ALA Marginalia

In your ALA experience, you may periodically hear someone reference something called “iMIS,” and most likely they won’t define it. You can even look on the official list of ALA Acronyms and not find it listed there, mainly because it’s not a unit of the organization. What, then, is it?

iMIS is a brand name like Coke, Pepsi, or Mountain Dew. It refers to a specific company’s “association management” software. Basically, iMIS is our membership database, and it runs the day-to-day transactions of the Association. It’s where we track when you joined ALA, your contact information, what committees you are serving on, if you’re registered to attend our next conference, when your dues are up for renewal, what journals you’re subscribed to, and much, much more. Your membership ID number is actually your iMIS number, and that’s how we track your interactions with us.

iMIS itself isn’t the database (that’s Microsoft SQL Server). Instead, iMIS is the interface our staff uses to manage all of the information in the myriad of membership tables in MS SQL. It lets us do things like update your data, run reports, track donations, see who is registered for our conferences, and more. It lets you (through the website) update your data, set your ballot preferences, set your communications preferences, and more. We even use it to track transactions with non-member customers (for example, non-members who purchase items from our store), invoice companies for advertising with us, and manage booth sales on our exhibit floors.

The upside of using special association management software is that we don’t have to build all of these pieces from scratch, especially the interface that pulls it all together. The downside is that we can’t always make the kinds of changes we want to the software without it requiring customization (which then requires careful attention when we install iMIS upgrades).

Here’s another fun fact I just recently learned: because ALA offers 30+ types of membership and there are multiple divisions and round tables, we have more than 900 pricing rules in iMIS. Yep, you read that right - 900. I was shocked by that number when I first heard it, but then learned that these are potential permutations of membership.

For example, you can be a student member of ACRL and RUSA and join a ”section” in each, which will put you at one price for membership. Or, you could be a regular member and join ALCTS and one of its sections, which would be a different price. Or you can just be a member and not join a division or round table, which is yet another price. Which gets you up to 900 pretty quickly. And in fact, John Chrastka, our Director of Membership Development, is always trying to add more types of membership to make it easier for folks to join at the level that works for them.

We’ve tried to remove all of the references to your “iMIS” number on the website, because it has no meaning to non-staff users, but in case we missed one, your iMIS number is your membership ID number. And if someone on staff tells you they’re looking up your record in iMIS, now you’ll know what they mean.

It’s not too early to start thinking about next year’s Annual Conference–especially if you’re seeking some travel assistanceThousands of dollars in travel awards are available to ALA members (and interested professionals) through the generosity of vendors and other benefactors. For the most part, the deadline for applying for these travel grants is December 1, 2007. While it seems early, acting now can mean a free ticket, registration and even a per-diem. Check out the requirements for these grants … and apply! Or, if you are a supervisor and you know your travel funds won’t go as far as you’d like, nominate someone! (All URLs were checked prior to posting.)

EBSCO Sponsorship
This annual award consisting of $1,000 for actual reimbursed expenses is designed to allow librarians to attend the ALA’s Annual Conference. Requires writing an essay. Donated by EBSCO Subscription Services. Deadline: December 1st.

Penguin Young Readers Group Award
These awards, made possible by an annual gift from the Penguin Young Readers Group, are administered by a committee of the ALSC. They enable four children’s librarians to attend the ALA’s Annual Conference. Four librarians working directly with children in elementary, middle schools or public libraries will each receive $600. Deadline: December 3, 2007.

Thomson Financial Student Travel Award (BRASS)
$1,000 cash award given to a student enrolled in an ALA accredited master’s degree program to attend the ALA Annual Conference and a one-year membership in the Business Reference and Services Section (BRASS) of the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA). The applicant should have demonstrated interest in a career as a business reference librarian, the award is administered by RUSA. Deadline: December 1.

Dun & Bradstreet Public Librarian Support Award
Annual award of $1,000 to support the attendance at Annual Conference of a public librarian who has performed outstanding business reference service and who requires financial assistance to attend the ALA Annual Conference, presented by the Business Reference and Services Section (BRASS) of the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA). Deadline: December 1.

SAGE Support Staff Travel Grant
Library Support Staff Travel Grants (six to be awarded) make it possible for library support staff to attend the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference. The travel grants cover the expense of attending the conference, including airfare, three nights’ lodging, and conference registration; up to $1,000 for each recipient. Deadline: December 1.

First Step Award
A Wiley Professional Development GrantThis Wiley Professional Development Grant is intended to provide librarians new to the serials field with the opportunity to broaden their perspective and to encourage professional development in ALA Conference and participation in Serials Section activities. The $1,500, donated by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., cash award is applicable toward round trip transportation, lodging, registration fees, etc. Eligible applicants may apply more than once. Deadline: December 1.

