Those selected will get a full ride at SU for the LIS program (including a stipend) as well as mentoring by Cornell science librarians, money for travel, and a paid summer internship.

Take a look!

Sherlock Holmes is called in to investigate a murder. After examining the scene Holmes announces that the killer was a librarian.

“However the real give away is that after the victim was killed the murderer dragged his body over to the toilet and wrote on the body ‘can you find the bathroom now?! can you find the bathroom now?!”

Not a big deal, and hopefully easier, just wanted to let you know. I’ve gone back and made the format changes to previous presentation as well. Hopefully it will make it easier to find everything.

Abstract: The best days of librarianship are ahead of us. However, to get there the field must step back, refocus, and reexamine our core principles. We as a profession have become so focused on the trees of standards and process that we are now at risk from missing the larger forest of opportunities. This talk will present a view of a new librarianship, one focused on knowledge and action instead of artifacts and collection. The presentation will look beyond the trends of today’s technologies to a durable new librarianship that focuses on innovation, leadership, and service.
Slides: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/Presentations/2009/Charleston.pdf
Audio: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/pod/2009/charleston09.mp3

Screencast:

A few hours later the director decided to walk the building and get a sense of moral among her staff. In rare books area she saw a group of librarians busily scanning books. “What are you scanning all of those books?” the director asked.

“We’re trying to increase the digital collection of the library so we can put a lot of great content on the website and make it more appealing to potential students.”

The director went to the acquisition area and saw the librarians surfing Amazon. “What are you doing?” asked the director.

“We are looking to see if we can save money by buying directly from online retailers.”

Finally the director went to the first floor where se saw the reference librarians pulling books off the shelf, tearing off the covers, and then randomly replacing them.

“WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT?” cried the director.

“Job security”

Sarah talks with Dr. R. David Lankes, Associate Professor and Director of the Information Institute of Syracuse School of Information Studies at Syracuse University about the concept of participatory librarianship. They also discuss the mission of a librarian, learning as conversation, and the four major ways of facilitating knowledge and information.

http://www.librarybeat.org/longshots/play/191

Abstract: This presentation examines work to redefine librarianship not as a set of functions, or skills, but as a deeper mission rooted in how people learn and use knowledge.
Slides: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/Presentations/2009/RealSweden.pdf
Audio: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/pod/2009/Sweden.mp3

Screencast:

So Albert Einstein goes to a party. The host is keen to show off the world-famous physicist to his friends so he escorts Einstein around, introducing him.

The first guest asks Einstein, “So what is it you do Albert?”

Einstein replies, “I seek to understand time.”

“Wow,” says the guest, “We’re in the same business. I sell watches.”

The host introduces him to the second guest who asks, “So Albert, what is it you do?”

Einstein, trying to impress, replies, “I seek to understand how all the planets and stars in heaven move about the universe.”

“Wow,” says the second guest, “We’re in the same line of work. I build telescopes.”

A third guest asks Einstein, “What is it you do?’

To which Einstein replies, “I have discovered that light, magnetism, and electricity are all the same force.”

“Wow,” says the third guest, “We’re in the same business. I repair TVs!”

The host takes a now depressed and exasperated Einstein to meet a fourth guest.

“What is it you do Albert?” asks the fourth guest.

Now completely deflated Einstein says, “Nothing. I don’t sell anything. I don’t build anything. I can’t even repair anything. I’m useless.”

“Wow,” says the fourth guest, “I’m a tenured professor too!”

So God calls a meeting, and to this meeting he invites Carl Linnaeus, the father of modern classification (he’s the guy who gave out all the latin names we had to memorize in biology), Melvil Dewey, and Penny a rural library director who had just passed away the week before.

God says, “Well I’ve done it. I’ve called the rapture and brought up all the souls from Earth for judgement. In fact they’re all behind that door over there. The problem is, when I came up with this plan there were a lot fewer people on Earth – like two – and you folks have been busy. There are now a couple billion souls in that room and I need some help in sorting the saved from the damned.”

“No problem,” says Linnaeus who stride confidently through the door.

An hour goes by, then two, then 5. Finally at 7 hours Linnaeus crawls back out of the door. His cloths are torn and he is clearly shaken.

“I couldn’t do it.” He says. “I was doing OK until I came upon a goth Japanese teenager and I ran out of Latin. It can’t be done.”

“I’m on it,” says Dewey who strides confidently through the door.

An hour goes by, then two, then three. Finally, 8 hours later Dewey crawls out of the door covered in sweat.

“It can’t be done! I had all the Christian denominations all sorted out, then I ran into a Jewish family and a couple of Muslims and I ran out of numbers.”

Upon hearing this, Penny turns on her heals, marches through the door, and one minute later walks back out “Done,” she says.

“That’s great,” says God. “But how did you do it?”

