News

As in past years, the DCLA chapter is working with ALA to support the advocacy efforts of librarians on Capitol Hill.  This year, the National Legislative Library Day will be Monday, April 23.  To help get ready for the event, volunteers are needed to prepare the information packets handed out to participants on Saturday morning, April 21 as well as help with welcoming attendees and guests at the evening reception on Monday, April 23.

The Saturday activity starts at 9am with a continental breakfast and usually last til around noon.  We need 7-8 volunteers for the activity which takes place at the ALA Washington office at 1615 New Hampshire Ave. , NW just about 3-4 blocks from the Q Street exit of Dupont Circle Metro.   The time is spent helping to prepare the packets of information used by attendees for themselves and also distributed to their respective congressional representatives.

The Monday night event is usually from 5-7 and will be on Capitol Hill.  The event is a happy hour reception where the attendees get a chance to exchange stories about how their visits to the Hill went that day and also an opportunity for ALA to recognize various members of Congress who have been particularly supportive of libraries throughout the year.  We need 4-5 volunteers for this event to help direct members to the event and to sit at the reception table to greet folks and get the congressional staffers to sign the guest book as well as whatever else needs doing at the time.

I encourage any students that might be able to help with either activity to volunteer as the event is a good way to learn about the advocacy efforts of ALA to support the library profession and institutions.  All DCLA members are also encouraged to participate if you are available.

Thanks very much in advance for  your continued support  of this effort by DCLA. 

The DCLA Members' tour of the 30 Americans exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery, originally scheduled for December 16, has been postponed. We will reschedule a date in January. 

Hey Librarians, Publishing Opportunity! We invite proposals for case studies to be published in a forthcoming ALA Editions book Abandon all Fear: Assessing, Evaluating and Letting Go of Legacy Services,  an edited collection of case studies examining how librarians in all types of organizations are responding and adapting to cataclysmic budgetary and programming changes. 

While our initial proposal has three sections, we’re open to other ideas:

Section One: Public Services Case Studies

Section Two: Technical Services & Collections Case Studies

Section Three: Facilities and Systems Case Studies

We welcome proposals from librarians, library administrators, trustees, faculty or other partners both individually and as teams. The proposal should consist of an abstract of 500 words together with all author contact information. Please include in proposal the issue faced, the strategies and assessments used to examine the issue and the result. Case studies should run at least ten double-spaced pages.

Please send proposals to editors Mary Evangeliste, owner of the consulting collaborative Fearless Future (marye [at] fearless-future [dot] com) and Katherine Furlong, Director for Access and Technical Services for the libraries of Lafayette College (furlongk [at] lafayette [dot] edu).

New and returning DCLA members met Wednesday, November 16 for food, drinks, and conversation at U Street's Local 16. The weather was cold and wet, but the atmosphere inside was warm and convivial. DCLA President Megan Shiels announced some of the achievements and on-going projects of this year's Board, which include identifying a new listserv for association communication, consolidating DCLA Board documents into a cloud-based management system, and uploading recent Board minutes to the DCLA website. She also announced opportunities for all members, including positions in the New Librarians Interest Group, the Management and Leadership Development Interest Group, the Webmaster position, and more. 

The results are in and we welcome the new Board of the District of Columbia Library Association. The following members have been elected to the DCLA Board which takes their positions on July 1, 2011:

DCLA Newsletter Editor Tony Ross has released a new edition of the Capitol Librarian Newsletter. This is the first newsletter in over a year and it features a number of articles on recent Association activities.

See the newest Newsletter and all of the past editions at: http://www.dcla.org/newsletter

The District of Columbia Library Association hosted an excellent presentation and discussion this week on digital preservation and the progress that has been made over the past 10 years through the Library of Congress National Digitial Information Infrastructure Preservation Program (NDIIPP). Barrie Howard, a Project Management Professional working on the NDIIPP program presented a summary of the program to date and highlighted some of the innovative tools and resources that have been developed through the NDIIPP program.

Over 30 people attended the session, hosted by DCLA-Board Member Jessica McGilvray at the ALA Washington Offices in Dupont Circle. Attendees came from a wide variety of libraries and experiences but everyone walked away with a broad understanding of the challenges of digital preservation as well as the rewards of preserving our cultural heritage. Mr. Howard talked about a number of efforts the Library of Congress has undertaken in the name of digital preservation including the establishment of standards, the development of tools, and a variety of pilot projects including archiving the entire contents of Twitter.

This free event happened just down the street from the Computers in Libraries (CIL) Conference where 2,000 people had traveled to Washington, DC to learn from similar sessions. DCLA's program complemented the CIL event and offered the library community something we all need: a chance to learn from our peers. This event was the final event for the DCLA Emerging Technology Interest Group (ETIG) for the 2010/2011 program calendar. The ETIG was co-chaired this year by Sally Stokes and Judine Slaughter. New co-chairs are being sought for the 2011/2012 program calendar and the ETIG will begin to plan new events as early as this summer.

The next DCLA event is scheduled for Saturday, April 2, 2011. The event is a workshop about creating Sister Libraries between local libraries and libraries in communities all over the globe. Registration is now open for that event as well as for the April 29 Joint Spring Workshop. This year's Joint Spring Workshop is about Strategic Planning for Libraries. For more information about upcoming DCLA events, visit the calendar at: http://www.dcla.org/calendar

The Emerging Technologies Interest Group (ETIG) met at the Watha T. Daniel-Shaw Neighborhood Library  [http://www.dclibrary.org/watha] at 6:00 p.m. on Jan. 24, 2011. Our host, Branch Manager Eric Riley, energetically launched the evening with a demonstration of the DC Public Library’s web site, [http://www.dclibrary.org/ ]. Eric explained the Drupal content management system, and showed how staff members update the neighborhood library pages on the website by adding book reviews, news, and announcements.

Next on the program was our featured speaker, ETIG co-chair Judine Slaughter. Judine’s presentation on do-it-yourself publishing for librarians stimulated lively discussion about improving one’s writing skills. Judine recommended a variety of online tools to support the writing and publishing process.  These tools included

a publishing guide at [http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewarticle.asp?id=57071],

an online publishing manual at [http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewarticle.asp?id=57071],

tips for writing book reviews at [http://midwestbookreview.com/revinfo.htm],

and a commercial source for inexpensive self-publishing, [http://www.lulu.com].

A special thanks to Pat Pasqual for inviting us to tour the Foundation Center on Tuesday, February 1, 2011. Pat showed us their excellent resources which are useful to all types of libraries --- everyone who attended came away excited about the tools they now know about.

For those who were not able to attend, here are the links to the Foundation Center sites-- everyone is encouraged  to explore! http://foundationcenter.org/ and http://grantspace.org/