Today I received an email inviting me to a webinar on OMEKA, a web based platform for all kinds of collections created by the Center For History & New Media. This sounds pretty great and I definitely am going to read up on this, if not try to watch the webinar (and I’m sorry to have already used the word webinar twice, you’ll have to suffer through it a couple more times I’m afraid)

Here is a blurb from the release for the webinar:

“Omeka is a free and open source collections-based, Web-based platform for scholars, librarians, archivists, museum professionals, educators and cultural enthusiasts. Until now, scholars and cultural heritage professionals looking to publish collections-based research and online exhibitions required either extensive technical skills or considerable funding for outside vendors…

Omeka features a “five-minute setup” that makes launching an online exhibition as easy as launching a blog. Designed with non-IT specialists in mind, it allows users to focus on content and interpretation rather than programming. It brings Web 2.0 technologies and approaches to academic and cultural Web sites to foster user interaction and participation. It also makes top-shelf design easy with a simple and flexible operating system. Omeka’s robust open-source developer and user communities underwrite its stability and sustainability…

Webinar participation is free and open to all but advanced registration is required. This is the second webinar in the OCLC Research Technical Advances for Innovation in Cultural Heritage Institutions (TAI CHI) Webinar Series developed to highlight specific innovative applications, often locally developed, that libraries, museums and archives may find effective in their own environments, as well as to teach technical staff new technologies and skills.  We intend to make recordings of these webinars available on the OCLC Research Web site and in the iTunes Store.”

Imagine the uses for this if it’s as flexible as it seems! Not just for libraries, but “cultural enthusiasts”, and who isn’t a cultural enthusiast of some kind?

More info and advance registration link HERE. 

The Banned Librarian has put together a clear concise guide to both current issues surrounding the Patriot Act, and the sections that are scheduled to sunset in December of 2009.

It includes:

HISTORY & BACKGROUND

• The PATRIOT Act Itself
• Treatises on the Law
• Helpful Articles
• Oversight & Watchdog Reports
• Prior Cases

STAYING CURRENT

• Pending Bills to Reform
• Outstanding Cases
• Useful Websites for Staying Current

Download the pdf HERE

Unless you have been reading this blog for at least five years, you may not know much of the history behind it. It was started many years ago (8? 10? More? I honestly can’t remember) by some friends of mine as a grand experiment. The experiment concerned fair use, music, language and more — you can find a full explanation of the ethic and idea HERE. They asked me to join late in 2003, and I was really happy to do so. Back then I was concentrating on under-reported news, scouring indymedia sites and other tiny blogs, looking to re-post and hopefully spread the word on things that were important to me–immigrant and women’s rights, gender etc… After I started library school, I started posting more news on, yes, libraries and information.  Over the past few years, most of the original contributors have fallen away, and now it really is just me. The funny thing about this, is that I have nothing to do with the design of the site, and it hasn’t been changed in quite some time. It doesn’t ‘belong’ to me, but it feels like mine all the same, even though I rarely write true personal commentary about my life. The reason I bring this up now, is that I’ve been named a Library Journal Mover & Shaker, which is a lovely honor– and best of all, I was nominated by my very favorite partner in crime (and crime fighting), Char Booth. I have long thought that what Char touches turns to gold, and I am currently feeling pretty shiny. Thank you to all of my friends & colleagues who make me a better person, and in turn a better librarian. I’m not sure if theexperiment will continue to evolve in to a more library-centric, lia-centric place, but if you have an opinion either way, I hope you’ll let me know.

You can find my UC blog HERE , on Twitter I’m piebrarian, and I’m Lia Friedman on FB. I’m also on Goodreads & Flickr , but I keep those a tiny bit more private, which doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to see you there.

The American Library Association has pulled out all of the library related hoo ha from the Stimulus Package, which was nice of them. You can find it HERE.

Thanks to the NPR Librarians blog (…as a matter of fact)  for letting me know.

Shai Reshef has started  a new venture, The University of the People, which will begin classes in spring of 2009. Reshef isn’t new to online school adventures, he started an online university in Europe, which he sold to Laureate, and a testing preparation company in Israel, which he sold to Kaplan. UOP will be an almost free online university, with cost determined on a sliding scale based on the wealth of their country of origin,  initially offering degrees in Business Administration and Computer Science, with more in the works. The best part is that some of the learning and teaching will be peer-to-peer, with students doing the teaching. Learn more HERE and listen to a podcast with Reshef HERE.

Interesting Open Access Experiment

More here

Optimism? Belief in a broken system? I don’t recognize it, so it’s a bit off-putting.  I read this today and felt something shift in my head, like scooting a book over to fit more snugly to the next. Are things really going to change?

For more on this go Here but, if you’re anything like me, go Here and probably Here as well.

But this recent posting on the iilalumni list gave me just a tiny bit of pause. What a great way to attract great potential recruits! Anyone out there want to move to move to Gettysburg?
Here’s the post in full– after the jump they lay out what they are looking for..I know a lot of people who have the skills who would be great in this position:

‘Are you tired of being a cog in the wheel?  Do you feel stuck in a bureaucratic rat race?  Do you have good ideas and no way to get them on the radar screen?
Do you wish you had more interesting professional development opportunities?
Do you like country living close to a metropolitan area?  Are you interested in being part of a strong liberal arts environment with service at its core?  Do you like the idea of working in a place where you can really make a difference?
If you answered “yes” to any of the above, please read on.
(more…)

Via PLG and KYW

Judge Heidi fox has ruled in favor of library advocates. Mayor Nutter
cannot close 11 branches without first getting Philadelphia city council
approval.The end result, all of the branches slated to be permanently
closed as of New Years Eve will remain open. Library advocates have
maintained through this two days hearing that library branches are
essential to the fabric of the community; for the children, their
homework and hobbies and staying out of trouble (see previous stories).

For many single adults libraries help people with job applications and
resumes. And for older adults, just to keep busy, because after all,
they point out, fifty percent of Philadelphians don’t have computers in
their homes.Throughout these two days, the Nutter administration, said
it had to close these library branches because of an overall cutback
because of a worsening budget situation, and because of a state law,
City Hall must balance its budget in a current five-year plan which
projects a one billion dollar deficit.
The judge focused her entire case on an ordinance from 1988, a section
in an ordinance, section 16-43, that says any city owned building cannot
be abandoned or closed without city council approval.

http://www.kyw1060.com/For-Now–All-Phila–Library-Branches-to-Stay-Open/3577021

From the CHE via Kathleen de la Peña McCook

November 30, 2008

The University of California will set aside money from its own budget to continue a labor-research program on its Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger eliminated from the state budget in September, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Mark G. Yudof, president of the university system, agreed to use $4- million in university funds to keep the Miguel Contreras Labor Program operating through this fiscal year, which ends on June 30, the newspaper said. The university is also asking the state to finance the program next year.

The program, whose budget the governor also has proposed cutting in previous years, has produced policy research and educated students on labor and employment issues for eight years. Portions of the program´s work, including training for union leaders, have often sparked controversy among politicians in the state.

After the governor´s veto of money for the program this fall, more than 400 faculty and staff members at California colleges sent Mr.

Schwarzenegger a letter of protest in which they called the elimination of the program an “unwarranted political interference in the academic activities of the University of California.”

Aides to the governor have said that the cut was not political, but that the state´s budget deficit had forced him to eliminate money for several state programs.

The $4-million the university will spend on the program is $1.4- million shy of the amount that was cut from the state budget. That $1.4-million would have been used to pay for small grants and other funds for campuses other than those in Berkeley and Los Angeles to conduct labor and employment research, the San Francisco newspaper said. -Sara Hebel