DIY Digital: Local Initiatives, Local Support

New York Technical Services Librarians
Spring Meeting & Program
Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Online registration is now open! http://www.nytsl.org/calendar.htm
Space is limited so please register ASAP.
Registration deadline: Friday, May 1, 2009.

TOPIC: DIY Digital: Local Initiatives, Local Support

NYTSL has invited three local experts to discuss their experiences with homegrown, collaborative digitization projects. Issues of concept, funding, managing, and implementing new digital initiatives will be considered. Please join us for this exploration of New York's digital projects landscape.

SPEAKERS:

• Joanna DiPasquale, Columbia University Libraries, Web Developer
• Josh Greenberg, New York Public Library, Director of Digital Strategy and Scholarship
• Jason Kucsma, METRO, Emerging Technologies Manager
• Moderated by Angela Sidman, CUNY Graduate Center Library, Catalogue Librarian

WHERE and WHEN:
South Court Auditorium
NYPL Humanities & Social Sciences Library
Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street
New York, N.Y. 10018

Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Refreshments, 5:00-6:00 PM
Meeting & Program, 6:00-8:00 PM

REGISTRATION and PRICING:
NYTSL now offers PayPal as a preferred payment method. Mail-in registration forms are also available on the website.

Program (Members) $15.00
Program + Membership (Non-members and renewals) $20.00
Program only (Non-members) $25.00

For questions about membership status, please contact Lisa Genoese, lgenoese@nyam.org.

Join NYTSL Today!

I'm passing on a membership appeal from the New York Technical Services Librarians, of which I am a member. Other local library organizations should feel free to send me information about themselves and I'll post it along.

Become a member of the New York Technical Services Librarians (NYTSL). Since 1923, NYTSL has been an active and productive venue for technical service professionals in the New York Metropolitan area. We provide great networking opportunities at our events for information professionals from public, academic, and museum libraries, among others. Twice a year we host a lecture program with guest speakers from our local area and from around the country. We cover a wide variety of topics of interest and of concern to our membership. Once a year we hold a spring reception and invite students from library schools in the metropolitan area, Queens College, Pratt Institute, Rutgers University, The Palmer School, and St. John’s University. Our annual dues are very affordable. For more information about joining NYTSL and learning about past programs, visit our site at http://www.nytsl.org.

Technical Parables

Friday night's New York Technical Service Librarians fall dinner program -- yes, I am behind here -- featured a compelling talk by the Library of Congress' Thomas Mann. Entitled "The Reference Librarian's Toolkit," Mann's presentation focused on the limitations of keyword and federated searching, researchers' ignorance of the power of controlled vocabularies (i.e. LCSH) and conceptual categorization, and the general dumbing down of search tools.

Mann was eloquent; I couldn't possibly reconstruct his arguments. Lucky for you, a number of his recent papers are freely available for download at the Library of Congress Professional Guild website, including "The Peloponnesian War and the Future of Reference, Cataloging, and Scholarship in Research Libraries".

And in the interest of full disclosure, I am a member of the NYTSL board. Thus, I have limited my subjective commentary on Mann's speech to the words "compelling" and "eloquent" and my impression of the event itself to, well, nothing. I leave that task to my readers. What did you think?