The IDS Project has sent out a last call for poster session proposals for their conference taking place in August.  The deadline is July 20, 2010.

This a great conference and has a good turn out.  Why not show off what fabulous things you have accomplished?  Plus, this year’s session will take place on August 3 from 5-6:30, during cocktail hour.  (The room has wireless and access to power.)  What could be better than chatting with colleagues about a cool thing you’ve done while having some yummy treats?

Possible themes include:

New library services
Creative marketing
New collaborative models
Cooperative collection development
Redesigned library space
Information literacy
Outreach initiatives
Assessment
Professional development

Proposals and/or questions can be sent to:

Sonja Landes, IDS Project Coordinator, SUNY Geneseo at:

landes@geneseo.edu

SUNYLA 2010 is next week; registration is closed, but we hope to see you there. Lynne Graziadei will be representing Nylink at the SUNY Brockport meeting. While Nylink won’t have a traditional exhibit, we will have a tabletop display of some photos from our 37-year history of working with the libraries of SUNY. We’ll also have a guestbook out and would love to have a few of your memories of working with us over the years.

In the spirit of promoting terrific ideas, we’d like to recommend Thursday’s #followthereader twitter chat, which will be focused on how public libraries can increase ebook adoption. Visit the Follow the Reader blog to get a better sense of the broad questions this twitter chat is intended to address, as well as links to background info (a white paper from OverDrive and a Power Point featuring an IFLA-sponsored survey).

The Thursday, June 10 chat, scheduled from 4-5 PM ET, will feature guest Bobbi Newman, otherwise known as @librarianbyday (http://librarianbyday.net/), who is a librarian, teacher, techno geek, and video game junkie who is dedicated to helping libraries find their place in the digital age.

For directions on joining the conversation, visit Follow the Reader.

Nylink’s Annual Meeting was held Thursday, June 3 at FIT in Manhattan. We’d like to thank our wonderful presenters, our poster session authors, and our 100 attendees for making this meeting a success. Thanks also to FIT and its Library Director N. J. Wolfe, our host for the day.
As we get links to presentations from the Annual Meeting, we’ll be posting those online. If you attended, please let us know what you thought. An evaluation survey is here.

SUNY’s Conference on Instructional Technology 2010 is being held on May 28-28 at SUNY Plattsburgh.  This is SUNY’s  largest and most prominent event on instructional technology in education, providing a forum for faculty, instructional support professionals, and policymakers to present, discuss, and explore innovative avenues for integrating technology into the teaching and learning environment.

The conference is open to anyone, whether you work for SUNY or not!

There appears to be many intriguing sessions covering everything from engaging students through new technologies and exploring the impact of i-pod touch and smart phones on music.

Sounds like a great opportunity to get out of the office, explore and discover new instructional technologies and chat with colleagues.

In April Nylink staffers Meredith Case, Deidre Dowling, and Jim Mancuso conducted three focus groups on the topic of Integrated Library Systems. The events, which took place in Colonie, Liverpool and Clarence, were attended by librarians from a variety of institutions who offered their thoughts, ideas and experiences with ILSs. Discussions surrounded questions such as, “What would you include in your dream ILS?” and “What do you expect from a good ILS vendor?” Trends noted included having searching like Google, the desire for ILS support techs to really “know” libraries, and for web-based clients. The conversations were honest, open, and thoughtful. And needless to say very informative! We want to thank all the librarians who participated and made each focus group flow so well. We are currently analyzing the information and expect a report to be generated by the end of May 2010.

The future of information services and mobile technology is tightly intertwined. That’s why OCLC and Library Journal have come together to present a free online symposium on the future of mobile on Thursday, May 20 from 1-4 pm ET.

• How will better connection speeds affect services and functions?
• What will the rise of the smartphone mean to personal computing?
• How will upcoming mobile trends impact your library, your users, and our culture?

Join our panel of mobile industry experts and librarians and find out. There’s no travel, no cost. Just insight.

Register for the OCLC/Library Journal Online Symposium about mobile today at www.oclc.org/innovation

From Library Journal: Libraries in NYC face budget cuts of $82 million dollars over the next two years, and librarians rallied during National Library Week to restore funding to Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed FY2011 budget.  For Queens Library, the cuts would mean that some community libraries would only be open two days a week, and layoffs of 350 employees (38% of the workforce) would be necessary. Read more about the proposed cuts and advocacy for NYC libraries here:

Libraries in NYC Protest Proposed Massive Budget Cuts – 4/20/2010 – Library Journal.

At the 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair, Google gave more details about the previously announced Google Editions, a hosted electronic bookstore for a selection of in-print books which will be provided by Google’s publishing partners.

An upcoming panel at Publisher’s Weekly Think Future discussion series, THE BOOK ON GOOGLE: Is the Future of Publishing in the Cloud?, features Abe Murray, Product Manager, Google Books; Chris Palma, Strategic Partner Development, Google; Abe Murray, Product Manager, Google Books; Evan Schnittman, Oxford University Press; and Richard Curtis, Richard Curtis Associates, E-Reads.

The Google settlement may have grabbed the headlines last summer, but it is a small piece of the company’s big plans for digital books. This summer, Google will enter the e-book market with an innovative, e-book venture dubbed Google Editions—a cloud-based platform the company says operates under a simple mantra: buy anywhere, read anywhere.

DATE: Tuesday, May 4, 2010 | TIME: 8:30-9AM (Registration); 9-10:30 AM (Panel)
LOCATION: Random House, Louis L’Amour Room (14th fl), 1745 Broadway (at 55th Street), New York, NY 10022

For more information, see the Publisher’s Weekly website.

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez covers the Empire State Book Festival, making note of observations at This Book is Overdue author Marilyn Johnson’s session, which featured noted librarians Kathryn Shaughnessy, Peter Chase, and David Smith.

The role of libraries in discoverability, as the number of books published rises every year, is also discussed.

The Future of the Book Might be in Librarians’ Hands – 2010-04-13 12:57:21 | Publishers Weekly.