If you are interested in Identity online (and I believe that this is the next big area of the net is identity management across platforms), ClaimID is now off beta, and available for signup. Check out Fred’s announcement for info on the launch.
I’ve been using ClaimID for some time now while it was in beta, and the development team has done an amazing job integrating information issues/needs into the tool. Take a look, play with it, and see if it does what you need.
Why Would Anyone Listen to These Three?
Originally uploaded by Wandering Eyre.
Great pic by Michelle Boule, just prior to the LITA presentation that she chaired and I, Karen Coombs (to stage left in the photo), and Steven Bell took part in. The presentation was titled “Next Step Blogging” and will be revealed in its entirety on LITABlog (as soon as Karen Schneider finishes it up…). My slides can be found here. It went remarkably well, with an absolute standing-room-only audience. Next time we need a bigger boat.
President-Elect of the ALA, Leslie Burger, had a wonderful gathering last night for Library Bloggers and librarians from the Katrina effected gulf coast. Hearing their stories, seeing their faces, and hearing the statistics (millions of books lost, hundreds of people without jobs, dozens of libraries destroyed)…truly sobering. The recurring message:
Do. Not. Send. Books.
They have more books than they can process…if your library is doing a book drive, stop it. Instead, send money…for repairs, for staff, for new buildings. That’s the need, and after having driven through the affected area, the need is more than I can say.
IF, and only if, you have to buy books, you should use the Amazon wishlists they’ve set up:
Dewey Donation System
Neil Gaiman @ ALA
Tales, Tips and Tools: Book Search, Scholar and the Library Team
Ben Burnell, Google Library Partnerships
Once more: notes in the form of a bulleted list!
Google Scholar
…over at LITABlog! We’ve got a veritable army of bloggers covering the convention, and we’ll have tons of info flowing in over the next 3 days.
First program/panel: Website as a Branch. The room is standing room only, so I’m forced to sit way back on the floor, which limits my view of the slides. The notes below are largely from the verbal portion due to that.
Presentation by Broward County Library in Florida. Short bullet point summary:
As of tomorrow morning, I’ll be on my way to the Big Easy for the American Library Association conference. For those attending, if you see me, say “hi!” and make sure and attend the Monday 10:30 LITA Session “Next Step Blogging: Building a professional blog for your library” so that you may heckle me. It’s in the Convention Center Room 342. I’m also going to be out and attending a lot of the blogger shindigs, so I’m sure I’ll run into bunches of you.
I’m planning on blogging as much of the conference as I can, both here and over at LITABLog. There will be text, pictures, and other goodies…Stay tuned!
Betsy just sent me the coolest thing…a translation of mayan glyphs that include the symbol for librarian!
It also translates as “one who keeps, guards, or venerates.” How cool is that? I think I’ve found my next tattoo….there’s also a female version:
These are from FAMSI, a great site dealing with the history and cultures of mesoamerica.
Any librarians heading to New Orleans for ALA this weekend that want to track down a tattoo shop and get inked?
All work and no blog makes Jason a cranky boy.
I’ve been spending nearly all my available neurons on the website redesign and my upcoming ALA presentation. Doesn’t help that I have a trip right after ALA as well, so time is getting shorter on the website.
As an update for anyone interested: we’ve formally decided to go with Joomla as our CMS. The support seems good, the tool seems to do everything we need, and the final decision-maker was that it seems much more intuitive than Drupal. Also, the actual text-editing for adding content is far easier, richer, and more Word-like than Drupal, which is a big deal in a library where we are going to attempt to decentralize some of the content creation. Now we’re on to info-architecture and template design….wish me luck.