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Library Issues Personal

Why ALA will never learn

Good job on the unconference. Just one fairly serious problem, at least to me. The Wiki has almost zero mention and absolutely no logos for LITA. The only LITA mention is in the text of the About BIGWIG wiki page.

This is a portion of an email that BIGWIG received as a result of being featured in the ALA Direct email after Annual, getting a bit of press for the BIGWIG Social Software Showcase.

I have lots of things that I’d like to say about this, but they all boil down to this: when, as an organization, we are more concerned with how we are portrayed than with results, I believe we’ve seriously lost our way.

I have also been thinking a great deal about the various fronts that have began mobilizing to make active change in the ALA. BIGWIG has obviously been working to move LITA in directions that we feel are important, but I admit that the bureaucracy of the whole endeavor takes some of the wind from my sails. If we ran our libraries the way we run our organizations, our patrons would be in real trouble.

Categories
Library Issues Personal

BIGWIG popularity

bigwig social software logo

In doing a bit of research tonight, I discovered that the BIGWIG Social Software Showcase is now the 10th result of over 700,000 for the single search term “Bigwig” on Google.

Pretty amazing for something sprung from my, Michelle, and Karen’s brains just a few months ago. That, plus the mention in AL Direct today, David Free’s analysis of the attendance of the Showcase, and I think we might just have a winner on our hands. đŸ™‚

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Library Issues

My favorite photo from Showcase

Here’s my very favorite photograph I took during the BIGWIG Social Software Showcase at ALA Annual 2007:

IMG_9382.JPG

That photo says so much. Here’s a few more that add to the conversation:

IMG_9381.JPGIMG_9381.JPGIMG_9385.JPGIMG_9366.JPG People not listening to talking heads, and experts in certain areas not preaching to the masses, but groups talking and interacting and questioning. Was amazing to see, and I can’t express how happy I am with having pulled it off. Thanks to all the presenters that put themselves out there for us, and worked so hard to provide content. Also, thanks to the 30 or so people who showed up to a completely unproven program, with no ALA advertising, and no appropriate listing in the program.

Over the course of the next few weeks, we’ll still be highlighting the presentations on LITABlog, and continuing as much an online conversation as people wish. I’m also very interested in what opinions people might have vis-a-vis Showcase 2008…yes? No? What gets changed? What makes it even better?