Do kids, teens and young adults who are and have grown up in the digital age approach the world in a different way than other generations? How do they consume media? How is technology shaping their learning and reading habits? What does it mean to them to live, play and work in today’s information-rich world? Hear from our net-gen panel and join the conversation.

Frustrated that your director seems resistant to new technologies? Tired of feeling that 2.0 is going from zero to nowhere in your library? Are fewer dollars headed for e-initiatives because budgets are down? Hear from a panel of tech-savvy decision-makers on how to make your best case for boosting technology efforts during tough economic times. Learn how to impact policymaker behavior by understanding their world view and shaping your message to become an effective change agent for your community.

Tough times can be a double whammy for libraries: exploding use and declining budgets. Cool tool experts, Cervone and Fichter, offer up a feast of tools that can help lower your IT cost by upgrading, switching, consolidating and adding DIY tools into the suite. Improve the library IT capacity from the staff desktop, public access computers to the libraries websites with new and useful tools and services.

2008, three groundbreaking works challenged library marketers and advocates to rethink their approach: OCLC’s “From Awareness to Funding,” Clay Shirky’s “Here Comes Everybody,” and Seth Godin’s “Tribes.” Discover how one public library is making the most of pointed, people-powered marketing to increase library support on the cheap using tools such as inexpensive flip cameras, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Word Clouds, and more. Phelps and Alcorn offer tips and techniques for marketing your organization using the social web and other tools, without the need for a big budget or a marketing department.

The first presentation looks at how you can replicate and sometimes surpass functionality with open source desktop tools, such as OpenOffice, GNUCash, GIMP, and other productivity-enhancing programs that are free, stable, and easy to use and install. Hansen illustrates that you don’t have to be a usability expert with an unlimited budget, and you don’t have to rely on guesswork to fix what’s wrong. Hansen looks at free and cheap tools available to help you gather quality data to improve your site, and shares tips and tools for gleaning valuable information about your site and customers, including surveys and statistics, low-or no-budget usability testing methods, pitfalls to avoid, and lessons learned from Newport Beach’s usability testing project.

Engard explains what mashups are, how they can be used, and shares examples from libraries around the world. She discusses how to find tools to use to mash up library data with content from the web to reach more patrons and illustrates using maps to enhance library data, using Flickr for digital collections, and creating library websites with data from several information sources. Fichter shows some advanced tools and library mashups.

The web services librarian and the IT folks at UCSB researched all the different options for a CMS available to them. With budget cuts and other obstacles, the open source Drupal was chosen and the Web Redesign Taskforce began the long process of migrating 15,000+ pages. Come hear their story; filled with humor of trials and tribulations. Learn how they came to select Drupal, created  a timeline; stuck to that timeline; and updated, weeded, and integrated content. UH implemented Drupal to support the library intranet. Using Drupal, the library was able to distribute the management of content and provide more effective tools for internal communication. Coombs outlines the strengths of Drupal as a platform for supporting a library intranet, and describes key modules and features that libraries can use to facilitate internal communication and build a space for collaboration.

Librarians and publishers, challenged by the responsibility to preserve the digital assets of their community, joined forces to build a global archive called CLOCKSS (Controlled Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe). CLOCKSS is unique from other archives as it is a collaborative, community effort. Everyone who joins in to support the archive has a voice in how the archive is governed and managed. Content is made freely available to everyone when that content is no longer available from a publisher. The content is preserved on four continents: North America, Asia, Australia, and Europe. The current global economic crisis illustrates the folly of outsourcing oversight and core responsibilities and the failure of insurance schemes. Our coin of the realm is scholarly literature. Join us to hear how, with minimal effort, you can make a major contribution to future generations.

The strength of any library website can be seen by the rich, timely content it contains. Solomon discusses bridging the gap between content creators and IT staff by empowering staff to contribute and update their own content. He shares the tools used, training methods and techniques, and best practices. Porter looks at publishers who are providing free access to a variety of types of information and media that traditionally required a purchase. Using new digital technologies, they are circulating content directly to the user via their own “electronic circulation channels.” He discusses how libraries can stay relevant with the model of free access alive in a chain distribution world and examines some library success stories and failures. Take away some great ideas, best practices, and the motivation to address these issues in your own library.

The concept of a “lab” or sandbox in which to develop and test new potential services or tools is growing in popularity in both academic and public library settings. Speakers highlight some of the best examples of how it’s currently being done, discuss why it’s useful, and provide several ways for libraries to quickly and easily get started with their own sandboxes.

