Aaron the Librarian

The Wild Things arrived en masse, today - Friday is officially the day for ALA Annual Preconferences, but more and more meetings are seeping in to the schedule.

Currently I’m maintaining my 4sq Mayorality (of #ala12 as well as my hotel) — now you know what’s *really* important, right?

This morning was LITA Board I (which we streamed) where we handled some administrivia and held a strategy session which resulted in a new, improved Vision statement and an early draft of a new Mission statement.

Halfway through LITA Board, I noticed Jason Griffey was wearing a red ribbon with my name in gold on it. When I asked, he claimed that it was in his registration packet when he picked up his badge. While I disbelieved, I was also more than half-convinced…

Lunch was split with the OCLC Americas Regional Council and Member Meeting update and an invited strategy session with Maureen Sullivan’s incoming ALA Committee Chairs. The strategy session was energizing and motivating (for all of the attendees, imho) and I got good notes for that one! (which I’ll post at some point)

While wandering the halls, seeking conversation, I ran into several more folks with me on their ribbon trail — I got several different stories about how they got theirs… ranging from “I found it on the ground (or “on a table”), figured I know you, and stuck it on my ribbon trail” (which is totally believable… no really… #snark), to “in my registration packet,” to “the person I got it from swore me to secrecy and made me promise to tell you that you can’t have one.” I appreciate this last one (as it *is* totally believable).

Then I hit the Emerging Leaders Poster Session and was again struck by the total awesomesauce on display. If these folks are the future leaders of ALA, we are in a really good place as an association. While here, I met even more people wearing “Aaron Dobbs” ribbons (all of whom would NOT tell me the real story) and began to get freaked out about this ribbon thing…

Next up, I hit the Exhibits Opening Reception and made it about halfway through my “list of vendors to harass” before they shut the lights off and sent us packing.

Then #ALAPlay where a bunchof fun people play a crapton of games - board games (such as Hamster Roll), card games (FLUXX!), and a “just built last night” game (tentatively called “Joust”) with hacked Wii controllers where the players try to keep their light lit while causing others to shake their controller and kill their lights… it was pretty neat.

Then more talking, solving the problems of libraryland over beverages, now this post, and soon to bed… “for a functional #ala12 Saturday”

Looking for input to share on a forthcoming report

The report aims to draw from rapid spread and eventual ubiquity of mobile devices, like smartphones, e-book readers, multimedia delivery tools, looking towards the future of mobile devices from a public policy perspective with regards to libraries

• Examine briefly the social trends and changing norms in using mobile devices
• Examine library environment in how libraries use mobile devices
• Goal is to explore potential benefits
  (Broadly how can mobile technologies serve library users better and get them the information they need and want?)
• Challenges:
  • Copyright considerations and content licensing for mobile devices
  • Privacy (digital technologies can track user activities, analog books can’t) and location awareness technologies (GPS and location broadcasting services)
  • Security and bandwidth considerations for library networks (increasing mobile delivery of content, and rich multimedia content—how does this affect bandwidth planning if I want to be able to download a ebook or audiobook or film from a library to my mobile device?)
  • Access and openness issues in platforms and information standards and compatibility, DRM
• More

What sorts of trends and/or issues do you see at the intersection of mobile devices, libraries, and existing public policy (copyright, fair use, DRM, anti-circumvention, etc.)?  What pieces of current public policy (laws, interpretations, policy decrees, etc.) support or block or run counter to user trends and/or technological abilities should an educational / informative report cover to better educate / inform legislators and policy wonks?

Oy, I don’t think I kept up with the discussion at all… here’s the #BarCampOhio feed

We started out with “community generated content” and morphed through “using patron usage data for enhanced services” (and should it be “opt” in or “opt out”?) then into “enhanced records - do users want this & what enhancements do they want” on into various discovery tools - Solrpac is very nice (I wanna try a beta for MPOW - can I have an extra few days per week?)

That’s all I can come up with - no real take aways at the moment… post-prandial & post-sponsor speeches chaos ensues

So here it is, less than a week to go before Library/BarCampOhio, and I’m totally dry on ideas (which haven’t already been done to one degree of teh awesome or other).  If you were going to go to a LibraryBarCamp what would you want to discuss / hear ideas about?  How about a hackfest?

Thanks for your ideas!

If you happen to be in the San Francisco Bay Area on August 6th and you’re interested in what the Congressional Internet Caucus thinks about the state of the net, consider stopping by the State of the Net West event. If I were in the neighborhood, I’d be there.

From State of the Net West

Overview

In August The Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee in collaboration with the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara School of Law cordially invites you to attend the 2nd Annual State of the Net West Conference on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008, in the California Room at the Benson Center of the Santa Clara University School of Law, from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. The discussion will feature leaders of the Congressional Internet Caucus, including Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, Congressman Mike Honda, and Congressman Bob Goodlatte. Other participants will include West Coast academic scholars, public interest advocates, and industry executives during a series of discussions on current, important technology policy issues. State of the Net West is designed to channel West Coast thought leadership from the academic community and private sector to help inform the technology policy issues being debated in Washington.