Colin Powell makes a stop in Tulsa

Yesterday I attended the morning session of a "Get Motivated" seminar in our new 18,000 seat arena downtown, the BOK Center.

The ticket was free, and I would not have gone if Mr. Powell had not been slated to speak. I wanted to hear what he had to say, this man who is a career military leader and is fond of old Volvo's.

He spoke of America's Promise, and how "we have no greater responsibility now in America than to make sure that the next generation of youngsters is ready for positions of leadership." He divulged that he is a bit of a tech geek, and is involved in a few businesses in the area of information and technology.

In his talk he noted that leadership is "all about followers and followership." Leaders need to 1) "clearly set goals" and 2) "take care of the troops." He said that passion is infectious, and a leader's task is to motivate and inspire people. He also pointed out that today's leaders need to display moral and physical courage, as well as character and integrity.

He then went into stories about his experience in the military and as Secretary of State.

Mr. Powell quickly glossed over four e's that we need to be focusing on: economics, energy, environment, and education.

He ended by saying that we need to "get back to simply American values" and "build bonds of trust," but that the US still has a strong role in leading change in the world.

Overall I was impressed with the man. He used humor effectively in his oration, and at times seemed like just another guy. There was a female voice at one point yelling at him, and he turned to that part of the arena and said, "Hello. How are you? Thank you," and moved on. The voice from the stands was not heard again.

Had he taken questions, I would liked to have asked him about sitting in front of the UN during that fateful moment in February 2003, and if he indeed thought it was his lowest point in life, how did it fit into his previous words about leadership?

He spoke for 37 minutes, and after his speech I left, sensing that the rest of the day's "Get Motivated" events would not hold much for me.

Dynamic Librarian to present at ODLA

There's nothing like teaching something to really make sure that you know it.

Along those lines, I'll be putting my best foot forward tomorrow for my presentation of "Audio files in distance learning: what can podcasting do for students?" at Oklahoma Distance Learning Association's Web 2.0 in Education conference.

This morning, on day one of two, the keynote speaker spoke about the read/write society that we are moving toward, and one of the videos he showed had this zinger: "Text... is the Latin of our world." The idea is that text is supposed to be this quaint, going-out-of-style language, and interactive hypertext, audio, video, and who-knows-what-is-next will be the way to communicate in the future. Well, time will tell. One thing is for sure- it's a great time to be paying keen attention.

Dynamic Librarian, Peabody Fellow

I'm heading to Nashville, Tennessee on Sunday for a week long Academic Library Leadership Institute, hosted by Vanderbilt's Peabody College of Education and Human Development. I am one of 25 who will be participating- only about three of us are younger than 30 (this is my deduction based only on photos- I may be wrong), and there is only one other community college represented.

More on my Peabody experience as it develops.

Final thoughts on ALA Annual 2007 in DC

Facebook library friends met at an establishment that night- no one had conference badges on so we did not know that for at least an hour we were sitting next to a table full of librarians. We can be quite a raucous crowd. Even our waitress was in library school. Only because of this night am I now on Facebook. SOOOO much better than MySpace.

Monday was my final day, and before I headed to the airport I attended OCLC’s President’s Luncheon. That got me fired up. OCLC is doing some wonderful things. Now I see why Michael Porter and others work there- seems like a great dynamic. I left the luncheon wanting to go fill out an application, or at least follow up on projects such as Identities, Fiction Finder, the WorldCat pilot project at the University of Washington, and the Delivery pilot project in Wyoming.

I made some excellent work contacts, and a few friends that I want to keep in touch with. So, overall, it was an epic conference (for the record, the categories are ‘epic’, ‘worthwhile’, and ‘should have saved the money’).

Thoughts on vendors at ALA

Taylor Francis has yet to make contact to alert me that I won the iPhone- this is an oversight I am sure, and trust it will be remedied this week.

Several vendors schmoozed with their customer base (effectively, I might add):

Ebsco provided lunch for about 700 people, and told us about some of the new databases they would be offering soon (more on those databases later).

OCLC sponsored a Blog Salon where I met, among many others, OCLC CEO Jay Jordan

Proquest hosted a dinner for about 150 people at the National Museum of the American Indian. The museum is a very cool public space, rounded walkways and an ‘organic’ sort of feel to it.

3M hosted a dance party at the Grand Hyatt- where else could you have all ages of vendors and librarians sharing a dance floor to the sounds of Outkast and Sir Mix-A-Lot?

