The RMSLA community meets the needs of its members throughout the four-state region of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and South Dakota by providing professional development opportunities, currency on information profession topics, networking, camaraderie, and engagement. Your Chapter website lists RMSLA news and events and provides access to member benefits from SLA headquarters, RMSLA’s Facebook page, and much more. We actively solicit posts from members, partners and other interested parties. If you have an item or self-authored article of professional interest, please send it to president@rockymountain.sla.org.

Thank you for using and contributing to your RMSLA website.

Recca Larson
2012 Chapter President

Here’s an overview of upcoming programs in the RMSLA Virtual Lunch program series in 2012:

• May 17 – Joe Murphy, LibraryFuture, on technology trends. (Register ASAP!)
• June 21 – “Tracking Congress 2.0,” Peggy Garvin, Garvin Information Consulting.
• July 19 – SLA Annual Conference recap: chapter member panel and guests TBD.
• Aug 16 – “Making a Difference in Your Organization,” Sue Cronizer, Managing Director, Market and Competitive Intelligence, CSC.
• Sept 20 – Amelia Kassel, specialty topic(s) in online research.
• Oct 18, Nov 15, and Dec 20 – Special three-part career series with Scott Brown and Kim Dority. Watch for details.

Recorded programs

Most of RMSLA’s past broadcasts are now available for online viewing, and a few more are in the pipeline. Find them via RMSLA’s webinar archive page at
http://rockymountain.sla.org/programs/webinar-archive/, and let us know what you think.

Thanks to all the excellent presenters!

Written by Joe Kraus, Science Librarian, University of Denver

I first became away of the term Digital Rights Management (DRM) about five years ago (http://stlq.info/sae/) when several engineering librarian discussion lists discussed the DRM restrictions that were being imposed by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). At the time, I knew how DRM was applied to music files and DVDs, but I hadn’t considered how DRM could be applied to PDFs, ePUB files and other text-based documents.

About 9 years ago, Karen Coyle gave a talk at the Library of Congress concerning DRM, and the talk was archived as a PDF. (http://www.kcoyle.net/drm_basics.pdf) This provides a good overview of the basics of DRM technology as of 2003. But, today, things are a little different. Now that more and more people are using ebooks to read digital texts (online and using ereaders), publishers are trying out a variety of ways to control use of their copyrighted content. These restrictions have greatly affected the way libraries and information centers provide access of licensed content to their patron base.

There are many who write about the negative impact of DRM technologies on the free exchange of ideas, but I find the work of Lawrence Lessig to be the most eloquent of the bunch. His book Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity (http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2750/free-culture) is great overview of the issues at stake. While this book came out about 6 years ago, Mr. Lessig continues to speak out on the rights of the common person to have greater access to scholarship and other content. (See http://fora.tv/2012/04/20/Ingredients_for_Innovation and http://www.casttv.com/video/ri74834/lawrence-lessig-the-architecture-for-access-to-scientific-knowledge-video for two examples.)

Publishers do have a right to make money from the books, journals and reports that they publish, but noted author Cory Doctorow wrote that “The death of DRM would be good news for readers, writers and publishers.” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/may/03/death-of-drm-good-news) The discussions concerning Digital Rights Management software between readers, authors, publishers and information centers will certainly continue. It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out in the next 5-10 years. Then again, maybe nothing will “shake out” in that time. No matter what happens, you can count on librarians and information specialists to advocate on behalf of the readers and users of published content.

With attendance numbers of around 100 Colorado information professionals, Colleague Connection 2012 was a rousing success.  See Robert Linz’s fantastic photos here:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/rmlinz/sets/72157629929403429/.  Last Thursday evening was filled with delicious food, delightful conversation and networking, and an interesting and informative speaker in Erika Napoletano of http://www.redheadwriting.com/.

One highlight of the evening was the result of Erika’s shushing contest, which had no winner, for apparently our colleagues were happy to hear the story of a young girl raised in a houseful of books, who spent her weekends at the public library. “I’m not a librarian, but my sister is.” That quote sums up much of Erika’s passionate speech, as she asked us to think about unpopular v. unlikeable thoughts. Unpopular thoughts are generally the thoughts that need to be voiced, and we as information professionals need to be ambassadors of information and our services. “I am an information addict.” As information professionals, how are we serving our information addicts? We are perfectly positioned to demonstrate our value and bridge the chasms between parents and educations, educators and dollars, and dollars and sense. If we build our support structure with champions like Erika Napoletano, who wants to be surrounded by librarians at the Zombie Apocalypse, we can brand ourselves as the valuable and necessary professionals we are, regardless of our specific job titles. Overall, the crowd enjoyed Erika’s engaging and thoughtful speech on the important work that we do every day.

I want to thank CAL, CoALL, SRMA, CCML, and the University of Denver Library and Information Science Program for co-hosting this event with RMSLA. I can’t wait until next year!

- Rachel Bates Wilfahrt, RMSLA President-Elect

Join RMSLA at noon on Thursday, May 17 for Joe Murphy’s presentation on the “Information Impacts of Current Tech Trends.”

>>Updated May 17: Access Joe’s presentation slides.

Learn about the biggest technology trends affecting information centers, from 3D printing to econtent directions and mobile strategies. This session by Joe Murphy explores the most current trends in technology, including the social media landscape, how shifting smartphone usage is shaping information engagement, and how the roles of special librarians are continuing to evolve.

Joe Murphy is a Librarian and Technology Trend Spotter consultant helping libraries and more prepare for upcoming technology shifts. Joe is an author and editor, an international keynote speaker, and a conference organizer. For more details about Joe, who formerly worked in the Yale University Libraries, see his website, http://joemurphylibraryfuture.com.

Register!

Register now to reserve your seat at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/115152769

This program is free to all SLA members. Non-members are welcome to attend for a $20 registration fee. Please allow 48 hours for our volunteers to confirm your registration and payment.

System Requirements

PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newer

Hello Fellow RMSLA’ers!

Colleague Connection is coming up very soon, register now as space is limited! It is a great chance to mingle with fellow information professionals and librarians from the Denver area.

The event will be held at the University of Denver’s Ruffatto Hall on April 26th from 5:30 – 8:30pm. The speaker for this event will be Erika Napoletano (https://plus.google.com/u/0/112623722232653545872/about) and (http://www.redheadwriting.com/).

The personally sponsor a student please contact Susan Bertsche at sbertsche@denverlibrary.org

Please register here: http://bit.ly/y2v0Rj

Hope to see you all there!