Attend Code4Lib Midwest, Oct 13-14

University of Iowa is hosting a regional Code4Lib meeting October 13-14. This will be a much smaller meeting than the international meetings that occur in late winter, and even cheaper! There is no registration cost and details are below. Code4Lib is a vibrant, diverse, and informal community of library, museum, and archive technologists. Please talk to me if you think you might be interested or have questions.
######### Email sent to Code4Lib on July 29 #########

*Code4Lib Midwest 2013
October 13-14
Pappajohn Business Building, University of Iowa Iowa City, Iowa*

Please join us Sunday, October 13, and Monday, October 14, in Iowa City for the Code4Lib Midwest 2013 conference! This informal conference will feature short lightning talks, longer presentations, workshops, and breakout discussion sessions covering technology in libraries, archives and museums in the Midwest. A preliminary schedule can be found on the Code4Lib Midwest wiki (http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Midwest).
*
I’m not really a coder. Can I still come to Code4Lib Midwest?*

Absolutely! Code4Lib events are always open to people who don’t think of themselves as coders but who want to learn more about using technology in libraries and cultural heritage institutions. Not all of the talks and breakout sessions will be about “code,” either. Topics like digital preservation, digital media, and metadata are totally fair game at Code4Lib.

*How much does it cost? What are the logistics?*

Nothing! Registration for Code4Lib Midwest is free. Just add your name to the list on the wiki (http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Midwest), and you’re registered. If you don’t have a wiki account and don’t want to sign up for one, e-mail Shawn Averkamp (shawn-averkamp@uiowa.edu) or Emily Shaw (
emily-f-shaw@uiowa.edu) to be added to the list. A block of rooms has been reserved in the Sheraton Iowa City Hotel at $99 per night for Saturday and Sunday nights. More logistical information is available on the wiki.

*How do I propose a talk/workshop/discussion?*

Just add it to the wiki (http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Midwest). We have room for up to 20 presentations (15-20 minutes each) and around 20 lightning talks (5 minutes each), so don’t be shy. We want to hear about what you’re doing.

Hope to see you there!

--The Code4Lib Midwest 2013 Planning Committee

16 free chances to learn something new in June!

Arm your professional development arsenal!  Check out the Open Education Database (OEDb) website, which has posted 16 free webinars relevant to librarians.  All the listed webinars are hosted by a variety of organizations throughout the month of June.  Topic selections include:

• MOOCs (massively open online courses)
• Data-driven decision making
• E-books
• Customer service
• Digital collection development

This is just a taste of the course offerings, so if you don't see anything interesting above, please peruse the comprehensive list here.

Conference Reports: Code4Lib 2013 and CNI Spring 2013 Executive Meeting

Code4Lib 2013

Videos on Archive.org

C4l13 on Lanyrd.com

Starting at the end

Bess Sadler, Creating a Commons

Mark Matienzo, Wielding the whip lightning talk

Jason Casden, My #HuntLibrary at NC State

 Harvesting images from Instagram to see how students are really using new library

James Stuart, Taming Email

Hydra

 Scholarsphere at Penn, making the repository “less janky”

 Avalon at Northwest

Pre-conferences and breakouts I attended: Discovery services (improving service integration), Data visualization using D3, LMS integration (Libguides, LTI), Community ProjectShare Board

Common themes:

 Building communities around shared needs, people who care

 Better testing

 Better use of analytics

 Service transparency and “don’t hate your users”:

   Making ILL more obvious

   Bento search (demo)

   Occam’s Reader: e-book lending using document delivery model   

 Data visualization, e.g. D3.js

 Video, audio discovery

CNI Spring 2013

Executive Roundtable on Author Identity

Plenary, Herbert Van de Sompel

 From the Version of Record to A Version of the Record

   In 2000, spoke on digital environment possibilities. "None of this has really happened, but here we are" still working on these problems.

The Scholarly Record is changing

         Contributors to the scholarly endeavor are taking central stage

         Enabled by:

           Online identities in a variety of portals and social networks

           Contributions to social networks

           Portals(...?)

