Information Center Connections

Librarian Bakes Cake

It's a fact:  attendance at training sessions, open houses, and lunch-and-learns will be higher if you serve food.

Did you use National Bundt Day to call attention to your information center's services? I did!

Mary the Food Librarian baked 30 bundts in 30 days for National Bundt Day.  Take a look at her baking adventures (with recipes!) on her blog.

Federal library world updates

The Federal Library Directory is a new resource of incredible value.

The directory, organized by FLICC, is searchable and provides detailed information about more than 1,000 U.S. federal libraries worldwide. Contact information, available services, and welcome audiences are listed, among many other characteristics of interest.

Read more about it in the press release.

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As you may know, GPO Access, the federal government's site for documents and reports, is being replaced by FDsys.  The transition has begun, and no new materials will be added to the old site. That site will be "retired" during the 2012 fiscal year, specific date yet undetermined.

FDsys stands for "Federal Digital System" and it is also a product of the U.S. Government Printing Office. The system provides access to information products from all three government branches, including fulltext documents and metadata.

Learn more about this resource on the FDsys site.

9/11 eCollection from ebrary

As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, ebrary has created an eCollection of 9/11 related-resources that are freely available now through the month of September.

The collection includes 15 ebooks, which are browsable and searchable. 

For a full list of titles, visit the eCollection.

Did you know that ebrary offers other open access collections?  Find them here!

The best intranets

Don't you love "best of" lists?  Top 10/25/101 lists?  From the writer's perspective, it's a concise and eye-catching way to communicate ideas.  From the reader's point of view, it's "I-can-scan-this-easily" time.

The 4 January issue of Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox lists the top ten intranets for 2011.  After the list, trends and common themes are explored.  Some findings:

• Better tools and greater investment in intranets (even in small companies)
• More and better mobile intranets...a captive, defined audience makes it easier to create highly-functional intranets
• Better management of knowledge on intranets through targeted repositories, encouragement of innovation, easy-to-use commenting tools, user rating systems, and customized content collections
• Task-centered information architecture aids usability
• Search capabilities are of utmost importance
• Page templates and content management systems are key to information organization and consistency

Where else can these ideas be applied?  Certainly for websites more generally.  And, we could all use better tools and greater investment in many aspects of our work. 

The full report is available from the Nielsen Norman Group.

New ventures for Gary Price and Shirl Kennedy

Gary Price and Shirl Kennedy, formerly of ResourceShelf and DocuTicker, have launched two new not-to-be-missed resource sites.

INFOdocket brings us industry news, and a whole lot of resources and tools.

FullTextReports...well, it's just what it says!  Reports from think tanks, scholarly organizations, industry analysts, and more.

Each site has an RSS feed and a Twitter feed (@INFOdocket and @fulltextreports), so it's easy to keep up with what's new, and each site is accessible on your mobile device.  How's that for great information service?

 

Minerva Library

You may not have heard of the Minerva Library, and that's likely because it's on a cruise ship.

The Minerva is Swan Hellenic's only ship, and it's quite popular among its many repeat cruisers. 

This article from the Daily Mail describes the library collection as "extensive" and relevant for the ship's varied itineraries.  The library is kept by the Minerva's hotel and entertainment manager.

Dream job, anyone?

The challenges of prison librarianship

Avi Steinberg has written Running the Books, which describes his experiences running a prison library in Suffolk County, New York.  Read more on Amazon.

You know you're curious about it!

Avi was recently interviewed on NPR's "Talk of the Nation."  The NPR site also has an excerpt from the first chapter.

Sounds interesting, and challenging.  Some of the most popular genres in the collection?  Astrology and real estate.

Ethics and critical thinking

As the deadline for SLA 2010 advance registration approaches (fees go up on May 8th!), I hope you are thinking about what sessions and CE courses will inspire your day-to-day work, build upon your existing knowledge, and enhance your resume. I'd like to recommend one course in particular, "Information Ethics and Critical Thinking for Info Pros." We know information ethics are important, but how many of us know how to handle a sticky situation in the workplace?

SLA's Information Ethics Advisory Council has been working on guidelines for professional ethics for SLA members. The need to reach SLA members at the instructional level became apparent to the council's co-chairs, LIS professors and ethics experts Toni Carbo and Tom Froehlich, and a CE course at the upcoming conference was planned to complement SLA's recent work in the ethics arena. 

In this full-day course, offered on Saturday, 12 June, the instructors will introduce the principles of information ethics to participants and foster discussion about ethical challenges and the resolution of issues. Toni and Tom will use lectures, case study examination, and small group discussions to explore information ethics as it relates to privacy, intellectual property, freedom of expression, and the proliferation of newer techologies and the information explosion. 

The knowledge you take away from this course will help make you better-prepared to navigate ethical issues, and set you on a course to thinking critically about the difficult situations we are increasingly facing in the information setting.

A full list of SLA-sponsored CE courses can be found on the Click U Web site. Register for CE courses today, as classes are filling up! Please send any questions to clicku@sla.org.

We look foward to seeing you in New Orleans at SLA 2010!

Everything you always wanted to know about copyright*

*...but were afraid to ask.

I think that most of us feel our knowledge of copyright (laws, issues, your-idea-here) falls short.  Copyright law is complex, and we work in areas of overlapping content and service types (academic, public, for-profit, non-profit).  It's hard to know where to begin, and how to get the right answer.

Have you considered the Copyright Management certificate program, which is offered online through SLA's Click University?

Courses are available à la carte and as a full certificate.  CCM100 is the introductory course, and covers the basics...compliance, principles, myths, and gray areas.  The curriculum progresses from there to include courses on U.S. and Canadian copyright law, digital copyright issues, copyright and the library, international copyright law, copyright management, and copyright education.

All the courses are taught by Lesley Ellen Harris, a copyright consultant and educator, and a columnist for SLA's Information Outlook.

To find out more, visit the certificate's Click University site.

Special note:  The upcoming offering of CCM100 starts on October 26th.  For this course, there's one online seminar, an online discussion, and a discussion list for class participation.  Visit the course page for more information and a link to register.

Hope to see you there!

Global trends in special libraries

Although the aim of the report Emerging Trends in New Zealand Special Libraries is to explore the evolution of special libraries in that country, the thoroughness of the research also gives a global snapshot of the special libraries sector.

There are several familiar names in the literature review section (Stephen Abram, Bill Fisher, Guy St. Clair, Priscilla Shontz, Jim Matarazzo, Toby Pearlstein, José-Marie Griffiths, among others), and you'll see the trend towards online services and expanded roles for information professionals.

Library closures, a persistent trend, are explored in depth.  According to the report, in New Zealand, while the number of libraries within commercial entities decreased, the number in non-commercial organizations increased.  Interesting tidbit:  most special librarians in New Zealand work for a governmental organization.

The "Ideas for Further Research" might give us all some direction regarding what to write about and study:  employers' perception of skills, reporting structures, corporate library consortia, recession strategies, what happens after libraries close?

Very interesting.  Take a look.