Sunday at ALA

Stephen Abram spoke on Sunday morning and his topic was “What are you promoting?” His point was that we need to be welcoming in our physical and virtual spaces. We need to give the user a positive experience. We know that we have the content- now we need to provide that to the users in an enjoyable way.

I went to a session about recruiting Black Male Librarians, as did about a dozen other people, only to find out that it had been cancelled. I took the initiative to gather business cards and promised that I would follow up. I feel that this workshop is important and ought to be rescheduled. ALA-Midwinter?

LITA hosted a Hot Tech Trends panel discussion Sunday afternoon, with Joan Frye Williams, Marshall Breeding, Roy Tennant, Karen Coombs, John Blyberg, and one more person who I don’t recall. Argh. His name will come to me at some point.

Robert F Kennedy spoke, and I had never heard the man before but I would like to sign up for oration class if he is teaching. Now I know what brilliant public speaking is all about. He had some powerful messages and presented them so as to leave little doubt that action was needed on several fronts (environmental, political, etc.). He was going to sign books after his speech, so I ducked out 15 minutes early and was 5th in line for his signature. I mentioned the Mono Lake Committee, hoping that he had heard of it, but alas there was no recognition in his face as he handed my autographed copy.

Gaming and Information Literacy at ALA

This was one of the top three workshops I attended; it was presented by CJCLS. The speakers were Dr. Gee and Dr. Needham, and they presented compelling arguments regarding the use of videogames (online as well as standalones such as Nintendo Wii) in education.

Essentially, they said, the education world has for decades been trying to get kids excited about doing long, hard, complex work at school. Private industry has somehow managed to get kids to do this type of work, and pay $60 for each game. What are we doing wrong and what are they doing right? For starters we educators make the kids read first, then play. The games encourage play, then reading. Let’s begin there…

They noted that librarians are no longer “information priests” now that users have a deluge of content coming at them from all angles. Instead, we need to be thinking about what the user can contribute. Indeed, Dr. Gee noted that for many of today’s ‘prosumers,’ information is useless they can modify it in some way.

Hollywood Librarian

Friday night was the world premiere of the Hollywood Librarian here in Washington, D.C. They rolled out the red carpet for us librarians, and some of us entered with style (read: did everything we could to get our photo taken). I did OK- its not everyday that an Okie librarian gets his photo and quote in the Washington Post style section. I should have, however, made them agree to mention my blog URL. Next time.

Once I got beyond the flashbulbs of the red carpet, I settled in for the movie. It was all documentary, and its good that Ms. Seidl chose librarians as her inaugural audience. At 100 minutes long, it will be a hard sell to regular audiences. To be marketable to non-librarians, it would need to be cut in half (ie, take out everything but the old movie clips).

Saturday morning there was a discussion panel that noted the movie playing on the library 'victimization' model: "woe is us because look at how others perceive us and gosh we don't have nearly as much money spent on us as we do on military operations around the world." My theory is that until we assert ourselves we will not reach our full potential with regards to funding and respect. We need to practice proactive librarianship and have the ear of key community leaders well before any shutdown occurs. Along those lines, maybe library school needs to include more emphasis on negotiation and proactive marketing (case studies on successful bond measures could be a place to start).

The movie spent a solid 15 minutes on the story of the Salinas Library system quagmire. Ok, what did we learn? Be more proactive and get out the word that the library needs continued support. Next slide, please-let's move on and not dwell on it.

One cool thing that I learned about was the San Quinton State Prison/Marin Literacy program that provided prisoners with the chance to learn how to read.

Other than that, the most relevant parts of the movie were the library-related movie clips and citations:

City of Angels
Cleopatra (twice)
Twilight Zone
Plaza Suite
Big Bully
Goodbye, Columbus
It's a Wonderful Life
Party Girl (thrice)
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
Matilda
Dangerous Minds
Pat and Mike
Desk Set (twice)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Goodbye Columbus
Librarian: Quest of the Spear
Music Man
Station Agent
No Man of Her Own
Threesome
Love Story
Storm Center (twice)
Time Machine
Battlefield Earth
Soylent Green
Zardoz
Cesar and Cleopatra
Fahrenheit 451

