Day Three at ALA 2008

Day three at ALA was my last day in California, after about four weeks of traveling throughout the state. By that point, I was very tired, and only managed to attend one program before heading home. The program I attended was called Hey! I Want to Do That Too! Gaming and the Elementary Age Child (1330-1500).

Hey! I Want to Do That Too! Gaming and the Elementary Age Child

This program was presented by Dr. Warren Buckleitner, a former elementary school teacher, current New York Times contributor, current adjunct assistant professor at NYU, and current editor of Children’s Technology Review. His presentation was on creating a media center, or Mediatech (like biblioteca), for a public library. Dr. Buckleitner split his presentation up into two parts:

1. the history of Mediatech at his library, and
2. selecting the right materials to create a Mediatech of one’s own.

During the first part, Dr. Buckleitner explained how he developed a Mediatech at the library where he lives (and is a library trustee) in Flemington, New Jersey. Luckily for Dr. Buckleitner, when he pitched the idea to “VIPs in town” and the library board in 1998, he faced no opposition. In 2000, he already had the support of an attorney, schools, and library trustees to create a non-profit organization and begin fundraising. By 2001, they decided on the library as the location of Mediatech, and the library board contributed a $100,000 trust to renovate the space. Mediatech opened on May 23, 2003, marking the anniversary of Charles Lindbergh’s nonstop transatlantic flight from New York to Paris.

Dr. Buckleitner’s media center has about eight computers, all of which were donated. Most of the games available at Mediatech were donated by Dr. Buckleitner, himself, as he writes reviews for them.

Reflection on My Third Day at ALA Annual 2008

Dr. Buckleitner was a very good speaker. His presentation was engaging and informative. He definitely knows about children and what they want. However, I don’t know how useful this program would have been for someone who attempted to set up a media center, faced opposition, and was looking for advice. Dr. Buckleitner’s story almost sounded like a fairy tale; everything important went the way it should have. There wasn’t a struggle, which is a common thing in public libraries in America… what with the budget cuts and libraries closing everywhere.

I think this program could have been more useful if the speaker presented strategies for succeeding in cases where not everything goes the way it should.

Day Two at ALA 2008

I attended three sessions on Saturday, June 28, 2008: Kids and Ever-Cool: Find Them Together at Your Library (1030-1200), Metadata Mashup: Creating and Publishing Application Profiles (1330-1430), and Science Fiction and Fantasy: Looking at Information Technology and the Information Rights of the Individual (1600-1730).

Kids and Ever-Cool: Find Them Together at Your Library

The main speaker in this program was Gene Del Vecchio, author of such nonfiction works as Creating Ever-Cool: A Marketer’s Guide to a Kid’s Heart (1997), The Blockbuster Toy: How to Invent the Next Big Thing (2003), and young adult fiction like The Pearl of Anton (2004), and The Sword of Anton (2006). He has been in the business for 25 years, and his clients include such brands as Disney, Mattel, and Nestle. (“How many of you played with Barbie? I sold that to you!”)

The purpose of his lecture was to encourage children’s libraries to create a logo or brand that is as strong as McDonald’s golden arches or Target’s bulls-eye while making it cool and successfully fulfilling a basic emotional need. A formula for success at the library, Del Vecchio claims, is to satisfy a timeless emotional need and dress it up in a current trend or fad (while updating periodically). Here are some examples of brands that fulfill a basic emotional need:

• cereal that makes a child feel like a winner: Wheaties
• fashion doll stands for beauty: Barbie
• fashion doll stands for rebellion: Bratz
• yogurt that gives children control: Sprinkl’ins
• stuffed animal that gives children a sense of empowerment: Build-A-Bear
• candy that makes children feel brave: Warheads
• cereal that is about sensory gratification: Rice Krispies

One particularly striking part of his presentation involved his presentation of user needs survey results, wherein children provided their opinions on what would make a library better or cool. Some of those results were in the form of pictures, like one that had an ice cream stand, bean bag chairs, and music playing, with a very small corner of the room for books; another child had drawn a separate room for listening to music. Most of the children came to a general consensus: they wanted their libraries to adapt to what they were used to and expected. They wanted Barnes & Noble in their libraries.

ALA Annual 2008 101

Welcome to Anaheim!

Yesterday, Friday, June 27, 2008, was my fourth day in Anaheim and my first day at the ALA Annual 2008 Conference. Joe Osborn and I attended YALSA 101 (from 1600-1700) and Intellectual Freedom 101 (1700-1800).

