Monthly Archives: August 2010

Getting started with cloud computing: A LITA guide

Dear Librarian Colleagues:

Consider writing a chapter for the forthcoming book, “Getting started with cloud computing: A LITA guide”.

Edward Corrado and Heather Moulaison, editors, are looking for 8-12 page (double spaced standard font) chapters on either:

1. Applications and services used by librarians in the cloud and how they might be used in a variety of libraries, including information on:

a. The tool itself (what it does, why it could be of use to libraries)
b. Why librarians should know about this application or service

2. Descriptions of best practices/ok practices/not good practices in using cloud services, including information on:

a. The background to the project: Describe your library, your collection, your resources, or any other element that will be necessary to understand what you did and why
b. The project: Describe what you did, why you did it, who did what, and how, being sure to mention any special funding you needed or resources you used
c. The assessment: How have you assessed your project and what are the results of that assessment

Possible topics: Using Amazon S3 for backups/storage, Hosting Websites, blogs, wikis, etc., in the Cloud, Hosting Library Subject Guides in the Cloud, Using Google Docs and other Google Applications, etc.

Examples can focus on all kinds of libraries, including public, special, museum, academic, etc.

Projected deadline for chapter: Nov. 1, 2010.

Authors will receive a copy of the book as compensation.

If you are interested in submitting an idea for consideration, please send a rough outline of your proposed chapter to ecorrado@ecorrado.us before Sept. 15, 2010. Clearly indicate in your email your name, contact information, and any other information the editors should take into consideration about the context of your proposal.

— 
Edward M. Corrado
Assistant Director for Library Technology
Binghamton University Libraries P.O. Box 6012, Binghamton, NY 13902 USA
Phone: +1-607-777-4909  | Fax: +1-607-777-4848 ecorrado@binghamton.edu | http://library.binghamton.edu

Feminism in Practice Conference 2010: Reflection, Action, Change

The Women’s Center and Women’s Studies at Lehigh University
invite proposal, paper, and poster submissions for

*Feminism in Practice Conference 2010:  Reflection, Action, Change*

Saturday, November 6
Lehigh University

Keynote Speaker

*Susan J. Douglas*

/Where the Girls Are/, /The Mommy Myth/, and /Enlightened Sexism/

This one-day conference seeks to bring together professionals, academics, activists, and individuals interested in exploring how, when, and why feminism exists as a practical part of our lives.

The theme for this year underscores the necessary act of critical reflection before, during, and after we act, for without participating in both of these steps, change becomes bereft of reason.  In an American context that pundits, academics, and social critics have defined as seriously lacking “critical thought,” the 2010 Conference will offer all attendees the opportunity to explore and engage in these notions of loss of critical inquiry.

We invite submissions for roundtable or panel discussions, research and/or poster presentations, and scholarly papers.  Submissions for this conference may be practically, creatively, or theoretically based.

Suggested topics may include

�         Feminism and Politics/Political Feminism

�         Activism

�         Community organizing

�         Critical reflection

�         Blogs

�         Feminism and Pedagogy

�         Mothering and parenting

�         Women in STEM Fields

�         Feminism and higher education

�         Non-profits work

Please submit proposals of no more than 750 words to infemcon@lehigh.edu by September 10, 2010.  Other inquiries may be directed to Rita Jones (rmj207@lehigh.edu) or Jackie Krasas (jkr205@lehigh.edu).

Registration fee is $10, which includes pre-conference hors d’oeuvres (Friday, November 5) and breakfast and lunch during the conference.

Best,
Rita Jones

— 
Rita M. Jones, Ph. D.
Director
Women’s Center
Lehigh University
29 Trembley Drive
UC C207
Bethlehem PA 18015

Evaluating Web Search Engines

Overview

The aim of this special issue is to explore the importance and the many possibilities of evaluating Web search engines. This includes a wide spectrum of topics, but we are especially interested in papers dealing with new approaches to search engine evaluation, as well as papers describing thoroughly conducted empirical studies.

A Web search is clearly the foremost method for finding information today. According to ComScore, more than 130 billion search queries were posed to search engines in a single month in 2009. This explains why search engine research is not only of interest to a community working on improving them, but also to a society whose members rely heavily on search engines. In contrast to the importance of search engines, there are still relatively few studies dealing with their quality. The question is how search engines can be best evaluated considering their wide use and the typical user behaviour towards them.

Search engines are not only used for general-purpose queries, but in many different contexts. The spectrum of queries ranges from trivial to highly specific; the usage scenarios range from private to professional. Therefore, evaluations should not only focus on the general user, but on certain user groups and/or search topics.

While there are only a few major search engines determined to cover the whole of the web, there are specialized engines focussing on certain parts of the web (e.g., language areas or individual topics). However, it remains unclear how much these add to the quality of Web search.

