thoughtcrumbs

I'm attending the ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries this week in the exotic locale of (wait for it . . .) the Lloyd Center Doubletree. Feels great to be back at a rigorously academic conference after the plethora of smaller vendor-specific or pet project show-and-tell-ish library conferences I've been at lately (though I've enjoyed them as well). But this conference has papers with sigma-laden equations, darn it. Leaves me craving a good CHI or SIGGRAPH. Some things I've gleaned from the first couple of days:

• Regarding academic libraries' copyright policies, keynote speaker Jessica Litman says, "When a student walks up to the reference desk, the librarian doesn't call up the publisher and say 'I've got a Class 3 female in blue jeans here. May she see your book? And if so, should I give her the upscale version, the educational version, or the version co-sponsored by Kmart?'"
  
  
• Do not use Comic Sans on your powerpoint slides if you want to be taken seriously.
  
  
• The Computer Science Teaching Center is a searchable collection of peer-reviewed materials for teaching Computer Science. Lots of source code, some syllabi, lectures, and papers.
  
  
• It is important to enunciate. One speaker gave an entire lecture on jalopies, not digital libraries.
  
  
• The Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations is building a collection of theses at the bachelor, master, and PhD level. Students of all disciplines learn how to submit their theses in electronic form (usually PDF or XML), and are able to hide or timestamp portions of their research for patent purposes, if necessary. Schools join for free and submit only finished, reviewed theses. Instant, high-quality dissemination. I wish UO had been a member when I was a student. (Sidenote: Should you actually want to read my undergrad thesis, here it is in all its glory: The Effect of Animated Banner Advertisements on a Visual Search Task 350k PDF.)