NHLA Blog

I'm pleased to report that last week, twenty enthusiastic information professionals met at the Bedford Public Library to begin laying the foundation for NHLA's new information technology section. (So far a total of 35 people have expressed interest in participating in the section, and the list continues to grow.) Represented within the group were information architects, library directors and assistant directors, reference, children's, teen and technical services librarians, and systems administrators and webmasters from numerous public and academic libraries.

During the meeting, we discussed organizational issues such as whether or not there should be a membership fee, and what kind of organizational infrastructure is needed. The consensus was that there should not be a membership fee and that compared to some other sections, the IT section would have fewer official committees, and instead, operate as a more fluid organization. In the next two months, a group of members will further discuss these issues as they draft a set of bylaws which will be reviewed at the section's next meeting on Tuesday, April 8th at 10am at the Bedford Public Library.

In addition, another group of volunteers agreed to start exploring content management systems with the goal being to select one for the section's web presence. Three applications in particular were mentioned, including WordPress, Drupal and Joomla. If any NHLA members would be interested in participating in this project, please contact Steve Butzel. 

Finally, we closed the meeting with announcements of interesting information technology accomplishments and ongoing projects at our libraries. One announcement of particular interest was that the GMILCS consortium has recently implemented ChiliFresh. ChiliFresh is a plug-in that allows patrons to add comments and reviews of books right into the library’s catalog, for other patrons to read. Read more about this here.

In closing, if you are interested in participating in the Information Technology section, please contact Steve Butzel, and he will get you signed up for the section's Google Group (which is serving as our communication system for now.) As I mentioned earlier, our next meeting is on Tuesday, April 8th at 10am at the Bedford Public Library. You are welcome to attend this meeting even if you missed our first one.

Posted by Steve B. at 08:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Steve B. at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

At the fall business meeting, I announced that I am planning to establish a new section within NHLA that will focus on information technology issues faced by librarians of all flavors. I envision the section discussing a wide range of IT issues. For example, we might discuss a Library 2.0 issue such as how to insert a tag cloud from LibraryThing into your catalog. We might also discuss more fundamental issues such as methods used to secure computers in different library settings. The sky is really the limit.

Who do I hope to attract to this section? Anyone who is interested in learning more about information technology and how it can be used to provide services in libraries. You do not have to be a techie, but you probably should look forward to learning about information technology. Maybe you would like to learn about web design or how instant messaging software is used as a reference tool. Maybe you are interested in learning about content management systems, digital library applications, and/or open-source software. It's all good!

So, if you would like to participate in this section, or even become an office holder, please contact me at steven.butzel@nashualibrary.org. I promise you I will make it worth your while.

Posted by Steve B. at 02:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Join us on September 24th at the Hooksett Library for Everything You Want to Know About Library 2.0.

Jessamyn West (Librarian.net), Lichen Rancourt (Remaining Relevant), Andrea Mercado (Library Techtronics) will explore Library 2.0.  They will be joined by Bobbi Slossar for GEEK Sessions (small groups with specific questions)in the afternoon.  Watch for more details coming soon. Brought to you by the Continuing Education Committee.

Posted by Andrea T. at 08:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Steve B. at 07:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Have you heard the latest news from Sirsi/Dynix regarding their decision to curtail development of the Horizon integrated library system software product? If not, Charlie LeBlanc has written an excellent summary of the situation in the NHAIS Notes blog. To connect directly to his entry, click here.

To learn more about Sirsi/Dynix's announcement, you can also read this article at InfoToday: SirsiDynix to Consolidate Products on New Platform.

Posted by Steve B. at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)