Tour: Martin Luther King Branch - New Orleans Public Library

Tour hosted by Donna Schremser, Director, New Orleans Public Library

The Martin Luther King Branch, located in a school in the Lower 9th Ward, took the brunt of Katrina’s storm surge and was completely destroyed. Nowhere else did the water rise so fast and with such force. Thanks to the effort of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Charter School for Science and Technology and to funding from the State of Louisiana Recovery School District and the Gates Foundation’s Gulf Coast Libraries Project, the library celebrated its grand reopening on October 5, 2007. We will tour the facility and hear from Donna Schremser, the director of the New Orleans Public library; Jim Mitchell, the Head of Branch Services; and Mary Ann Marx, the MLK Library Branch manager. Jim and Mary Ann will share their disaster and recovery experiences and insights on disaster planning.

Keynote: Similes for Understanding and Explaining Library 2.0 Services and Tools

Steven L. MacCall, Associate Professor, School of Library and Information Studies, University of Alabama

It has been said that a simile is like a picture in that an effective simile is worth a thousand words. Because of their descriptive power, similes can serves as a basis both for gaining personal understanding and for explaining new concepts to others. The presenter extends the power of similes to Library 2.0 as he uses a series of similes that provide a comprehensive conceptual basis for understanding and explaining Library 2.0 services and tools. Services (RSS and tagging) will be presented as Web 2.0 infrastructure, and tools (blogs, wikis, and podcasts) will be presented as a unified whole of basic Web 2.0 content creation.

Driving Up the Value of Internal Information

Julia Cleaver, Information Services Manager, Ipas

Mary Panke, Director of Knowledge Resourcing, Population Action International

Margie Shiels, Director of Library Services, Family Health International

Three APLIC-I members share three different roadmaps to building internal collaborative networks in their electronic work environments. Each system aims to bring a higher order of efficiency, coordination and knowledge resourcing to the day-to-day work of their organizations.

Models for Synthesizing and Sharing Information Resources with Your Organization

Peggy D’Adamo, Deputy Project Director, The INFO Project

Peggy will present several approaches to identifying, managing, synthesizing, summarizing, sharing and getting feedback on external information resources that you want to share with your own organization, including staff, faculty and students. She will cover how to make information more relevant and useful to your staff, how to present and organize information without spending all your time doing it, and how to get your organization involved in actively sharing.

Maximizing the Use of Free Resources for Research and Training

Peggy D’Adamo, Deputy Project Director, The INFO Project

Yan Fu, Information Resources Manager, Population Studies Center, University of Michigan

Lori Rosman, Health Sciences Librarian, Johns Hopkins University Welch Medical Library

The panelists will share their experiences with free search tools and discuss ways to maximize their uses. The knowledge and skills are helpful not only for information professionals but also for their clients who may not have access to licensed products. The panelists will present a list of helpful free resources, highlight the advanced features in PubMed, POPLINE and Google products and leave enough time for members to share their experiences and knowledge.

Second Life: Research Communication, and Organization in a Virtual World

Eric Arnold, Tulane University Law School student

Elizabeth Townsend-Gard, Associate Professor, Tulane University Law School

Virtual worlds give us the opportunity to redefine the rules and limits of the human experience. At the same time, they provide a three-dimensional forum to users that promises exciting possibilities for the future of communication and organization. Second Life combines these characteristics in a unique way that is attracting much attention from researchers, educators, and businesses alike.

The presenters will discuss the current uses of Second Life as a research and education tool, including Elizabeth Townsend-Gard’s experience bringing law students into Second Life to compare conceptions of property in real and virtual worlds. Creative opportunities for using Second Life as a communications tool will also be explored. Finally, the future potential of Second Life and other developments in virtual worlds will be examined.

Translational Research: Using Data to Inform and Influence Diverse Audiences

Ian Askew, Director of Frontiers in Reproductive Health, Population Council

Ellen Carnevale, Director of Communications, Population Reference Bureau

Rebecca Clark, NIH/National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

There are many ways that organizations are asked to demonstrate the value of their research or project activities. This is sometimes called translational research, research-to-practice, research utilization, or insight to action. Panelists will address the ways that they are involved with translational research activities, including communicating to different audiences such as the general public, policy-makers, and other population researchers. In addition, the session will cover getting research results used at the country level (Askew), taking data that is gathered and making it relevant to the general public as well as working with the news media (Carnevale), and funding translational research activities (Clark).

Current Resources about Infectious Diseases

Dr. Joseph Keating, Assistant Professor of International Health and Development, Tulane University

Dr. Keating will provide information about current web-based and/or print resources about infectious diseases. Drawing on his research on mosquitoes and malaria transmission, he will discuss resources available to identify statistics and prevalence, trends, emerging issues, and other information about current or previous epidemics. He will also share information about the organizations working to learn about and prevent the transmission of infectious diseases, including HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and avian flu.