SLA 2005 Conference Blog: Blogger get-together

Amy Disch posted this on the SLA Conference Blog:

Sunday afternoon my favorite blogger j and I are getting together and we'd love it if others would join us.

We'll be meeting at C'est What, 67 Front Street East, at 3:30.

Hope to see you there!

Internet Connections

I just noticed the PAM hospitality suite will have connections. That's nice. My hotel does not have WiFi and the long-distance/roaming charges would have been a hassle. This should be a comfortable setting to post from.

Toronto Weather

Another good site for Toronto weather info is The Weather Network, the Canadian equivalent of The Weather Channel in the States. The Toronto weather link is here. The long term forecast suggests the weekend will be 24-25C (~75F), with thundershows, meaning it will be quite muggy as well.

Thanks to Sara for the kind words.

Event Classified as What?

Just read at the bottom of the SLA conf planner page this statement:

This show is a trade event and not open to the public. No one under 18 will be admitted (including infants).

Whew! Glad for someone to finally in public equate SLA annual meeting with a trade show. I need to update myself. Here I thought I was attending something which fosters professional development and information exchange.

What exactly is the policy on attendance of accompanying children?

CA intro

Hi Colleagues:

Sara T. here, now with "LA hair" (as my Illinois friends call it!).

Happy to be back involved with PAM (after an engineering hiatus!), and to have helped with the concept for this blog, and hope to do a fair amount of useful posting at the conference, though unfortunately I am only there through Tuesday.

Thanks to Randy R. for posting here, and for PodBayDoor which helped get me interested in blogs.
My own experiment is here: http://sarat_la.blogs.com/
I may take it down this summer due to lack of time.

See you all soon!
Sara
====================
Sara R. Tompson, MS
Science & Engineering Team Leader
Information Services Division
University of Southern California
Science & Engineering Library
SSL-304,MC 0481
Los Angeles, CA 90089-0481
sarat{at}usc {dot} edu
http://isd.usc.edu/~sarat/
=====================
Aviation, this young modern giant, exemplifies the possible
relationships of women with the creations of science."
- Amelia Earhart, Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana, 1935.
Update: edited by ckp to remove clickable e-mail and phone numbers.

A word of warning for Sunday

A word of warning for those of you needing to take public transit to the conference. In Toronto the Good, subways only get started at 9am on Sundays. Also, many bus routes that run the rest of the week don't run on Sundays. You can check those schedules here.

CS Roundtable Final Agenda

Here's the final agenda for the Computer Science Roundtable at the SLA Annual Conference in Toronto. It's Monday June 6 from 11:30am to 1:00pm.

1. Introductions
   
2. IEEE Announcement
   
3. The incredible shrinking Computer Science Department: the effect of declining enrollments on collections and services
   
4. Information Literacy Instruction for Computer Science students: is it needed, how to convince faculty and students of its value
   
5. Open Access, Google and CS scholars’ information seeking behavior
   
6. Safari and other technology ebook packages
   
7. Lecture Notes in CS: print or online only?
   

I would be very grateful if someone could volunteer to help me take notes. You can contact me at jdupuis at yorku.ca.

The Weather

Canadians are obsessed by the weather. Perhaps it's because we so often experience all four seasons in one day. In any case, the weather in Toronto at the beginning of June should be pretty good (mostly just spring and summer), with highs in the low 20's. Celcius that is. Fahrenheit, that's low 70's.

The Environment Canada page for Toronto is here. You can also just type"weather toronto" in Google. To get the weather delivered to your desktop via RSS, rssweather is fun as is BlogLines' new weather feed. Once you're actually in Toronto, the best place to get up-to-the-minute weather updates on tv is CablePulse 24 on channel -- you guessed it -- 24. More normals, averages and extremes than you can shake a stick at here.

Available methods expand

One sees in this way the feasibilty of using a small mobile device and cellular network to produce quick postings--usually short of course.

An introduction

My name is Carol Hutchins. I head the Courant Institute of Math Sciences library at New York University, and have been doing that since 1992. Before that, I worked at Indiana University in Bloomington, and even before that at Univ of New Mexico. I studied mathematics and German literature (odd dual major) at the Univ of Texas, and went to grad library school at UC Berkeley.