The Demco New Leaders Travel Grant
The purpose of these grants is to enhance the professional development and improve the expertise of public librarians new to the field by making possible their attendance at major professional development activities.This grant has been established to enable PLA Members new to the profession and who have not had the opportunity to attend a major PLA Continuing Education Event in the last five years to do so.Eligible events include PLA Preconferences, held in conjunction with ALA Annual Conferences. A travel grant of up to $1,500 per applicant for a total not to exceed $5,000 per year and a plaque. Deadline: December 3, 2007; online submission.

3M/NMRT Professional Development Grant Application
The purpose of the 3M/NMRT Professional Development Grant is to encourage professional development and participation by new ALA members in national ALA and New Members Round Table activities. Applicants must be personal ALA/NMRT members who are working within the territorial United States. The grant will help finance attendance at the ALA Annual Conference and covers round trip airfare, lodging, conference registration fees and some incidental expenses. Deadline: December 15, 2007.

AASL Frances Henne Award
Sponsored by Greenwood Publishing Group, the $1,250 award recognizes a school library media specialist with five years or less experience who demonstrates leadership qualities with students, teachers and administrators, to attend an AASL conference or ALA Annual Conference for the first time. Applicants must be AASL personal members. The application deadline is February 1, 2008; mailed applications only.

ACRL/DLS Haworth Press Distance Learning Librarian Conference Sponsorship Award
This conference sponsorship award honors any individual ACRL member working in the field of, or contributing to the success of distance learning librarianship or related library service in higher education. An Award of $1,200 to help defray the costs of travel to and participation in the ALA Annual Meeting and a citation plaque sponsored by Haworth Press is offered. Application deadline is Dec. 7, 2007.

FAFLRT Adelaide del Frate Conference Sponsorship Award
The Conference Sponsorship Award is given to a library school student who has an interest in working in a Federal Library. The student will receive an award of $1,000 for annual conference registration fee, transportation, and other expenses related to attendance at the next ALA Annual Meeting. Deadline: April (? - website not updated)

ALTA/GALE Outstanding Trustee Conference Grant
The ALTA/Gale Outstanding Trustee Conference Grant enables public library trustees to attend the ALA Annual Conference. A grant of $750 each is warded annually to two public library trustees who have demonstrated qualitative interests and efforts in supportive service of the local public library. Contact ALTA office for deadlines.

Baker and Taylor/YALSA Conference Grants
This grant is funded by the Baker and Taylor Company. The two grants of $1,000 each are awarded to librarians who work directly with young adults in a public or school library to enable them to attend the Annual Conference for the first time. Applications must be received in the YALSA office by December 1.

Diana V. Braddom FRFDS Scholarship
The goals of the scholarship program are to offer librarians and/or staff members from all types of libraries an opportunity to learn new fundraising skills enabling them to increase funding to their libraries from public, private and corporate sources. Scholarship amount will be a $1,000 stipend towards attending the LAMA Fundraising and Financial Development Section programs at the annual ALA conference. Requires essay; deadline: December 1.

LAMA/YBP Student Writing and Development Award
The LAMA/YBP Student Writing and Development Award is given to honor the best article on a topic in the area of library administration and management written by a student enrolled in a library and information studies graduate program. The purpose of this award is to enhance the professional development of students of library and information studies through publication of the winning article in Library Administration & Management, the LAMA magazine, and enabling the award recipient to attend the ALA Annual Conference. The winning article will be published in the fall issue of Library Administration & Management. The award recipient will also receive a travel grant of up to $1,000, funded by YBP, Inc., to be used to attend the ALA Annual Conference, where he/she will be recognized at the LAMA President’s Program, the first meeting of the LAMA Board of Directors, and have the opportunity to attend other conference programs. Deadline for submitting 4-6,000 word paper is March 1.–Karen and John

Banned Books Week is still five days away, but Iowa State University is getting a jump on things with its Banned Books Jeopardy game. To be played tonight, “This is a game pitting prominent local panelists with literary backgrounds against each other to answer questions about banned books and authors.” Have a better one? Enter it on the Map of BBW Events!

More info about Banned Books Week here (including real life events), with a list of activities sponsored by ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom taking place in virtual worlds here and OIFtube videos here.

I’ve been familiar with BBW for years, but it wasn’t until I started working at ALA that I realized it’s a collaborative event that is also sponsored by the American Booksellers Association, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Association of American Publishers, the National Association of College Stores, and endorsed by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress.

In case you ever try to send a large file to an ALA staff member via email, it won’t go through if it’s over 20MB in size, because files that large get blocked due to storage and bandwidth issues. However, there is a workaround - a special form located at http://cs.ala.org/upload/ - that lets you send up to three files at once to someone at ALA. (The form is so secret, it’s even called “untitled.”)

When you click on the “upload” button, the file(s) is uploaded to one of our servers where the staff member can then grab it. The script also emails the person to let them know that the file is there. Handy dandy.

Not there yet. Whew!

Some of you may have seen the AL Focus video Wheel of Confusion 1 or played the game at the membership pavilion at the ALA Annual Conference in Washington, D.C.

