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IT Systems Administrator Senior – Library Services, Multnomah County, Portland, OR Visit the Core Jobs Site for additional job openings and information on submitting your own job posting.
Core ForumOctober 7-9, 2021 in Baltimore, Maryland —– Opening Keynote Presenter Announced: Nikole Hannah-Jones The 1619 Project, an ongoing journalism project conceived by Nikole Hannah-Jones and published by the New York Times Magazine, commemorates the 400th anniversary of the date the first enslaved Africans were brought to the American colonies. The initiative aims to “reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.” The school curriculum linked to the New York Times’s 1619 Project is the target of state censorship on the grounds that its critical reframing is a “misrepresentation” of American history. As a result, five states are attempting to bar its use in classrooms. In addition to developing the 1619 Project, Hannah-Jones has written extensively about school resegregation across the country and examined the decades-long failure of the federal government to enforce the landmark 1968…Continue Reading
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In the April Core E-Forum, participants were asked to discuss Communities of Practice (CoP), consider how a CoP could/should function, and how it might be useful to apply at organizations with distributed personnel. While many participants had little experience with CoPs prior to the e-forum, a wide variety of aspects of CoPs were discussed, including membership, organizational structure, and motivation for forming a CoP. These discussions also identified key areas for continued investigation, including how CoPs differ from other working or interest groups, the decision-making power of CoPs, and the balance between formality and flexibility in creating and sustaining the community. In discussing CoP membership, e-forum participants agreed that enthusiastic support is essential to ensure the long-term success of the community. Some participants observed that engagement suffers when members are inactive or roles are unclear; similarly, respondents also noted that simply providing a shared time, location, and topic of shared…Continue Reading
This article is from our guest blog contributor, Julia A. Lovett, Associate Professor, Digital Initiatives Librarian, University of Rhode Island Libraries This post has two purposes: firstly, to show how you can use Open Refine to easily edit a spreadsheet and transform data from Excel (tab-delimited) format to XML; secondly, and more specifically, to show how I used this method to add Crossref DOIs to an IR (institutional repository) collection. In this case, the IR platform is Digital Commons and the collection is dissertations and theses. For some background, after the University of Rhode Island Libraries joined Crossref, I wanted to create new DOIs for our ETD (electronic theses and dissertations) collections on the IR, DigitalCommons@URI. I was familiar with creating DOI’s one by one using the Crossref web deposit form, where you can enter your new DOI along with its associated metadata and URL. But with thousands of ETD’s,…Continue Reading
The March 2021 issue of Information Technology and Libraries (ITAL) was published on March 15. Two journals published by ALA’s Core division, Information Technology and Libraries (ITAL) and Library Leadership and Management (LL&M), invite applications for peer reviewers. Serving as a reviewer is a great opportunity for individuals from all types of libraries and with a wide variety of experience to contribute to scholarship within our chosen profession. See “Reviewers Wanted,” the Letter from the Editor for this issue. Editorial Board Member Brady Lund asks and answers a particularly intriguing question facing libraries in this quarter’s Editorial Board Thoughts column, “The Fourth Industrial Revolution: Does It Pose an Existential Threat to Libraries?” We have two “Public Libraries Leading the Way” columns this issue, both focused on technological adaptations as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the first one, We Can Do It for Free! Using Freeware for Online Patron…Continue Reading
Core’s Preservation Outreach Committee has updated its resource page on Handling Library Materials and Collections During a Pandemic, with an emphasis on including resources that will be regularly updated and speak directly to COVID-19 research and guidance as it impacts handling library collections. Initially published in March 2020, this resource page was created early in the pandemic when most available resources were based on general flu and pandemic research. It also included articles published by library and cultural heritage organizations as well as initial CDC recommendations. Now, more than a year after the start of the pandemic, a great deal of research has been conducted on SARS-CoV-2 and its impact on safely handling collections, and the Preservation Outreach Committee’s guidance has changed to reflect this. The new guidance highlights the essential research of the REALM Project (Reopening Archives Libraries and Museums), a joint project from the Institute of Museum and…Continue Reading
The two day e-forum “Changes in Library Organization” which took place on March 2-3, 2021 had 80 posts from 13 participants, representing a range of institutions: public, academic, and vendor. Our discussions included reasons why libraries needed to change their organizational structure, barriers to change and how to overcome them, communication techniques, as well as discussing specific organizational structure models and positions. The resources shared by the two co-hosts and participants can be found at the end of this summary. We explored some of the primary reasons organizations needed to change, such as retirements, new leadership, new systems, and new priorities. There were a variety of responses with a couple of common themes emerging with organizational change being driven by COVID-19 changes and by library staff changes (retirements, new leadership/administration). Additional reasons were system migrations and other library work changes. One library that reorganized ~3 years ago expressed a desire…Continue Reading
The Information Technology and Libraries (ITAL) and Library Leadership and Management (LL&M) journals invite applications for peer reviewers. This is an exciting opportunity for individuals from all types of libraries and with a wide variety of experience to contribute to scholarship within the profession. We are seeking the broadest pool of reviewers possible. Reviewer responsibilities for both journals are to have an interest/experience with the journal’s topics, as described below. Reviewers should expect to review 2-4 articles a year and should provide thoughtful and actionable comments to authors and the editor. Reviewers will work with the editor, associate editor, and/or editorial board of the corresponding journal. See the job description for ITAL reviewers for more details about that role. We welcome applications from individuals at libraries of all types, levels of experience, locations, perspectives, and voices, especially those from underrepresented groups. Reviewers will be selected to maximize the diversity of…Continue Reading
Are you interested in volunteering with the Core Access and Equity Section? New committees are forming now! Log in to the ALA website to see the Core Committee Volunteer Form. To learn more about the work of the Section and its committees, see the Section homepage. You can also join the Section’s ALA Connect Community via the homepage. Section leaders will begin making appointments now for terms ending both this year and next, so you do not need to make the usual 2-year commitment in order to check out one of our new committees. And if you’re interested in volunteering with a different Core Section, please continue to check the Core Sections page on our website. New Section committees are coming online every day as we continue to ramp up ALA’s newest division. If you have questions, please contact the Core staff at core@ala.org.
Are you interested in volunteering with the Core Metadata and Collections Section? New committees are forming now! Log in to the ALA website to see the Core Committee Volunteer Form. To learn more about the work of the Metadata and Collections Section and its committees, see the Section homepage. You can also join the Section’s ALA Connect Community via the homepage. Section leaders will begin making appointments now for terms ending both this year and next, so you do not need to make the usual 2-year commitment in order to check out one of our new committees. And if you’re interested in volunteering with a different Core Section, please continue to check the Core Sections page on our website. New Section committees are coming online every day as we continue to ramp up ALA’s newest division. If you have questions, please contact the Core staff at core@ala.org.
