Today we celebrate the birthday of one of America’s great humorist, Will Rogers. Rogers was born on November 4, 1879, at Oologah, Oklahoma.

Some quick facts: he traveled around the world three times, made 71 movies (50 silent films and 21 with sound), wrote more than 4,000 nationally-syndicated newspaper columns, and became a world-famous figure.

“So let’s be honest with ourselves and not take ourselves too serious, and never condemn the other fellow for doing what we are doing every day, only in a different way.”    — Will Rogers

(Source: Audri and Jim Lanford)

Posted by Tom R.

Happy Friday one and all!  Everyone (library staff) here in Broken Arrow  has managed to adorn the walls of their offices with “art” in some shape or form.  So we’ve decided that it is time to start highlighting these wonderful creations.

To begin our documentation . . . the first “wall art” from our esteemed Director’s office . . . enjoy!   Waca waca waca . . .

Stay tuned . . .  more art to come.

[Isn't it amazing what one can do with sticky notes?]

Posted by Tom R.

When the polls closed, 2802 SLA members had cast their ballots and participated in the election. The results have been finalized and the winners are as follows:

2010 SLA President- Elect (three-year term on board): Cindy Romaine, Romainiacs Intelligence Services, Beaverton, Oregon

2010 Treasurer (three-year term on board): Dan Trefethen, Boeing, Seattle, Washington

2010 Division Cabinet Chair-Elect (three-year term on board): Mary Ellen Bates, Bates Information Services, Inc., Niwot, Colorado

2010 Chapter Cabinet Chair-Elect (three-year term on board): Liz Blankson-Hemans, Dialog, London

Romaine and the other newly-elected board members will begin their terms on the SLA Board of Directors on January 1, 2010, and participate in their first board meeting during the association’s Annual Leadership Summit later that month in St. Louis.

To learn more about the elected board members please visit here.

 Source: SLA Blog

The complete database and all of its content is free for the month of October.

You’ll first need to register. This link should get you started. You’ll be asked for an email address, name, and a few other data points. You will also be asked if SAGE can contact you. Select yes or no.

SAGE Journals Online contains more than 260,000 articles from more than 500 SAGE journals* with content available from 1999-current.

Quick Search and Advanced Search interfaces are available. You can also browse by journal title.

* Some of the many disciplines include:

+ Communication & Media Studies
+ Engineering & Computing
+ Geography
+ Information Science
+ Management & Organization Studies
+ Pharmacology & Toxicology
+ Politics & International Relations
+ Research Methods & Evaluation
+ Sociology

A complete list of disciplines that Sage Journals Online covers is located on the opening registration page.

Access SAGE Journals Online

Source: SAGE

Posted by Tom R.

It’s official!  Dr. Louderback has been promoted to Assistant Professor, AND has been transitioned to a tenure-track position.  Congratulations Dr. Louderback.  Let’s start building that faculty file immediately!

Broken Arrow Big Read Evening Kickoff Event Featuring Author Chris Crutcher

Come join the Broken Arrow Community as NSU and the Big Read host renowned author and speaker Chris Crutcher as he explores the themes of Ray Bradbury’s classic novel Fahrenhite 451. Chris Crutcher is the author of several award winning works such as Deadline, and Whale Talk. The Big Read program will be distributing free Fahrenheit 451 readers guides and other materials to promote literary reading. Don’t miss out on this wonderful evening event and a chance to meet Chris Crutcher! This program is free and open to the community.

Event Location: NSU BA Auditorium, 3100 E New Orleans, Broken Arrow, OK 74014
Date: Tue, Oct 6, 2009
Time: 6:30pm – 8:00pm

OR

Date: Wed, Oct 7, 2009
Time: 9:30am – 11:00am

Posted by Tom R.

Rebecca Elder

Last Friday, in conjunction with the Big Read program, the NSU Broken Arrow campus hosted a Preservation Workshop entitled:

Preserving Your Historical Records: An Archival Holdings Maintenance Workshop.

The presenter was Rebecca Elder (an adjunct Preservation Field Services Officer) from AMIGOS. 

The session was very well attended with over 25 registered attendees from all across NE Oklahoma!  A fun-filled and informative day of preservation!

Posted by Tom R.

Yesterday marked the beginning of this year’s “Banned Books Week.”

Banned Books Week (BBW) is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment.  Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.

Intellectual freedom—the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular—provides the foundation for Banned Books Week.  BBW stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints for all who wish to read and access them.

For more information, visit the ALA website.  There is even a section where you can check out which books have been challenged the most frequently by year, by author, by decade, and which “classics” have been challenged.

(Source: the American Library Association)

Here is the list of the top 10 things that Library Administrators should know about technology.

1.  Technology isn’t as hard as you think it is.
2.  Technology gets easier all the time.
3.  Technology gets cheaper all the time.
4.  Maximize the effectiveness of your most costly technology investment — your people.
5.  Iterate, don’t perfect.
6.  Be prepared to fail.
7.  Be prepared to succeed.
8.  Never underestimate the power of a prototype.
9.  A major part of good technology implementation is good project management.
10.  The single biggest threat to any technology project is political in nature.

For additional detail/explanaation, here’s the entire article.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has a really interesting tool available on their website (http://personas.media.mit.edu/).  This particular tool scrapes information from your web image/presence and then organizes it into a visual persona.  Very cool indeed.  It really is more fun to watch the process, but the results can be interesting as well.  Here is an example using my name . . . as I watched, I discovered that it was gleaning information from the web from 15 “Tom Rink” sources.  Of these 15 sources, only 8 of them were actually me.  Enjoy!  Find out your persona and see how it compares to your self image.