Library Connectivity & Development

SAFETEA-LU, the current highway and transit authorization legislation, expired on September 20, 2009. Congress has extended the authorization eight times with the latest extension expiring on September 30, 2011.  Both the House and Senate intend to introduce (very) short term extensions when they return from recess.

Today the president held a news conference in the Rose Garden with Sec. La Hood urging Congress to highlight the need for transportation funding. Read Sec. La Hood’s blog post here.

Today is an open discussion opportunity for participants. We’re talking about disaster preparedness. Does your library have a disaster plan? Does your parent agency have a plan or provide you with supplies?

Join in now! http://fhwa.acrobat.com/translibrarian

We had four hurricanes during my first year at the University of Tampa Library. We had a plan and it was put to the test repeatedly that year.

It was pretty simple, but each librarian was in charge of a team and each team was assigned a section of the library to physically secure (to the extent you can secure against wind and water) by wrapping stacks in plastic,  taping windows, moving equipment to higher floors, stocking and placing clean up supplies for easy access and so on. It was a learning experience for me.

The Transportation Research Board Library is cleaning up after yesterday’s earthquake. Everyone is safe and unharmed. However, it looks like there’s plenty of work for the interns.

*Update*

5.8 in magnitude, the quake was centered around 100 miles southwest of Washington in Mineral, Virginia. More news is available from the New York Times.

The VDOT Library, located nearby in Charlottesville, Virginia fortunately sustained no damage.

Our transportation libraries are always looking for ways to maximize the potential of digital information for their clients. The LIST Committee is sponsoring a poster session at the TRB 91st Annual Meeting, January 22-26, 2012 in Washington, DC. This has been a very successful and highly visible event in past years.

Call Title: Digital Directions in Transportation Information Management

Call Description: The Committee on Library and Information Science for Transportation (LIST) invites you to submit proposals for a poster session focusing on innovative digitization projects that can give modern transportation professionals a competitive edge in capturing, converting, presenting, and preserving transportation information. Posters will be displayed at the TRB Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, January 2012.

Posters on all aspects of digitization are welcome including converting hardcopy and analog materials (books, reports, records, maps, photos, prints, audio, etc.) to digital formats, or converting an older digital format to a newer, better digital format, description (metadata) and representation of digital objects, coordination and financing of the digitization project, digital asset management, digital curation, digital preservation, and digital rights management.

Please submit an abstract with enough detail to review committee chair Jennifer Boteler no later than Friday, September 9, 2011 by sending them to: Jennifer Boteler (Jennifer.Boteler.CT@dot.gov)

We used most of our designated travel funding for this year on SLA, so this year’s annual meeting is likely going to be a web conference. It was a short year, since we structured the contract on the federal fiscal calendar.

Is this ok? We could conduct our business meeting (review the annual report, budget and FFY 2012 Workplan), get a status check on projects, perhaps have a guest speaker to teach us something new and exciting and begin planning a spectacular face-to-face meeting for next year.

Thoughts?

We have five intriguing project proposals for 2011-2012 Group Special Projects from our TAC members and Partners. We hope to provide products and services that will benefit our members and the entire transportation library community.

Please review them and cast your votes below. You may select more than one project. I’ll close the poll on Monday, August 22nd. Last, you must log-in to vote.

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MTKN will hold their annual meeting September 28-29, 2011 at the Institute for Transportation in Ames, Iowa at the University of Iowa.

Hank Zaletel from Iowa DOT-Institute for Transportation has some very interesting ideas for the program. Stay tuned for more information and an agenda when its set.

Do you plan to attend?