Attending
Andy Burkhardt, Andy Giesler, Becky Yoose, Brett Rohlwing, Catherine Phan, Dave Zwicky, David Drexler, Jill Peters Dagel, Katie Karnish, Laura Rizzo, Laura Schmidli, Laura Wynholds, Lisa Berrones, Sarah Roberts, York Lin, and special guest star Barbara Arnold.
Introductions
We began with people introductions, and a brief introduction to the group's history (some examples of previous activities) and purpose (to help its members learn more about IT in LIS, and to share the knowledge with others).
Note: if you haven't already, consider joining the Facebook group "SLIS LITA".
Brainstorming
Next we discussed ideas for activities. In addition to the ones listed on the Agenda Page, people offered the following:
- Technology Incubator. Create a sandbox where people can play: one or more machines where people can try out technologies they may not be familiar with, without fear of hurting anything. Greg Putnam, our building IT coordinator, would be a good person to work with.
- SLA Website. A group within the SLA needs help rearranging their website. This would be a good opportunity for apprentice learning, pairing a LITA person who's familiar with web stuff, and another LITA person who isn't yet familiar with it. One of the people should be an SLA member.
- SLIS Alumni Association Website. Same as above (except for the SLA member part).
- Library IT News Feed. There was some interest in this as an activity that anyone on LITA could use to help themselves and others to learn. Other possible resources: Gary Price and Steve Abrams, who have very useful websites.
- Resources on SLIS Website. Provide a list of tech resources and links on the SLIS website, either through the LITA page or directly on SLIS's site somewhere (Deb Shapiro would be our contact in that case).
- Visiting Speaker. Jessica Baumgart, a SLIS alum, is coming to Milwaukee to speak as ASIS&T, and would love an excuse to visit Madison. A possibly joint event with SLA-SC? Challenge: the ALA accreditation group will be here that same week, and we need to schedule around their activities.
- Tech Primer. Some sort of point-of-entry for non-geeks, an overview of relevant technologies, in online or meeting form (or both?).
- Brownbag Lunch.Two years ago, LITA held a lunch where LITA members and LITA alumns presented brief presentations on several LIS-related technologies similar to the preceding point).
- Just for Fun. We talked about ideas for non-tech activities. Other groups have done a prom, picnics, game nights, pot lucks, pub crawls, helping the Jailhouse LIbrary Group or Allied Drive group, tours of local libraries, etc.
Next Steps
A smaller Activities group will triage the suggestions and pick some of the most promising ones. Then we'll ask for small groups of LITA members to volunteer to organize each of them.
Andy Giesler, Dave Zwicky, David Drexler, and Sarah Robert volunteered be on the Activities group.
Followups for You!
- If you have more ideas, please mail them to Andy Giesler ASAP.
- If you'd like to join the core group, please let Andy know, we'd be glad to have your help. Even if you're not that familiar with technology, we could definitely use your ideas and perspective.