For years we’ve published the list of acronyms used in the conference program in the program book itself. With the beginning of the conference wikis, Meredith Farkas converted the list to a wiki page, now continued on the ProfessionalTips wiki. In scanning through the list, it does look like any part of the Association has its name quickly turned into an acronym–preferably one we can pronounce.

Well, I’ve been here a bit longer than Jenny … more than 20 years to be exact, but I’m on my third job at ALA. I spent the first 13-14 years working with two of our divisions. A key learning from that experience is that even ALA veterans still have questions about how things work, what various units and committees actually do, or how to bring to reality a great idea!

In my current role as ALA Librarian and Knowledge Management Specialist, I answer a lot of questions. The most common of these have been collected into the FAQ on the ALA website (http://www.ala.org/faq). Still more have been accounted for on the ProfessionalTips wiki (http://wikis.ala.org/professionaltips/) or ILoveLibraries.org

But that’s OK .. the best aphorism from a grad school classmate was: The only dumb question is the one that goes unasked.

K

Today, I’d like to highlight a couple of things about Booklist Online, one of our most popular serials, because I didn’t realize just how much it offers until I started working with them on some projects. If you haven’t looked at the website lately, you may not have noticed that there are lots of RSS (syndication) icons dotting the home page. Even though you need a subscription in order to access the 115,000+ reviews, you can get a lot of content for free in your RSS feed reader. (If you’re not familiar with RSS and feed readers, you can learn more by watching this excellent RSS in Plain English video.)

In fact, you can take advantage of more than 30 different feeds, including the Review of the Day, which changes…every day (feed URL here). Otherwise, you can visit the BO site daily to read the current review. In addition, the bi-monthly columns are available for free on the site or via an RSS feed, so you don’t need a subscription to read At Leisure with Joyce Saricks, The Back Page, Carte Blanche, He Reads, She Reads, and The Manley Arts, as well as Read-alikes and the Top 10 Lists.

Then there’s also Keir Graff’s Likely Stories blog, a fun and witty take on the publishing and reviewing industries. Keir’s writing is so insightful he should be a bonafide author. Wait, he is.

And if you’re trying to track new awards as they’re announced, this is your lucky day because you can subscribe to 21 different feeds to be notified automatically when the new ones are announced, including the Newbery and Caldecott awards. No more wondering if you’ve missed an announcement - they’ll magically appear in your feed reader.

Two final things I want to highlight. One, Booklist has been hosting an online Book Club about “authors, books, and other literary topics.” The Downers Grove (IL) Public Library is partnering with them on it, but anyone can join in the discussions, including you.

Two, because we do sell access to the meat of Booklist Online (those thousands upon thousands of reviews), we felt we needed a syndication policy for all of those feeds. I wanted to share that here not just because there are some restrictions on the content (you can’t redisplay the feed somewhere else if you’re a commercial entity without requesting permission first, you can’t keep copies of the reviews in a database), but because we tried to find a balance that others could use as a model in case they’re in a similar situation. If that’s you, feel free to steal wholesale.

Basically, though, if you’re a library (or other nonprofit or even as an individual), you are welcome to re-display these feeds on your own web pages within the terms of that syndication policy. You can do so by using a syndication site such as Feed2JS (instructions here). The link to the most current Review of the Day will always be freely available and won’t require your users to log in to the site to read it.

Some fun facts about Booklist:

• Booklist receives about 60,000 books and other media each year.
• Of those, they review about 8,000 annually.
• Nearly half of those are books for adults, about 2,500 are children’s and YA books, and the remainder are audiobooks, DVDs, and reference works (both print and online).
• Who are the reviewers of Booklist? About 35% of our reviews are written by staff writers and editors, who have extensive field experience, mostly either as librarians or writers, and about 65% are written by freelancers. Our freelance pool is made up of people with professional reviewing experience (former book reviewer or library selector, for instance) or particular subject expertise (cookery or science, for instance).

Welcome to a place where a few ALA staff members are going to share with you some of the things we know about ALA, some of the projects we’re working on, and answers to frequently asked questions. Please use the comments to ask questions, give feedback, and engage in a discussion with us.

Personally, I just recently celebrated my first anniversary at ALA in August, and pretty much every month I learn something new about the organization that helps explain why something is the way it is. Not that it’s logical or that this is why it should be that way, but just how it ended up there, and I hope to be able to share these tidbits with you here.

A little bit about me: I spend half my time in the Publishing department, helping to disseminate our content in different ways online, as well as providing advice about new strategies and directions. My biggest project this past year for Pubs was the 2007 TechSource Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium.

I spend the other half of my time in the IT department (actually, it’s called “ITTS” at ALA - Information Technology and Telecommunications Services - but I just say “IT” because it’s easier), where I provide support to the rest of organization for things like blogs, wikis, RSS, podcasting, etc. Two of my big upcoming projects for IT are revamping our Online Communities service (which you probably didn”t know existed) and implementing a social network (more on that in future posts).

As a newbie within ALA, I find it just as confusing as members (and non-members) do, so hopefully we can figure some of this out together.