Contact: JoAnne Kempf
Office of ALA Governance
(312) 280-3212
jkempf@ala.org
NEWS
For immediate release
June 9, 2009
The final installment in the series of ALA President Jim Rettig’s ALA Connections Salons will be an online discussion with Joseph Janes, associate professor at the information school of the University of Washington.Ã Janes will be joined by his students at the University of Toronto to discuss the future of ALA, libraries and librarianship. The discussion will take place from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. EDT Friday, June 19.
Janes was the founding director of the Internet Public Library and writes the “Internet Librarian” column for American Libraries magazine.Ã He has co-authored eight books on librarianship, technology and their relationship and is the 2006 recipient of ALA’s Isadore Gilbert Mudge award for distinguished contributions to reference librarianship.Ã Janes is also a member of the ALA Committee on Accreditation.
Online Programming for All Libraries (OPAL) Coordinator Tom Peters will begin the hour with an interview with Janes.Ã Following the interview, participants will be free to ask questions and engage with Janes and with one another to discuss other ways ALA can make connections.
The salon will take place in OPAL, a user-friendly site offering online rooms where participants can interact via voice-over-IP, text chatting, synchronized browsing and other functions.Ã The link for the salon is http://tinyurl.com/6ncakq, and a tip sheet for users is available at http://www.opal-online.org/firsttimetips.htm.Ã
Like its 17th and 18th Century European counterparts, the series of ALA Connections Salons offered a place for ALA members to gather and discuss professional topics of interest.Ã Beginning in September, the ALA Connections Salons discussed topics that included:
- Presidential Connections
- Kid Connections
- Political Connections
- Gaming Connections
- ALA Connections
- Next Generation Catalog Connections
- Advocacy Connections
- Education and Recruitment Connections
For more information about ALA President Jim Rettig’s initiatives, please visit http://jimrettig.org/content/initiatives/initiatives.htm .