnee PL posts questions on its FB page: What are you reading this weekend? and gets good feedback...check out their page and try some
  • they are not using FB ads...lots of interest in the fact that we are
Reinventing librarianship with David Lankes
  • by far the best part of the VC
  • we need to go back to our roots: fundamentally we do the same thing as we have been doing for 100s of years which is facilitating knowledge (it's not about technology)
  • talked about "The Great Influenza" by John Barry book (614.51809041 BAR) about medical history, and how in spite of the huge advances in medical technology, it's bed side manner that still counts the most...the human touch...personal contact...service...ditto for libs
  • people helping people, regardless of the tools
  • "users" needs to be replaced with "members" (drug dealers and computer programs have "users")
  • the mission of librarians (not "libraries) is to improve society by facilitating knowledge creation in their communities
  • we need to shift our focus from collection management to connection management (similar to the notion that libraries need to shift from being the LIVING ROOMS of the community to being the KITCHENS)
  • "the great challenge of librarianship is improving communities"
  • replace WHAT you do with WHY you do it
  • ask what the community needs...what problems are they trying to solve...and respond
  • also "Librarians must be ruthless in seeking out things we don't know if we can do and then doing them."
One person can make a difference: Tips and techniques for the long change agent with Stephanie Chase
  • "transformational leaders work on the edges" which is not always comfy
  • be the person who sees the need, the hole
  • then build the bridge (as you cross it!)
  • you'll never be excellent if you keep doing only what you're doing
  • be strong like water, flowing around obstacles, re-shaping them
  • broaden your scope of advisers, your network...beyond your library, your profession, your city
  • having a building-wide "stand up" meeting a good idea...eg at the beginning of a new season, after a busy time...to quickly share info / generate ideas
  • staff meeting tip: divide up quick info sharing time and deeper thinking / discussion time (we don't do that enough)
  • read "Death by meeting" by Patrick Lencioni (658.456 LEN)
General "Virtual Conference" notes:
  • I had Twitter open in another window and was tweeting / following the #ala11 tag as well as participating in the VC chat...worked ok but would have been nifty to have them mashed up
  • "Discussion" area was completely separate (asynchronous) from the session chat and I did not go there
  • I logged in 10 mins prior to start time and a presenter and facilitator were chatting, which was not very welcoming! Should have been kept private, with a general "welcome" message posted
  • chat was moderated (very short delay)...one comment I made about something the moderator said in an intro was replied to privately (she said something about not using your "library voice" to which I objected!)
  • about 1,500 participants
  • there were some annoying "watch my presentation later" tweets...self-promotion
  • some presis had too many stats
  • some presenters were obviously reading from notes, which was not very inspiring to listen to
  • the best presenters took time to review the chat and twitter conversations and participate
  • facilitators posted a quick poll in between sessions for involvement (but same question each time: how many people are participating at your location?)...could have varied
  • there were a few delays including the 30 min Pecha Kucha session being 15 mins late
  • day 1 was archived by day 2