While the quality of results is surely the most important factor when evaluating search engines, there are other areas of interest as well. The quality of a search engine’s index is important to determine whether this engine would be suitable to produce relevant results. For the professional searcher, the quality of the search features also is important. Mal-functioning search features can have a negative effect on the results for less sophisticated queries. Last, but not least, the usability of search engines must be considered in evaluations. Usability is a major factor for users in deciding which search engine to use.

Topics of interest may focus on but are not restricted to:

•       Retrieval effectiveness
•       Reliability of search results
•       Language handling
•       Index sizes and overlap comparisons
•       Query log analysis
•       User behaviour
•       Results presentation
•       User surveys
•       User guidance in the search process
•       Ability of search engines to deal with different query types
•       Index and/or results freshness
•       Diversity of results
•       Search features comparison
•       Influence of search engine optimization (SEO) on results quality

Submissions
Papers must spell out the implications of the findings for online information (these should be discussed in the introduction, discussion and conclusion sections of your paper).

In general only research-based submissions will be considered. Such submissions may be any type of research, including technical or conceptual. Viewpoints, literature reviews or general reviews are generally not acceptable.

Papers should ideally be 4000 to 6000 words in length and references and citations should be in our journal style. Please see our author guidelines at http://info.emeraldinsight.com/products/journals/author_guidelines.htm?id=oir for more details and submission instructions. Following these guidelines closely will avoid delay in your paper being assessed and improve your chances for acceptance. Please ensure that you submit your paper under the special issue rather than the regular journal issue.

Important dates

Deadline for authors to submit papers: 15 September 2010
Notice of review results: 15 December 2010
Revisions due: 31 January 2011
Author notification: 15 February  2010

About the journal
Online Information Review is a refereed, ISI-ranked journal devoted to research in the broad field of online information, including both transactional and transformational aspects, in the academic, corporate, government, scientific and commercial contexts. It addresses issues related to online resources, systems and services, information quality, content and evaluation, with a particular focus on online and digital information creation, storage, retrieval and applications (including social, political and ethical aspects).
Journal information page: http://info.emeraldinsight.com/products/journals/journals.htm?id=oir

Contact

Prof Dirk Lewandowski
Hamburg University of Applied Sciences
Department Information
Berliner Tor 5
D – 20099 Hamburg
Germany

E-Mail: dirk.lewandowski@haw-hamburg.de
Website: http://www.bui.haw-hamburg.de/lewandowski.html

Canadian Library Association (CLA) National Conference

The 66th Canadian Library Association (CLA) National Conference and Trade Show will be held in Halifax from Wednesday, May 25 to Saturday, May 28, 2011.

CLA is pleased to invite librarians and other interested parties to propose program submissions for this national event.

Proposals are being solicited on any topic relevant to the Canadian library and information professional community. The conference has no set theme, and there are no defined subject streams – proposals on all topics of professional interest will be considered. The Program Committee would like to encourage proposals which express innovative and creative ways for presenting information to delegates.

Sessions may be presented in any format: panels of speakers, single speakers, round-table discussions, debates, “un-conference” session, interviews – let your imagination guide you! The only restriction is time: you may request either a 60 minute or 90 minute slot in the schedule.

Poster presentations are also being solicited. These presentations take the form of display boards, with presenters available for one-to-one discussion with delegates at a specified time. Again, any topic of broad interest to the library and information profession will be considered.

All proposals will be reviewed by the CLA Conference Program Committee. The submission deadline is October 1, 2010.

Please visit the conference website for more information: http://www.cla.ca/conference/2011/

The Power of Marginal Spaces in the Works of Carmen Martín Gaite

NeMLA Session Call for Papers:

The Power of Marginal Spaces in the Works of Carmen Mart�n Gaite

 

Deadline:

September 30, 2010

 

Organization/Area:

Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Conference (Women’s and Gender Studies)

 

Location/Date:

Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, April 7-10, 2011

 

Description:

In Carmen Mart�n Gaite’s “The Back Room,” the room emerges not merely as a source of creativity and aesthetic content, but as a challenge to Carmen, the thinly fictionalized woman writer who narrates the story.  Paradoxically, though she has been acculturated to believe in the inherent inferiority of her experiences as a woman, she needs to draw on that very experience to write well.  Actually, in order to write at all, she must reconcile the space between the sideboard that dominates her childhood play space and her grandmother’s mirror, the surface through which “[a]ll of Galicia flows,” the space that reveals to her the splintered image of herself, the debilitating wound she bears, the wound that stymies her confidence and blocks her from writing.  To find her voice, Mart�n Gaite’s Carmen learns to revel in the story which has so frequently been absent from history: the story of the culturally marginalized, the miniscule, the domestic, the perspective from “behind the curtain,” a theme which also runs through “The Spa” and “The Castle of the Three Walls,” to name only two examples.