YALSA 101

YALSA 101 was an introduction to the conference and YALSA as a division. I went to the ACRL 101 program last year, and I found that YALSA 101 this year seemed much more lively and easy-going.

YALSA 101

During the program, the current president of the division highlighted some of the cool programs YALSA is sponsoring during the conference such as Teen Spaces: Between Home and School, a program about creating both physical and virtual spaces for teens, and the YALSA Bloggers Meeting. She also highlighted the fact that YALSA and ALA are member-driven, and volunteering is easy to do: just fill out a YALSA committee form on the YALSA website (search for “volunteer form”). Overall, I found the YALSA 101 program to be helpful, even though this conference is not my first. I liked the culture and content of YALSA so much, I even joined the division online as I was sitting in the audience.

Delicious Library 2

I’m currently in California, been here since Friday (June 6), and will remain here until June 29. We’re here for conferences, mainly, as this week is WWDC08 in San Francisco, a conference for Apple Software Developers like my boyfriend, and the last week of my stay in this state is the (previously mentioned) American Library Association Annual Conference in Anaheim.

I am not attending WWDC with my boyfriend, but he will be attending ALA with me. Even though I did not sit through the Keynote and watch SJ deliver the next surprise, I’m still pretty gaga about Apple. I use a MacBook Pro, and I’ve preferred Apple computers since I started using one this time last year. As a recent convert, the differences between Apple’s OS X and Windows XP/Vista are obvious and fresh in my mind. I don’t miss my old large and clunky Dell laptop. When working in the library, I can use both freely, but I prefer a Mac.

Everything I produce on the computer seems all the more valuable if I do it on a Mac. Programs are simple and intuitive: their functionality adheres to the metaphors that inspired them.

One wonderful application for the Mac is Delicious Library 2 by Delicious Monster. Delicious Library 2 allows the user to catalog everything: books, movies, albums, software, videogames, toys, gadgets, tools, and apparel. (The first version of Delicious Library only allowed the user to catalog books, movies, and albums.)

 

Delicious Library 2 Screenshot

What’s particularly awesome about this application is that it does not require the user to do much work, as far as typing in long strings of numbers or metadata for each object. If the application is installed on a Mac with a webcam, it can be used as a barcode scanner. The barcode scanner picks up the UPC or ISBN and looks it up in Amazon’s database, and then collects the metadata from Amazon associated with that item (e.g. publisher/label, release date, genres, format, dimensions, number of pages, retail price, current value, purchase date, ISBN, dewy decimal, EAN, and country for books). And if a working webcam is not available, it is also possible to search by a known metadata field such as title, author, or ISBN. The application also works with a bluetooth scanner, the Microvision ROV Scanner with Bluetooth, which would greater enable cataloging of a larger collection, such as the collection of a small library.

Last Year’s ALA Annual Conference in Washington, DC

My experience at last year’s ALA Annual Conference in Washington, DC, was guided by the 2 credit course I took with Scott Nicholson, IST 600: Leadership and Organizations. Scott gave us some tips and required us to meet with a leader in the field at the conference. I met with Sari Feldman, Executive Director of the Cuyahoga County (Ohio) Public Library, who has since been elected PLA vice-president.

Another perk of having taken that course in preparation for the ALA Annual Conference was that hotel accommodations were included with participation in the course.

Friday, June 22

I got to the hotel later than expected. There was a mix up from either the university or the hotel, but all was well 20 minutes later. One thing I didn’t do, as others suggest as well, is to check hotel reservations prior to arriving.

When I arrived, I met my roommate, Dawn Cadogan, shortly after making it to my room. We went to the Washington Convention Center via the metro to get our badge holders (and Dawn’s badge).

When we got there, we discovered that many, many, many people had the same idea. It was crowded, but the lines moved quickly. There must’ve been hundreds of people ahead of me, but it took less than 15 minutes to get to the head of the line. Once I got there, I was greeted warmly and taken care of quickly.

By that point, it was already late and we were hungry. We entertained the thought of going to the Film and Libraries program, but our hunger won out. Near the registration booths, Dawn, her coworker, and I found another booth we put to great use. ALA offered dining suggestions. We asked the lady behind the booth where we could find good food at decent prices, and we were directed towards Chinatown. (It was really helpful as none of us knew our way around DC.)

We went out to eat at Tony Cheng’s in Chinatown (right near the Convention Center), and by the time we were done, it was too late for the film program. We wandered around Chinatown for a while and then came back to our hotel.