         Contributors in the periphery

         Contributors take Center (Web) Stage

           rewards and credit for what they can provide

       Surface Your Scholars

         Advocate web presence for scholars:

           professional portals

           academic portals

           asset-oriented portals

           reference portals

           social networks

         Benefits

           increased visibility, metrics for scholar, institution

       1998-2013 15 year evolution

         a true understanding of what the web really means

         fundamentally leveraging web infrastructure

         network of interconnected resources

       It is possible to tackle the challenges today by leveraging existing web architecture

       Proposal: And if we can leverage it here, we can leverage it to solve other problem domains

     Questions response:

     "We need more chaos in the altmetrics area, not less until we can start to identify approaches that work and can be agreed on."

A Toolkit for Digital Research

Kaitlin Thaney, Digital Science, digital-science.com

 FigShare, Altmetric, etc.

Oregon State and U of Oregon digital publishing collaboration

 Could be really beneficial to keep this in mind with main campus or others.

Environmental Scan and User Survey

 Faculty most wanted dedicated time and knowledge about/access to tools

 Students wanted internships and experimental space

   Graduate-level courses are really popular because they allow students *time* to devote to learning the tools.

 Sharing across universities (30 minutes apart)

   Phase 1

     Training

     Credit Courses

     External Grant Consultation and Support

     Speaker Series/ Symposiums

     Internal Digital Scholarship Center Fellowships

   Phase 2

     Increased capacity for projects

       both U's use Hydra, Drupal, eventually Scaler(?)

 Goals for 2013

   Foster community of digital scholars

     Access to AWS has been very popular with students - library has account "We can spin up a VM for you on demand where you can experiment."

 Core Values

   Agility

   Collaboration

New display at Dykes Library!

Come check out our new "eye" catching June display celebrating Vision month!

NLM Professional Development Awards

Are you interested in attending a conference or workshop that you may not have attended before?  The National Libraries of Medicine, Mid-Continental Region, is giving out four professional development awards of up to $1,500 each for the 2013-2014 year.  These awards are geared toward librarians' continued education in the field and proposals must meet some basic requirements:

• Before you apply for the Professional Development Award, please work with your administration to determine, 1) what would be applicable for your position, 2) how it can benefit your institution, and 3) your responsibility within your institution to share your experiences with higher level administration. Document these items in your application. (Question #6)
• Attendance at the conference must take place before April 30, 2014.
• Funds can be used for registration and/or travel.
• This award is intended for educational purposes only, and not for use with professional organization officer/committee commitments.
• Your responsibility to the Mid-Continental Region will be to share your experiences through a newsletter article, presentation, or a way mutually agreed upon with the NN/LM MCR.
• Recipients for the 2013-2014 year will be targeted toward four librarians.
• The applicant's institution must be a Full Network member of the Mid-Continental Region and the applicant must hold a health science library position.

For more information and to see past years' winners, go here.

Interested in applying?  Then, go forth and good luck!

Currently seeking Book Club hosts and hostesses - could this be you?!

Read any good work-related books lately?  Want to shout out from the rooftops what an inspiring read it was?  Or maybe a title has caught your eye but you forgot about it while you were doing 10 other things at the same time?   Well, now is your chance to get on board with the library's book club!  We are looking for 4 people to lead sessions throughout the next fiscal year.  Don't want to lead a session yourself?  Consider a co-leader! The requirements are simple:

1. An interesting book title that is relevant to professional/personal development or focuses on workplace-related themes and popular topics.
2. Keep the budget for books $125 and under (per session).  This may mean finding creative ways to obtain the book if it's a relatively new release and you have more people signed up to read it than the budget can accommodate. 

Past titles that have been discussed in book club:

1. Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip Heath & Dan Heath
2. Inside Apple by Adam Lashinsky
3. Go Put Your Strengths to Work!  by Marcus Buckingham
4. This Book is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All by Marilyn Johnson (current selection)

That's it!  Simple, right?  So what are you waiting for?  Peruse the guidelines for the book club if interested, and then sign up for the session you want to lead here! The next session starts in July, so don't delay - sign up today!

MLA 2013: NLM Theater Presentations

The NLM exhibit booth at the Annual Meeting of the Medical Library Association featured theater presentations to bring users up-to-date on several NLM products and services.  

These were recorded and posted on the NLM site.  They are 15-30 minute videos.  Take a look:  http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/mj13/mj13_mla_theater_ppt.html