Library Advocacy Day from ALA Washington on Vimeo.

For one year only, Library Advocacy Day will replace National Library Legislative Day (NLLD). On June 29, 2010, library advocates from all 50 states and Washington, D.C. will meet at Upper Senate Park on the U.S. Capitol grounds. The event, which will begin at 11 a.m., will feature guest speakers, photo ops, and a chance to cheer on libraries! After the rally, participants will meet with their elected officials and their staffs.

CALL FOR ENTRIES
SPARC Announces Mind Mashup:
A Video Contest to Showcase Student Views on Information Sharing

Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales and Documentary Filmmaker Peter Wintonick Among Judges Selecting $1,000 Prize Winner

Washington, DC - July 25, 2007 - SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) today announced the launch of the first annual SPARC Discovery Awards, a contest to promote the open exchange of information. Mind Mashup, the theme of the 2007 contest, calls on entrants to illustrate in a short video the importance of sharing ideas and information of all kinds. Mashup is an expression referring to a song, video, Web site or software application that combines content from more than one source.

Consistent with SPARC's mission as an international alliance of academic and research libraries promoting the benefits of information sharing, the contest encourages new voices to join the public discussion of information policy in the Internet age. Designed for adoption as a college or high school class assignment, the SPARC Discovery Awards are open to anyone over the age of 15.

Contestants are asked to submit videos of two minutes or less that imaginatively show the benefits of bringing down barriers to the open exchange of information. Submissions will be judged by a panel that includes:

• Aaron Delwiche, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas
• José-Marie Griffiths, Professor & Dean at the School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Rick Johnson, communications consultant and founding director of SPARC
• Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC
• Karen Rustad, president of Free Culture 5C and a senior at Scripps College majoring in media studies
• Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia
• Peter Wintonick, award-winning documentary filmmaker and principal of Necessary Illusions Productions Inc.

The contest takes as its inspiration a quote from George Bernard Shaw: "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas."

Submissions must be received by December 2, 2007. Winners - including a first-place winner and two runners up - will be announced in January 2008. The winner will receive $1,000 and a "Sparky Award." The runners up will each receive $500. Winning entries will be publicly screened at the American Library Association Midwinter Conference in January 2008 in Philadelphia and will be prominently featured in SPARC's international advocacy and campus education activities.

For further details, please see the contest Web site at http://sparkyawards.org.

SPARC
SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), with SPARC Europe and SPARC Japan, is an international alliance of more than 800 academic and research libraries working to create a more open system of scholarly communication. SPARC is a founding member of the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, a coalition of patient, academic, research, and publishing organizations that supports open public access to the results of federally funded research - including research funded by the National Institutes of Health. SPARC is on the Web at http://www.arl.org/sparc/.

Podcasting is an emerging technology that allows for the easy online distribution of media files. The use of podcasts for both personal broadcasting and as a media tool has grown greatly in the past couple of years. Many institutions of higher education are now utilizing this technology as a method of distributing promotional and educational content. This webcast explores the growing usage of podcasting in higher education and examines how academic libraries fit into the educasting environment. The session focuses attention on examples of podcasts as classroom and library instruction tools and examines how academic libraries can become more integrally involved in podcasting efforts on their campuses.

This Webcast will last approximately an hour and a half.

Gaming and literacy experts James Paul Gee and Henry Jenkins will keynote the event by exploring how libraries fit into the intersection of gaming and the digital learning landscape, while guest speakers Eli Neiburger (author of the 2007 title "Gamers…in the Library?! The Why, What, and How of Videogame Tournaments for All Ages") and Syracuse University Game Lab Director Scott Nicholson will kick off the discussions about why libraries do this. Gregory Trefry, a game designer from GameLab, will explore libraries and the concept of "big games," while social computing expert and gamer Liz Lawley will provide context and a broad view for the topics discussed.

More than 25 sessions in three tracks will cover such wide-ranging topics as creating games for information literacy, implementing gaming programs, teaching kids how to make their own games, gaming for adults, digital downloads for gamers, online fiction games, and more. In addition, a track dedicated to Second Life will highlight how libraries are creating a presence in this virtual world and what they are gaining from it.

The bill (H.R. 1120) withholds federal e-rate funding from libraries and schools that do not restrict the use of social networking websites by minors.

If this is bill is as vague as people are suggesting, we will be taking several steps backwards from the way people have evolved in the utilization of information. Our economy is knowledge based and international in scope, but politicians continue to try to decrease collaboration and reduce U.S. competitiveness. Why are we not improving our education methods first, before restriction? Our children are leaving school at a disadvantage because we keep roadbocking their information/collaboration/communication development.

The ALA Washington Office hosted its first virtual event in Second Life. Over 60 people attended.

David Lankes from Syracuse University presented his paper entitled “Participatory Networks: Libraries as Conversations”. See the post on the InfoIsland blog for more information, including links to a video and a transcript. Also, see the Participatory Networks website for additional information.

One of the most popular sites on the Internet, Second Life is an online world - at www.secondlife.com - which people from all over the globe can interact. There are myriad locations and users navigate through them via their "avatar" - or, digital version of themselves.

The Washington Office is located in Cybrary City next to several other libraries. Cybrary City is one of several islands that librarians are using on Second Life to provide services to the users of this community. Traditional library services - such as collection building, reference, and community gathering - have all been incorporated in to this virtual world. More information on activities can be found at www.infoisland.org.

To visit the virtual Washington Office, simply visit the Second Life URL (SLURL) for the Washington Office.

At present, you can find the following items in the virtual office:

• An introduction to the Washington Office;
• Information on upcoming activities at Midwinter and National Library Legislation Day;
• An interactive computer that will point users to ALA Washington online resources, including the District Dispatch podcast and blog;
• A slideshow of office and staff.

[VIA: ALA January 10, 2007, Press Release]

LEADS will feature the same content that appeared in the e-newsletter:
LAMA news and information about ALA and other organizations of interest to LAMA members; including awards, conferences, important dates and deadlines and other resources. The blog format will permit news to be published more rapidly and to be available through RSS feeds. Readers may comment on entries, and submit items for posting.

Look for more Web 2.0 goodies from ALA LAMA in the near future. (HINT: We are looking to collect stories, pictures, and comments about the first 50 years of LAMA. Just imagine the Web 2.0 tools we might utilize in this undertaking.)

I was glad to hear others have similar thoughts as me at today's Closing Session - OK lets get started! I am not suggesting that we did not work hard already, but the group has really learned a lot and are eager to look to the future now.

I was amazed how much beyond a "workshop" that this ALA Library 2.0 Bootcamp developed. Beyond just looking at the technology from a hands-on playground, the group flushed out much more about user expectations, organizational implementation, online/social implementation, etc.

The work products of the ten teams were amazing for "virtually" working on the topics, while potentially many of the participants were exploring these 2.0 technologies for the first times themselves.

I think we only can see the tip of the iceberg right now after our 6-weeks of collaboration, but ALA cannot avoid the collision with Web 2.0 that we have created. There comes a time when people must realize that we do not always need to avoid every collision, because the past principles and the future technologies can blend to meet the needs of today. ALA and all libraries can be great leaders in pushing not just the technology of Web 2.0 but the principles of collaboration, social interaction, and the user's control of their experience.

One thing I hope this exploration demonstrated to ALA and the membership is how much work can be accomplished outside the traditional face-to-face meetings of conferences. It appears from the discussions and team projects that we can be seeing an amazing transformation in ALA and libraries in general in how business is conducted, how users are reached, and how ALL people can contribute to an organization's success and resources.

I look forward to continue growing the relationships I developed, and helping in anyway I can to continue this wonderful process.

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