What’s going on in library associations around the country?
Check it out. Go to the ALA list of state library associations and click on a few links. If you see anything good - be sure to let your AKLA roundtable and committee chairs know.
posted by Susan Mitchell at 1:20 PM
7 Comments:
I really like some of what the South Carolina Library Association is doing. They have a wiki (PmWiki) for their organization home page and for the conference. They have six people working on the home page, which I think probably helps them keep it fresh and current without overwhelming any one person.
It looks like they started using a wiki for conference in 2007, when the conference was themed Library 2.0. They did incorporate some video and presentations, but mostly linked out to YouTube, slideshare, etc. They provided links to librarians and libraries using various Web 2.0 technologies, like Facebook, Flickr, and even IM. Overall, I thought this was very nice, and I would be very interested to see how it develops over the next few years.
As I look through more of the organizations, I notice that the Rhode Island Library Association has a nice community blog. One of the things I like about this is that they have a core group of bloggers who have committed to posting on specific topics. This way, it's hopefully easier to keep the blog current without overwhelming one or two people.
I believe it was Oklahoma's association that linked to a blog that was officially about library stories (fun!) but seemed to be mostly ads for library positions, at least recently (important, but perhaps not quite as much fun, except maybe for jobhunters!). It did seem pretty active, though.
One nice thing about it is that since it's in date order, you could just look at fairly recent postings, and no one would need to worry about getting the posts down. Also, having historical positions posted could help people create announcements, and might help prospective employees know if there's been a lot of turnover or not.
One more quick note: I thought it was interesting that the Pennsylvania Library Association is using Surveymonkey to take program proposals for conference. This might be a handy way to allow for electronic submission if you're not set up for online submissions otherwise.
I just found some more neat stuff at the SCLA site. They have a YouTube channel and you can renew your membership with PayPal. I wonder how this works for them, and how expensive it is. Hmmm....
The Tennessee Library Association uses scheduling software for their conference schedule. Once members log in, they can sign up for sessions directly. I wonder how this works separately from their registration. They're conference is coming up soon, so online registration was shut down and I couldn't compare.
Looking at library associations from Utah to Wyoming, a few sites impressed me:
Vermont - http://www.vermontlibraries.org/
The Vermont Library Association page is a blog masquerading as a web site. None of the entries on the first page had comments. There is an RSS feed for new content which would be nice to have on a Conference or association site. Nothing in the way of Web 2.0 appears to planned for their 2008 conference in May.
Virginia - http://www.vla.org/demo/index.html
The Virginia Library Association lets members join or renew online via Paypal or library card. They have have a relatively active blog at http://vla.org/blog/. Few comments but more than a few contributors. The blog has a good set of categories and subpages. One the pages has instructions for uploading images to the association blog. VLA posts presentation materials, at least for past conferences at http://www.vla.org/VlaPresentations.asp.
Wyoming - http://www.wyla.org/
The Wyoming Library Association site has a link to a nice events/CE calendar apparently run by the Wyoming State Library at http://will.state.wy.us/ldo/planningcalendar.html that not only lists individual opportunities, but also has links to a number of program archives.
Here are a couple state sites that I thought worked similarly to what we want:
Nebraska:
http://www.nebraskalibraries.org/conference/
They used a conference wiki as a place to store information and for interaction amongst conference attendees. The wiki link posted on the conference web page. Looks like all presenters were given access and encouraged to participate. PB wiki is the software they used.
Noticed that for the 2008 conference a wiki isn't available.
New Jersey:
http://www.njla.org/conference/2008/index.html
Also has a link to their conference wiki on the web page. Similar to Nebraska--web page hosts static information while wiki was developed to encourage interaction. I liked the speakers' pages: has traveling information--looks to be the place where speakers can keep track of where they're supposed to be. Also has a handouts available section. There are instructions on how to use the wiki--the types of information expected. They also have a blog which has conference information as well as statewide activities and librarianship information.
I'm surprised that so much of this information is available to me (not a Nebraska/New Jersey librarian) with out requiring a password! Is this something we want to do?
Post a Comment
<< Home