10.10.2006

Card-Carrying Member (as soon as it comes in the mail)

I'm now an official member of ALA, LITA, and GODORT--all for the this-time-only reasonable price of $135 (don't you hate to call anything over a hundred bucks "reasonable?"). Next year on this date, my checkbook will weep, I'm sure.

Last year, there was a lot of frustrated talk among NextGens about ALA, some of which has now quieted. But it seems a little hard to be active in the library community without the membership--first of all, I wanted to be in LITA and GODORT, and second, if I'm going to attend a few ALA conferences a year anyway, then I might as well get a slight discount.

Speaking of professional activity...
  • Whew! I just submitted a presentation proposal--my second in two weeks. The first one was a lot easier than this one, on which I procrastinated until the deadline loomed, and then just forced myself to write it and send it in. Sometimes I can spend a week crafting and perfecting a proposal, and sometimes I just blurt it all out in desperation. My philosophy is, at the very least if I just finish it and send it in, I've got a chance.
  • It's only a week and a half until DLC--I've got to start planning what to pack! (I'm finding it's hard to pack light when you need a laptop, hairdryer, and iron just for starters...)
  • I'm pondering harnessing the power of RSS for the CRS archive and the CyberCemetery. The problem, as a colleague quickly pointed out, is that the batch-uploads to CRS (often 100+ at a time) make for a messy feed. So we're thinking about creating a feed for each of the browse terms (which are actually LIV top terms). I think this would be a great way not only to help researchers, but to market our department's digital collections. I'd love to have links to the feeds on the GovDocs homepage... guess I'll add that to my project wishlist.
And now, for something completely different (but, um, still library-related):

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