 

How do marginal spaces empower or debilitate? How do they figure in Mart�n Gaite’s ideas about history and feminism, aesthetics and politics?  How did her ideas about marginality develop?  How do they link her to other feminist writers?  How do these ideas reposition her within a feminist canon from which she has been mostly excluded?

 

Please send abstracts (500 words) for 15 to 20 minute papers (2500 to 3000 words) to Elizabeth.Huergo@montgomerycollege.edu<mailto:Elizabeth.Huergo@montgomerycollege.edu<mailto:Elizabeth.Huergo@montgomerycollege.edu<mailto:Elizabeth.Huergo@montgomerycollege.edu>>.  Abstracts may be submitted in Spanish, but papers need to be delivered in English.  Selected panelists must be NeMLA members and registered for the conference by 30 November 2010.  Please include on the abstract your name and affiliation, e-mail address, postal address, telephone number, and A/V requirements (if any; $10 handling fee).  Requests for more information are very welcome.

 

Call for Papers Online:

More information on the 2011 conference is available online: http://www.nemla.org/convention/2011/cfp.html

 

ESS Panel on Motherhood and the State

Call for Abstracts

 

We invite abstracts for a panel on Motherhood and the State to be proposed for inclusion in the 2011 meetings of the Eastern Sociological Society (ESS).  We envision a panel that will draw together diverse cases to better understand how identities, ideologies, and practices of motherhood/mothering are mobilized by individuals, organizations, and institutions in negotiations and confrontations with the state. 

 

Please submit a one-paragraph abstract by Wednesday, September 15 to Rachel Kutz-Flamenbaum (rflamenb@pitt.edu) and Amy Traver (ATraver@qcc.cuny.edu).  

 

The Meetings are scheduled for Feb. 24-27 in Philadelphia.  Visit www.essnet.org for more information. 

 

Best,

Amy Traver & Rachel Kutz-Flamenbaum

New Learning Technologies Conference

Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin
Orlando, Florida 
February 23-25, 2011

SALT (Society for Applied Learning Technology)

Abstracts for presentations from knowledgeable professionals in industry, government, military, and academia are solicited to provide presentations which would be part of a comprehensive conference program on the latest learning technologies as they are being applied to training, education and job performance improvement, including ways to implement technology, descriptions of education and technical skills applications, e-Learning, Enterprise Management, Instructional Systems Design, Mobile Computing, Gaming and Simulation for Training and Job Performance Improvement, New Technologies & the Marketplace, together with Knowledge Management systems.

To submit your abstract online or to download a full PDF version of the Call for Papers choose one of the links at the left. For online submissions you will first enter your contact information and after submitting that form you will be transferred to the abstract submission form. You can also send your abstract via email to DCProgram10[at]salt.org.

If you have questions please call us at 540-347-0055

Types of Presentations

Standard Presentation

This type of presentation typically involves one or two speakers who present information on their topic of choice with the use of PowerPoint slides and/or other medium residing on the laptop or the web. Each presentation room is equipped with a projector, screen and high-speed line to the internet. 45 minutes are allowed for this kind of presentation. This kind of presentation constitutes the majority of slots on the conference program.

Panel Presentation

This type of presentation typically involves a moderator and three or four panelists with extensive experience or knowledge related to the panel topic. The moderator and the panelists generally are from distinct organizations (e.g., they are not from the same company, university or government agency). The moderator acts as the Emcee and proposes questions to the panelists as well as relaying questions from the attendees. 1 hour 30 minutes are allowed for this kind of panel presentation. During the course of the conference, 3 to 4 panel presentations will be accepted for inclusion in the program.

NINTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NEW DIRECTIONS IN THE HUMANITIES

Dear Colleague,

On behalf of the Advisory Board, we would like to inform you of the:

NINTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NEW DIRECTIONS IN THE HUMANITIES     
Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain     
8-11 June 2011     

We are pleased to be holding the 2011 conference in Granada, Spain at the Universidad de Granada. Known throughout Spain and Europe for its scholarship over many centuries, the Universidad de Granada also brings great diversity to the city and contributes to Granada’s thriving student population, today totaling over 80,000 students. The University was founded during the rule Sultan Yusuf I, and is also contemporaneous with the 14th Century Alhambra which overlooks the city and the university.

The Humanities Conference and its companion journal provide spaces for dialogue and for the generation of new knowledge about the nature of the humanities, building strongly on the past traditions of the humanities whilst setting a renewed agenda for their future.

