Virtual Reference Presentation Brainstorming

Myself and some others have noticed a dearth of presentations on Virtual Reference over the past few years.  I wonder why?  Too much “nuts & bolts” or “how I dun it gud” presentations on the topic in previous years?

Would a more philosophical presentation/discussion raise interest?
Is virtual reference a brain-dead obvious service these days?

Here’s a list of possible themes/questions which I wonder about / think might be good for discussion points:

Themes:
Co-browsing — requirement/superfluous?
Typos — acceptable/omgwtfbbq no way?
Follow ups — email/chat/phone/f2f appointment?
Reference Knowledgebase — use chats to fill/make stuff up/guess what users might want or need?

Questions:

“What are the basic requirements for “Virtual Reference”?
IM?
Avatars?
Reference Blogging?
Meebo Widgets on every page?

Brainstorm with me!

Feel free to comment on Friendfeed if you prefer, though some new commentary on the blog would make me feel good, too 🙂

My ALA Ribbons

ALA Ribbons

Originally uploaded by AaronTheLibrarian

These are the 17 honestly-come-by ALA 2008 ribbons I found and wore like a badge of honor (or should I say suffering?) along with all 5 of the ALA2008 Surfboard designs 🙂

Yes, I’m a bad boy; I was only supposed to have 1 surfboard. But I was also an ALA Ambassador & wanted to be able to easily show people the design choices while I was at the Ambassador desk in the ALA Pavilion… honest! 🙂

Ribbons, Dude!

Dude!

Originally uploaded by cindiann

Here’s a close up of maybe 1/4th of my conference ribbons — centered on my fave ribbon, no less 🙂
These ribbons were few and far between… and I was specifically hunted down to be handed this one *blush*

Thanks @cindi for taking the pic!

Sometimes I Wonder…

Aaron Dobbs

Originally uploaded by cindiann

Just a little blurry & slightly out of focus — This is my favorite picture of me from ALA Annual.
Plus, that is the most appropriate t-shirt for me /evar/

Thanks @cindi!

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Three days to get a new phone – help?!

Hiya blog-reading peeps, so I’m headed out to drive to a conference in *three days* and I. want. a. new. phone. MPOW has an 18% discount with Verizon, so I’m a-lookin’ at Verizon compatible phones. My tweeps have suggested the crackberry, the enV, and reminded me to watch out for the Verizon features that only work when sending/receiving to/from other Verizon peeps.

What do I want in a phone? fully qwerty keyboard, good camera, bluetooth, that cool headset which uses your facial bones to filter out sounds, plays tunes with ~CD (or a little less) quality…

[edit] also, maybe a bluetooth (or other method) data xfer hookup for when the laptop isn’t in a wireless cloud? [/edit]

What other features do I need/ought I have? Do I want auto GPS/GeoTagging for pix?
What models have worked well for you?
I have no time to do srius research on this so looking for recco’s…

Thanks for the suggestions…

Art A Fair during ALA Annual 2008

D’you live in Southern Cali or are you going to ALA this summer?  The city of Laguna Beach is hosting Art-A-Fair, the city’s only international art festival.  On the Saturday & Sunday during ALA Annual, Art A Fair will have live Jazz and eclectic violin performers.  I’m sure you’re already busy, but hey, it’s Annual – go ahead and over-schedule yourself, I am…

Passion Quilt Meme: An above all, read as thou wilt

So, okay, I’m meme-ing. I blame @library_chic for pointing me to @kgs‘s Passion Quilt Meme “Reading Sets You Free” post.

The original image comes from Torcroft.com via a Google Image Search.

The caption is a touch on the small side, because often the important stuff is in the fine print 🙂

Tagged:

@library_chic
@griffey
@librarian_mer
@cindi
@infosciphi

Have fun, kids 🙂

The original meme:

1. Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
2. Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
3. Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.”

Dialogue on Government Information and Beyond

Here I am in the ALA WO, once again; this time as a voluntary observer of what has been billed as a Dialogue on Government Information and Beyond.
Why are we here?  What happened that this meeting was deemed necessary?
Here’s my understanding:
A while back some GPO Regional Depository Libraries wanted to do a joint-Depository model due to space and budget issues.  GPO requested comments. GODORT & COL (Gov Info Subcommittee, I think) worked up a draft set of comments and followed the processes outlined to get an official letter of comment approved by Council.  Meanwhile other groups also felt impacted by this and worked up their own letter of comment.  The GODORT/COL version got waylaid somehow(?), the other groups’ version did not get approved by Council. (Then the other groups’ comments went to GPO under ALA header anyway?)
Result: everyone involved felt betrayed, angry, and/or disillusioned.  COL chair, Camila Alire, requested a meeting to discuss this and how to improve the internal process for getting to decisions.

I think this meeting is an experiment on getting involved, affected parties to sit down and get the affected groups’ ideas on how the process could be improved.  My impression is that people who have hit the rough spots in a process often see ways processes can be improved.

I’ll post a summary of the meeting later today…
(Funny, the twitter reflex of posting after every sentence or so is very hard to break.)

Hooboy, Twitter has spoilt me

Now I’ll work on >140 character posts 🙂
Follow me on Twitter