I wish I could say my lack of posting for the last week or so is because of me 'gone fishing'.
Instead, I'm working on a site for the Public Library Association that, happily, is close to completion.
The thing's looking good but it's taken all my free time away.
We got a great crowd of around 20 people for our Drupal 'Birds of a Feather'. The above is a shot of everybody in the BIGWIG Bloggers' room -- just before we got kicked out by some group from YALSA (bums, we'll get even)!
(We then proceeded to the next available empty room and had our get-together there.)
First up on the agenda was setting up the Drupal IG, making sure we have enough signatures and asking for volunteers to serve as Chair and Co-Chair. For the first year, Leo Klein (i.e. me) graciously volunteered to serve as chair and Ian Chen as co-chair.
Not the best quality shot but hopefully it conveys what a great time I had at the LITA Happy Hour on Friday, June 27. I got most of the signatures for the Drupal IG plus met a bunch of great people.
A couple people from LITA have helpfully suggested that we set up a Drupal Interest Group (IG).
I think this is a great idea since, as I understand it, IG's get a slot at one of the officially sanctioned meeting rooms come convention time.
Aaron Dobbs, Mary Taylor and our friends at BIGWIG have been very supportive in allowing us to have our Drupal4Lib BoF in the Bloggers Room but by having the IG, we can do a couple of things more, including as I said, maybe getting a room of our own next time round.
In any case, all IG's have Chairs and Co-chairs. I'd be happy to offer myself up as the initial Chair. (The thing is open so basically anyone can throw their hat in the ring.) We'd also need someone(s) interested in being Co-Chair. Term is a year.
This is all something we can discuss at the BoF -- on Sunday, June 29 (3:30p-5p). All we need are 10 signatures to get the thing off the ground.
See the Info Page on LITA IGs...
P.S. for the BoF, I'm bringing this nice little projector so people can show off their sites and projects if they want.
I've got a neat job building a community site for one of the library organizations here. I'll talk more about it at our Drupal4Lib BoF in Anaheim but basically the idea is to promote online collaboration. Needless to say (for those in the know), I'll be making great use of Drupal's Organic Groups.
I got a number of enthusiastic and helpful suggestions on the Drupal4Lib list as to when and where we could hold our Drupal4Lib BoF.
It's increasingly looking like it'll be Sunday after the LITA Top Technology Trends in the LITA Bloggers' Room.
ALA has been in the process of redesigning their site for a while now. They did a Usability Assessment Report (pdf) at the end of last year. Now, Rob Carlson, ALA's Manager for Web Development, has just posted a link to wireframes for the new site. He's also posted a link to an online survey for user feedback.
Carlson cautiones that the wireframes are just "rough early sketches" without the visual detail or content of the finished site. They're there to give you an idea of where things are heading and how they'll be arranged. With that in mind, have a look yourself. The survey runs till the end of the month.
You can find out more about ALA's Website Redesign Project by going to the ALA Web Planning Wiki.
I'm stuck in Chicago with the ALA-DC Blues again.
ALA along with the annual LITA Conference is one of my favorite conferences -- particularly when it's in a town like DC.
Unfortunately I'm too mired down with projects here in the Windy City to make the trip.
I look on with complete envy to everyone who's going.
Anyone else notice this? I was in the midst of reading "The Evolution of the Academic Research Library During the 1960's" in the lastest issue of College & Research Libraries, when the article suddenly dropped off the face of the earth.
The words on the following page didn't make sense. Then I looked at the page numbers: '104' on the page I was reading and '121' on the new page.
Opps, looks like they let something slip.
Bill Drew (SUNY Morrisville) posted a link on Web4Lib to the American Library Association's new Wiki, 'Read Write Connect'.
The Wiki brings together many of ALA's online services loosely defined as 'Web 2.0' (i.e. Podcasts, flickr, etc.) This is one of a series of new online products, the most successful of which, IMHO, is the electronic newsletter, AL Direct.
Current Readings around Town...
Library
Design
WebDev
Tech News
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