Do you struggle with naysayers and opposition to new ideas in your organization? If so, there are proven ways to deal with this. Using the latest research in the areas of persuasion, group dynamics, and organizational psychology, speakers provide tips and concrete methods for helping your organization move into the future, even if you’re in a risk-averse organization with shrinking budgets. Key books that inform this talk: Influencer, The Power to Change Anything and Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.

Pecha kucha is Japanese for the sound of conversation and represents a fast-paced series of presentations. Each panelist has 6 minutes and 40 seconds along with 20 images to express his or her innovative practices. The event starts with a look at how to answer Drucker’s “Five Essential Questions” in a digitally focused workplace, discusses creativity techniques to bring ideas from one discipline to another in order to innovate, and looks at books in Second Life,  library/community partnerships for videoconferencing to provide training and access to distance learning, learning from local tech communities, and finding creative and innovative staff.

This presentation explores new opportunities for technical services staff to assist libraries in moving forward in the digital environment. Through retooling and retraining, technical services staff can assist in this transition by being retrained to work in non-MARC metadata standards, doing scanning and description of unique digital objects, and even becoming digital consultants for faculty and students with information needs. Hear from experienced speakers who discuss how important it is for libraries to use current employees’ skills, talents, education, and expertise in these tough budget times to help move their libraries into the digital environment. Learn how several libraries designed innovative workflow resulting in a substantial reduction of time in the ordering-to-shelf cycle, as well as significant, permanent labor cost-savings that can work for your organization as well.

The recent transition to a new U.S. presidential administration once again highlighted the fundamental instability of the Web. The new administration brought sweeping changes to the U.S. government web presence, with new sites such as “recovery.gov” being created, and existing sites such as “whitehouse.gov” being transformed in a day. Internet search experts are all too familiar with seeing trusted resources disappear with no warning. Now there are a growing number of tools that enable librarians to build web archives to preserve websites and documents at both a small and large scale. This session explores the tools available, demonstrates the California Digital Library’s Web Archiving Service, and discusses collaborative archiving, collection development in web archiving, and end-user access to web archives.

Technology often drives pop culture trends like iPhone mania and texting addictions, and it can also be used to improve all kinds of library services when we embrace the idea that information technology is everyone’s job. By establishing a tech-friendly atmosphere, libraries can harness the latest real-world and web-based techno tools to engage customers in an ongoing discussion to identify and meet the pop cultural & life-learning needs of their communities. Find out how to use trendspotting, experimentation, and continuous training to create a technological sandbox at your library and hear about creative strategies and practical, imaginative solutions from the field for you to use in your community. Then hear how to deal with information load through ten principles including organizational techniques, how to filter your input, time and stress management, managing overload in different media: email, RSS, interruptive technologies, the telephone, print media, multimedia, and social networks. Come away with a plan for tackling your own mound (physical or virtual) of overload!

This is not your standard presentation! Want to learn what it takes to produce engaging and successful multimedia projects? This active, engaging, fun and productive session looks at several successful and award winning library multimedia projects. How were they made? How was the community engaged both in creating and promoting the videos? How can you do the same? After sharing stories and examples, a new library song and two new short library videos are premiered. Audience participation using multiple cameras and a green screen captures images for an upcoming library video. Come join in the fun, get inspired and learn about successful library multimedia creation and distribution!

Since 2006, hundreds of libraries have implemented online training programs for staff based on the 23 Things series developed by the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. This panel each presents and then discusses what “23 Things for Communities” could look like. In addition, they examine the possibilities and pitfalls, look at a variety of organizational tools and models that would scale best to a very large participant base, and present a number of models to consider as starting points for your own community training project.

Get up-to-speed on Web 2.0 tools, how to utilize them to get the word out about your skills, and how the tools can benefit potential employers and/or clients. This cybertour shares tips and tools for ramping up an independent consulting business or finding another job.

Do you work with colleagues who aren’t in your building, or even your city? Come get tips for working on projects or services with people you may never see using free and for fee tools.

Hear about what’s new with this browser and learn how to use it to get the most out of your searching.

The gadget guys and gals go mobile this year and feature some exciting new and futuristic technologies, practices, and applications. Join us for an illuminating and interactive look at the mobile world of the future. Be prepared to offer your suggestions and ideas!