Call for Submissions: 2010 Conference

Online Northwest is a one-day conference focusing on topics that intersect libraries, technology and culture. The conference is sponsored by the Oregon University System Library Council.

The 2010 conference will be held at CH2M Hill Alumni Center, Corvallis, Oregon (on the Oregon State University campus) on Friday, February 5, 2010

Submit proposals: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=HDhY4z4qIUhUrqqnK2KGRQ_3d_3d

Proposal Submission Deadline: Friday, October 2nd, 2009

The coordinating committee seeks presentations that discuss how technology is being applied within library settings and how technology is affecting library patrons and services. We strongly encourage academic, public, school, and special librarians to submit proposals. All topics relating to technology and libraries are welcome,
including:
• Technology in tough economic times
• Tagging used in libraries (OPAC, librarything, flickr, etc.)
• Change/innovation & organizational culture (as it relates to technology)
• User interface design and evaluation
• Resource sharing (e.g. ILL, document delivery)
• Information literacy and instruction (distance ed. and technology use)
• Management of electronic resources, digital repositories, or digital archives
• Programming and development of computer applications to support delivery of library services
• Using social features in library technology
• Other topics related to technology in libraries are welcome

Submit proposals: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=HDhY4z4qIUhUrqqnK2KGRQ_3d_3d

For examples of past presentations or more information, see:
http://www.ous.edu/onlinenw/

Check out updates on our blog and subscribe to our twitter
Blog link: http://onlinenw.blogspot.com/
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/onlinenw

Miss Something?

Were there presentations you did not get to see at this years conference? Too busy networking and miss something? We now have most of the presentations on our website. Check them out, see what you missed, and get a refresher on what you did see.

What you are saying

Are you posting about your Online Northwest experience? Tell us about it and we will link to you. So far Sam Wallin has shared a video presentation of his experience, and Nicholas Schiller has posted about his experience.

Comment here and we will link to your post.

Thanks for Guest Bloggers

Thank you to all our guest bloggers who did live blogging and some not as live blogging below. If you haven't gotten the chance to read their posts please take a moment to do so. Comment back and tell them what you think.

Many people were also tweeting the conference via their twitter accounts. Search #ONW09 to see all the buzz.

Good to see so many people in attendance.

FYE: a committee point of view

Just a bit of background to start. I grew up on the west coast, received a bachelors degree from Linfield college in McMinnville, and moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana to get my MLIS. I worked at Middleton Library while I was getting the degree, then I moved to Florida. I stayed in Florida working primarily in library administration for 5 years. Last February I moved back to Oregon to be the Portland Operations Librarian for OIT (Oregon Institute of Technology).

Shortly after starting I was asked if I wanted to represent the OIT Libraries on the Online Northwest planning committee. My answer went something like, "Uh, sure. What's that?" I learned what Online Northwest was pretty quickly after that when the committee met in the spring. For those that don't know, Online Northwest is a kickin' conference with a tech focus in the Northwest US.

The committee is made up of representatives from The Oregon University System libraries. Each committee member takes on a few tasks in the planning and execution of the conference. The tasks I took on were advertising and putting out a call for proposals. Then, last friday (2/13) was the conference.

Remember what my answer was when I was asked if I wanted to be on the committee? Well, Not only was this my first year on the planning committee, but it was also the first time I had attended an Online Northwest conference. I really did not know what to expect, but I liked what I saw.

I was the room monitor to room 114, so I got to see all the presentations in that room. I also got to troubleshoot some interesting computer issues, and deal with the curtains when the sun was too bright to see the presentations. Overall, I think it was a positve experience. I got to hear some great presentations (see some not so great pictures below.) And I got to meet some people that I would not have gotten to meet otherwise.


Cass Kvenild talks with a session attendee while cleaning up after her presentation on Library Services for Distance Learners


Sam Wallin gets animated during his presentation on Using Video to Enhance Library Service.


Anna Johnson laughs with a session attender during the break after her presentation 2, 4, 6, Great: Handouts They'll Appreciate.


Diana Wakimoto shows what not to do when making accessible web pages during Preventing a Digital Divide: Accessibility and Online Learning.


Kate Gronemyer, Planning Committee chair gives a general welcome and some brief announcements before the keynote.

So, Overall, my first year experience (FYE) at Online Northwest was a good one, and I hope to have more bad pictures for you next year.

2, 4, 6, Great: Handouts they'll appreciate (Lisa T. blogging)

Anna based her thoughts on handouts on the work of Edward Tufte.

The key point I took away from this session was that the presentation is a summary of the handout. The handout is not a summary of the presentation. When you only have 1 hour (or less) to present something, it's good to have something information-rich for students to take away and read and refer to afterward. Handouts allow active learning - they don't summarize the content of the presentation, but rather give students the content.

People think that students don't read handouts because they're too long, but Tufte believes that to clarify, add detail. We often use bullet points and lots of graphics on handouts, but we shouldn't be using web design principles for the design of printed documents. In the same way, print handouts shouldn't be lists of links - paper documents need to stand alone, and should make sense 2 years from now, even if the links change.

To make great handouts, use tables to align the content, make everything look good in black and white (we don't usually print in colour), use grey lines rather than hard black ones. Insert hyperlinks into the Word doc, but don't type out the URLs you link to.

Once you convert your Word files to PDF, the hyperlinks will become clickable when the PDF gets posted online.

Fit content onto 2, 4 or 6 pages - no wasted space, no wasted paper. Print 4 pages booklet style on 11x17 paper, fold it in half.

Using colour paper is more cost effective than colour ink.

If your content makes sense in a sentence, leave out the image. Images compete with content for space.

Examples of Anna's handouts

Library Blogs: Guidelines, Policies and First Amendment Rights (Lisa T. blogging)

According to a Pew study, 32% of adults are blog readers. Portland has the second highest number of blog readers and contributors in the country. What people like about blogs: the material is always new and fresh, they foster community, they're interactive.

What Multnomah County Library (MCL) learned from early tries with blogging:

• be afraid
• you must moderate comments
• only let people comment for a specific period of time

This comes from a situation where they had an unmoderated Everybody Reads blog on their site, where people were still commenting on it, spamming it, etc. after the project was over. This led to the MCL site coming up as a result for searches of words that were not at all library-related, and possibly offensive.

How to get the public what they want without getting the library into trouble? There are rules for behaviour in the library, those could be extended to library blogs.

The three major policy issues related to allowing public comment on blogs are:

• 1st Amendment rights and responsibilities of the public and library staff
• Public records retention
• Liability - copyright infringement, libel, etc.

Re: 1st Amendment rights - describe the blog in a way that makes it a limited public forum. One that focuses on giving people information (e.g. book recommendations) limits the scope of what people can comment on. As for staff, give them guidelines as public employees, ones that are connected to existing behaviour guidelines for staff.

Post a purpose statement on the blog that defines the limited public forum. Write a social software policy for the library and post disclaimers on the blog as well. Comment guidelines also appear directly where users would post their comments to the blog.

Comment moderation helps avoid spam. There are two reasons to reject a comment - if it's unlawful, or off-topic (this is where it's important to have a purpose statement to help define what is on-topic or not). Keep any comments you don't post, in case of a legal challenge.

Re: public records retention - this is one reason why it's better to host the blog on your own server, rather than having it hosted by another site.

Re: liability - make sure staff have clear guidelines for writing posts, think about having a social software policy especially for staff, and make sure it's clear how to deal with copyrighted material. It's really easy to post images and video that may be under copyright.

Presentation materials online