“I just asked everyone who had ever voted to increase library funding to raise their hands and told the rest they could go to hell.”

Abstract: The mission of librarians is to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities. Through service, innovation, and leadership, librarians facilitate conversations in schools, communities, colleges, government, businesses, and beyond. It is this act of facilitation of knowledge in partnership with communities that makes a library, not collections, blogs, catalogs, or ivy on walls. This is the central premise of participatory librarianship. This discussion will explore the new role of librarians as a passionate and powerful force focused on the social good.
Slides: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/Presentations/2009/NNYLN.pdf
Audio: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/pod/2009/NNYL.mp3

Screencast:

Abstract: An argument for taking a step back and reconceptualizing librarianship through conversation.
Slides: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/Presentations/2009/Lansing.pdf
Audio: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/pod/2009/MichiganLansing.mp3
Lecture Notes: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/Presentations/2009/LansingNotes.html

Screencast:

To me this video is about a lot of things, but one that may not jump immediately to mind is information organization. I gave a talk at the last ALA on the Death of Documents. Part of that argument is that more and more of the data folks are going to use/create/look for is not bound and static like our current perceptions of documents.

Take a look at what these folks have down. They have mashed up (mind you with some very high-level programing) all sorts of geospatially encoded data (video, maps, etc) and even added real time interpolation (i.e., not all the data being shown is “real” data – some of it is simulated), to create a fascinating (and slightly creepy) information space for folks to navigate.

Does it make sense to put this in that catalog? How would you even do it? Not the paper they are presenting, but the actual system.

As librarians we must greatly broaden our concepts of the services we provide, and how we organize them. One could imagine a transportation library where this is the primary interface for members. Add to this real time world links to planning and environmental data (click on that road, up comes the construction records – click on that bridge and access the inspection schedule).

Anyway, plenty to think about.

Things will be picking up in the next few weeks. I’m still here, and really cool stuff is happening. Stay tuned.

If you subscribe to this in iTunes or any podcasting tool you will still get all my presentations and screencasts. Please update your feed readers (note just if you subscribed to just the podcast one). If you are reading this, then you have the right link already.

Slides: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/Presentations/2009/CTChange.pdf
Audio: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/pod/2009/CtChange.mp3

Screencast:

I’ve been listed on the Learn-gasm’s 100 Best Blogs for Librarians of the Future

http://www.bachelorsdegreeonline.com/blog/2009/100-best-blogs-for-librarians-of-the-future/

OCLC has named members of a Library Advisory Council that has been put in place to advise OCLC in developing the first Web-scale cooperative library management service.

In April, OCLC announced plans to launch a new service for Web-scale, cooperative library management services—network-level tools for managing library collections through circulation and delivery, print and licensed acquisitions, and license management. These new services will complement existing OCLC Web-scale services, such as cataloging, resource sharing, and integrated discovery.

The Library Advisory Council comprises leaders from the library community who will assist OCLC in creating a service strategy that will meet the needs of libraries across various sectors and geographies. Members of the Library Advisory Council are:

Helene Blowers, Digital Strategy Director, Columbus Metropolitan Library

John Helmer, Executive Director, Orbis Cascade Alliance

Jan Ison, Executive Director, Lincoln Trail Libraries System

R. David Lankes, Associate Professor, Syracuse University

Sarah McHugh, Statewide Projects Librarian, Montana State Library

Mary Piorun, Associate Director, University of Massachusetts Medical Center Library

Tim Rogers, Executive Director, NCLIVE

John Teskey, Director of Libraries, University of New Brunswick

Andrew Pace, OCLC, ex officio

The Library Advisory Council will hold its first meeting following the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago. The Advisory Council will expand soon to include more global representation, and pilot sites for the new Web-scale management services will be announced at the ALA conference.

It seems that folks who bought and paid for a few books (ironically George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984) suddenly found the books missing from their Kindles. Amazon, at the request of the publisher, remotely wiped them. Yup, you thought you bought the book, but instead bought access. While Amazon seems to have credited accounts, it does re-open the whole question of first purchases.

From BoingBoing:

David Pogue. writing in the New York Times, reported that hundreds of customers awoke to find that Amazon remotely deleted books that they’d earlier bought and downloaded. Apparently, the publisher determined that it should not offer those titles, so Amazon logged into Kindles, erased the books, and issued refunds. This was aptly compared to someone sneaking into your house, taking away your books, and leaving a stack of cash on the table.

Also see the New York Times.

Abstract: The following presentation is a crossover between the Conversatns Converation/Confernece and the ALA Annual Conference.
Slides: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/Presentations/2009/ConversantsALAVirtual.pdf
Audio: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/pod/2009/VirtualALA.mp3
Transcript: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/Presentations/2009/ConvTrns.html

Screencast:

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6650838.html

They Named the Building After Us: The Library as Conversation from R. David Lankes on Vimeo.