In addition to an impressive line-up of international plenary speakers, the conference will also include numerous paper, workshop and colloquium presentations by practitioners, teachers and researchers. We would particularly like to invite you to respond to the conference Call-for-Papers. Presenters may choose to submit written papers for publication in the fully refereed International Journal of the Humanities. If you are unable to attend the conference in person, virtual registrations are also available which allow you to submit a paper for refereeing and possible publication in this fully refereed academic journal.

Whether you are a virtual or in-person presenter at this conference, we also encourage you to present on the Humanities Conference YouTube Channel. Please select the Online Sessions link on the conference website for further details. Additionally, please join our online conversation by subscribing to our monthly email newsletter and subscribing to our Facebook, RSS, or Twitter feeds at http://thehumanities.com .

The deadline for the next round in the call for papers (a title and short abstract) is 9 September 2010. Future deadlines will be announced on the conference website after this date. Proposals are reviewed within two weeks of submission. Full details of the conference, including an online proposal submission form, may be found on the conference website at http://www.HumanitiesConference.com .

We look forward to receiving your proposal and hope you will be able to join us in Granada in summer 2011.

Yours Sincerely,      
Jose Luis Ortega Martin
Universidad de Granada     
Granada, Spain    
     
For the Advisory Board, International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities and International Journal of the Humanities

Women and Poetry: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing by Successful Women Poets

Book Publisher:  McFarland & Company, Inc.
 
Contributors needed for articles about:  websites for women poets, using life experience, magazine markets, networking, managing family, blogs, unique issues women must overcome, lesbian and bisexual poetry, continuing education, queries and proposals, anthologies, conference participation, contests, promotion, self-publishing, teaching tips, and other areas women poets are interested.

Practical, concise, how-to articles with bullets/headings have proven the most helpful. Please avoid writing too much about “me” and concentrate on what will most help the reader. No previously published, co-written, or simultaneously submitted material.

Foreword: Molly Peacock, the author of six books of poetry, including The Second Blush (W.W. Norton and Company, 2008).

Co-editor Carol Smallwood is a 2009 National Federation of State Poetry Societies award winner included in Who’s Who of American Women who has appeared in Michigan Feminist Studies, The Writer’s Chronicle, The Detroit News. She’s included in Best New Writing in Prose 2009. Her 23rd book is Writing and Publishing: The Librarian’s Handbook (American Library Association, 2010). The first chapter of newly published Lily’s Odyssey was short listed for the Eric Hoffer Prose Award; a chapbook by Pudding House Publications.

Co-editor Colleen S. Harris is a 2010 Pushcart Prize nominee. Her book of poetry, God in My Throat: The Lilith Poems (Bellowing Ark Press, 2009), was a finalist for the Black Lawrence Book Award. Her second and third books, These Terrible Sacraments and Gonesongs, are forthcoming in 2011. Colleen holds an MFA degree in writing and has appeared in The Louisville Review, Wisconsin Review, River Styx, and Adirondack Review, among others.  Her work has been included in Library Journal, and Contemporary American Women: Our Defining Passages.

Please send 2-3 topics you would like to contribute each described in a few sentences and a 65-75 word bio using the format of the bio’s above. Please send in a .doc Word (older version) file by September 30, 2010 using POETS/your last name on the subject line to smallwood@tm.net. You will receive a Go-Ahead with guidelines if your topics haven’t already been taken. Contributors will be asked to contribute a total of 1900-2100 words. Those included in the anthology will receive a complimentary copy as compensation.

International Journal of Library Science

www.ceserp.com/cp-jour/


Call for Papers

Dear Colleagues,
Papers are invited for the
International Journal of Library Science (IJLS). The IJLS is a peer-reviewed journal. It strives to publish refereed, well-written original research articles, and studies that describe the latest research and developments in the area of library science and information. This is a broad based journal covers all branches. It’s also publishes interdisciplinary research. The areas of interest include but are not limited to:

�         Education for librarianship

�         Information policy

�         Information and communication technologies (ICT’s)

�         Information Society

�         Equity of Access

�         Sustainability and ICT’s

�         Children’s Internet Protection Act

�         Censorship

�         Information explosion

�         Information literacy

�         Government Information

�         Decreased funding for established libraries

�         Copyright

�         Intellectual property rights

�         Intellectual freedom

�         Digital divide

�         Open access (publishing)

�         Patriot Act

�         Public lending right

�         Slow fires

�         Serials crisis

�         Current digital/scanning technologies

�         Remote Access

 

An original and unpublished manuscripts can be sent to the publisher via e-mail at: cangaley@yahoo.com and a copy to cpublib[at]gmail.com .

 

Sincerely,

 
Dr. Michel Nguessan,
Editor-in-Chief

International Journal of Library Science (IJLS)

www.ceserp.com/cp-jour/
Governors State University, Illinois, USA
E-mail:
cangaley@yahoo.com

E-mail:  cpublib@gmail. com