At the end of the film Ms. Seidl mentioned that we could all pick up a free copy of the film in the exhibit hall if we agreed to two things. First, we had to show it in our communities during Banned Books Week, September 29- Oct 6, 2007. Second, we have to charge admission- $8 for adults and I don't recall how much for children. The proceeds would be split among the hosting library, Ms. Seidl, and a third entity that I do not recall. Jury is still out on how many libraries will actually show the film in their town. I agree about charging money so people will respect what they see, though.

first day at ALA smashing success

Today I attended a preconference called "Accepting an Electronic Resources Librarianship Position: the Best Professional Decision You Ever Made! Now What?" The presenter was Anjana Bhatt, E Resources Librarian at Florida Gulf Coast University. There were 45 people who each paid $200 (or their institution paid) for this 3.5 hour workshop. Overall it was worthwhile, although the price should have been about $115. There was a librarian from Amsterdam, Netherlands there. How worldly can you get? The workshop made me feel that my community college is doing well in the E Resources area, and we are poised to take the next step with an ERMS (excuse the shop talk...). I made good contacts and will be able to use some of the material as soon as I get back to Tulsa.

Oh, and the fellow from the Netherlands told me of a song I had never heard of, "Twenty four hours from Tulsa," the lyrics of which can be found here. Not a ballad I'll be singing anytime soon, but one more song reference for our fair city.

I took the Metro to the Library of Congress, Jefferson Building, and ohmygoodness I was impressed. The place is incredible. They stayed open from 5 to 7 PM on a Friday night for us fellow librarians. Very cool.

Here is my humble photo essay for today (photos are taken inside Convention Center and Library of Congress, Jefferson Building):

Getting ready for ALA in Anaheim 2008

Library of Congress, Jefferson Building

Words that will be applicable forever in our democracy











Inside the Reading Room


















A friendly note from the librarians to the regular Reading Room crowd










This photo is for Gisele- those are Contemporary Authors!


















A view from the 4th floor (where I was not supposed to be...)

















Tennis, anyone?


















A kayaking we shall go


















Let the music go around





















And I have yet to get to the Hollywood Librarian movie premiere- that will have to wait until tomorrow as it's 2 AM and I'm beat.

Dynamic Librarian in DC

Karen Harris and I are representing Tulsa Community College here at ALA's massive annual conference. And I do mean massive. There will be about 30,000 of us librarians here.

Today was travel day, and the most interesting thing was the guy in handcuffs on our Tulsa-Memphis flight. I didn't ask questions- he was guarded by two burly men and I felt pretty safe.

The second most interesting thing was a comment about cabin pressure that prompted me to look up the demise of Payne Stewart. Worth a read if you are not familiar with the story.

So here I am at Hotel Washington. The only building that is between me and the White House is the US Treasury. I am about a mile from the Convention Center, but I don't mind the walk and all the hotels were booked when I made my reservations. This one fits me, though. It is 90 years old. :-)

I'm planning my day tomorrow while I watch soccer (Houston is embarrasing Chivas- the score is 4-0 and it's not over yet. This is big because Chivas has never lost by more than 3 goals). Let me know if you have any comments/vendors you want me to visit, if you haven't already.

-Nathan, F.I.G.
(Friendly Information Guru)

'Hollywood Librarian' to make its debut Friday night

Roll out the red carpet, get the papparazzi out here- DC is the place that the feature-length movie called 'Hollywood Librarian' will be debuted on Friday night.

I will be there and I'll let you know about it tomorrow night. For now here is the trailer:

Heading to ALA

I'm off to DC June 21 for the American Library Association conference, and it will be my first as well as possibly my last ALA conference. I get to see Stephen Abram, as well as the premeire of the Hollywood Librarian, some cool museums and a female Muslim refusenik named Irshad Manji. Some vendors will give me a free meal- the price I pay will only be my time as they introduce the latest product they have out. I am excited to go, though I may not sound like it. :-) We'll see if ALA can deliver- I'll be posting a few highlights here.

I have a theory about organizations: when they become too large (number of employees, number of people they are supposed to serve, etc) they become ineffective. There was a book written to this effect called Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, and maybe someday I'll take my friend Greg's advice and read it.

Back to ALA, it has become too large. It is ineffective. I send emails suggesting ideas for ad campaigns or requests for information, and I don't get a reply. None. Zip. My renewal confirmation comes 3 months after I send in my dues. How is that effective?

The Free Range Librarian says that the short answer to effect change "is to take over ALA governance." Awesome- let's do just that. I'll vote for you. There's a start. (Along those lines, if every 18-30 year old voted in 2008, we could put whoever we wanted in office. Pedro, anyone?)