I have no idea whether I will be able to do much posting during the conference itself, unless Wi-Fi is more available than I imagine at this point. Use of a mobile device such as blackberry might be what I'd choose to do. RIM is a Canadian company after all!!

I will be making a brief presentation during the Math Roundtable, which in my best hope will precipitate some thoughful discussion.

Blogger I am not, unless one would wish to regard PAMnet as a group blog.

While I look forward to visiting Toronto, I will leave the meeting a bit early this year, as I am going on to Joint conf on digital libraries in Denver.

Third Canadian Introduction

Greetings from Edmonton. My name is Randy Reichardt, I am Information Services Librarian (Engineering) at the Science & Technology Library, University of Alberta, and have worked here since the dawn of civilization 1983. In a previous subject liaison life, I was responsible for mathematics and statistics. Since 2000, I have worked with chemical and materials engineering, mechanical engineering, nanotechnology, engineering management, and related fields.

I publish two blogs, one personal, and the other being STLQ (SciTech Library Question). I will be moderating the Standards Roundtable at SLA on Monday, June 6th, 1130-1300 hrs. I will also be up to my eyeballs in Engineering Division mtgs, assorted breakfasts, and various social events. My hotel is the Holiday Inn on King, which charges for 'net access in rooms, but I don't know what the cost is - no doubt a stiff one. (Oops, no it doesn't, either. I just called the hotel, and they said the web site is incorrect, they used to charge for 'net access in rooms, but now it's free!)

Unlike Catherine's and John's, STLQ is not one of the "Blogs of Note" listed on the SLA Conference Blog. I can report, however, that I have recovered from the initial shock and subsequent pain of being excluded, although I suspect I could be scarred for life as a result. Hope to meet many of you at the conference.

Introduction

Hi everyone. I'm John Dupuis, Acting Head of the Steacie Science & Engineering Library at York University in Toronto. I do liaison and collections here at York in math, stats, computer science, information technology, engineering and history of science. Up until recently I also did physics and astronomy, but I've temporarily given up those areas while I'm acting head. My blog is Confessions of a Science Librarian. My own background is in computer science, which has come to influence CoaSL more and more over time.

At the conference, I'll be moderating the Computer Science Roundtable on Monday at 11:30. I'll be posting the final agenda here shortly. Tragically, the RT is opposite the PAM/Chemistry/SciTech Poster session, the session on Who Owns Scientific Knowledge, a session on Blogging & RSS and the Standards Roundtable. I'm also part of the Hospitality Committee, so I expect to spend a lot of time in the PAM suite.

As for blogging at the conference, I expect to do much of my blogging in the suite or perhaps even when I get home in the evening. I hope to manage a least a post or two per day. My blog is also one of the "Blogs of Note" on the official SLA Conference Blog, which was a pleasant surprise but which also means I should probably post there a couple of times too. I'm not sure how I'll balance posting in the two, but we'll see.

Introduction

I'll continue the introduction thread, started by Christina.

I'm David Bigwood of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston Texas. I'm also a member of the Committee on Cataloging, so I'll be running between them and PAM. I am the person responsible for Catalogablog a weblog on cataloging. I'm also scheduled to give a short talk on weblogs sometime at the conference, I've yet to check my schedule. If you would like a preview, the sites I am likely to mention are at FURL

I noticed I don't have WiFi in the hotel, and my ISP doesn't have an 800 number, so my posts from the conference may be few.

Introductions all?

Hi All-
I just wanted to introduce myself and welcome you all to the blog again.

I'm a librarian at a non-profit, university-affiliated research laboratory in Maryland (and of course, all views are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer). I have an undergrad in physics which comes in handy on an almost daily basis. I also do plenty of CS, astro, and math searching.

I have a pretty busy schedule planned. I have a whole list of questions to ask various vendors and a list of sessions to attend. You might see me running by so stop me and say Hi! -- Christina

PAM Blog

Greetings from Canada, I've accepted Christina's invitation to join the PAM Division Blog. See you in Toronto in June. - Randy