OLA recap

Oklahoma Library Association

1907-2007

100 Years and New Frontiers

I would have posted this from OLA yesterday, but I had a few issues with the wireless connection (only available in certain places, being 'timed out' and not being able to publish a post I had spent 10 minutes on, etc.)- such is life.

I'm back in Tulsa now, and am letting everything from yesterday soak in. The vendors, the workshops, the people I met, the state's 100th birthday.

Some of the awards and aknowledgements at OLA:

• a Presbyterian group in Chickasha awarded for Food and Fun program
• the marketing committee for the Read Y'All posters campaign
• Jennifer Kidney for the "Let's Talk About It Oklahoma" program
• Jennifer Paustenbaugh for the "Oklahoma Library Legends" program
• Rosemary Moran for her dedicated service to the Sequoyah Book Awards
• the endowment committee was recognized for raising $120,000 toward the goal of 0ne million dollars
• Senator Mike Morgan was recognized as being a Library Champion

After the awards Stephen Abram spoke, and some of the things he said are here summarized (my thoughts are in italics):

Library 2.0 is here- are you ready? You've gotta be in it to learn it. Don't study to death- instead Pilot and Play

What can librarians do that Google can't? Have you ever seen a child enter the library, run across the floor and give Google a big hug? (Keep up those) childrens' story times

People are still reading quite a bit- stop trying to protect the book. Start protecting the library and the staff

We have been teaching Boolean for over 20 years and we failed. We need to integrate Boolean in the searches, behind the scenes

In 30 minutes of Google, the same amount of questions are answered that it would take 8 years of all librarians in the world to answer. Read that again and let it sink in

Google does WHO WHAT WHEN and WHERE, and they do it very well- let them. We need to be doing the HOW and WHY

Britannica and Wikipedia- both have errors, but Britannica has only 5% of the content of Wikipedia. (We are delusional if we think students are going to stop using this resource)

85% of the newspapers in the US are owned by 5 (Republican) families (I need to verify this...)

Google will be soon able to charge 4 times as much per ad because they will know your GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION when you type in a search

The OCLC perceptions report states that 95% of respondents value libraries, but they also value online search. The 'library' word is a brand. How will we differentiate ourselves?

Library Thing is the 4th largest library in the US- and it is all people at home cataloging their books!

The 'magic sauce' is the social web- let people talk to each other. Let them tag books and post comments on your site about their reading and research experiences.

Put your content where the users are- brand yourself

Karen Schneider says the User is Not Broken

Finally, if you want to know where you can start learning about some of these social networking tools, go to the page that tells you about the Learning 2.0 project at the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. You can get 'up to speed' in 9 weeks, for only 15 minutes a day! (sounds like an excercise infomercial :-))

Oklahoma Library Association conference

OK- here I am at OLA. I woke up this morning at 4:50 AM to drive from Tulsa to Oklahoma City (had I not been invited to EBSCO's invitation breakfast I could have slept a full hour long- the things we do for free food and networking!)

My first observation is that Stephen Abram is a rock star. He delivered the general session speech, and gave a rousing talk on "Technoschism: Library 2.0- Threats and Opportunities in a Googlemanic world." I can only hope that the 700+ attendees at the conference can take what he had to say and apply it to their daily situations. Later I had coffee and lunch with the man, and tried to pick his brain as much as possible about as much as I could.

My second observation is that there is no wireless connectivity in the presentation rooms or lobby of the Cox Convention Center- I have to sit at an alcove to get a signal. ARGH. And when I do get the signal there is a default tool that 'can't find' the websites I have for my home pages. Seriously, it says "Can't find http://www.cnet.com" and then when you scroll down the page there are links it has found and guess what- on is http://www.cnet.com! BUT, you have to scroll past the ads to find it. Does Cox communications think I am stupid?

Mr. Abram took up that issue- Google and its advertisers skewing the results of searches- and encouraged us to study up and tell people exactly how search engines work. They are bias. Of course, so are libraries. We are biased towards high quality, filtered information. :-)

More later about some of the special awards given by OLA, as well as tidbits from the presentations I attended.

OLA is right around the corner

The Oklahoma Library Association conference is right around the corner, and I look forward to meeting some of my fellow Okie librarians. I have been to two California Library Association conferences (2004-San Jose and 2005-Pasadena), and I look forward to doing a little compare/contrast.

:-)