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If you participated on the 2007 Librarians Run for the Cure team, you likely received a notice today from the run organizers that registration is now open for the 2008 run. We’re all set to receive team registrations too.

Join us on Sunday, October 5th, 2008 as a member of the 5th Annual Librarians Run for the Cure Team. We’ve raised $71,780 over our past four years. Let’s aim to top $100,000 in overall fund-raising this year to celebrate our 5th year of participation! Team participation is open to anyone library-friendly and you can run or walk!

When registering, elect to “Join an existing Team” and search for “Librarians Run for the Cure”.

If you’re interested in acting as Team Captain for your run site / city, please contact me.

Follow our progress by joining our Facebook group too.

For three weeks (17-Feb through 09-Mar), I ran a Facebook Ad Campaign targeted to UofA students to promote the Cameron Library Facebook Page. Nothing fancy, just something to create student awareness of Cameron Library on Facebook.

What were the results?

• 399,485 page impressions of the Ad resulted in 503 click-throughs to the Cameron Library Page (0.13% click-through rate)
• 47 new “Fans” (though no way to know if they were click-through folks or friends of click-through folks that had seen their friends become Fans)
• Page Views definitely picked up during the three weeks (428, 489, 235 respectively); post-Ad weekly Page Views have been (115, 55, 94, 90)
• Total spent: $90.88

Initial thoughts? Ads get eyes on your Page. Whether your Page offers anything of use to those looking at it is a different story that needs different measures.

It is internship season in Alberta again. Here are the postings for recent MLIS grads for both public library and academic library internships in Alberta:

• Community Development Librarian (Intern). Edmonton Public Library.
• Volunteer Services Librarian (Intern). Edmonton Public Library.

• Academic Library Internship Positions 2008/2009. University of Alberta Libraries.

Such great support and opportunity for new grads in Alberta!

I didn’t make it to CLA last year in St. John’s so I don’t yet have CLA=May ingrained in my brain; I’m still thinking CLA=June. I’d best be turning some attention to CLA=May as I’ll be joining a stellar cast of Canada’s best in a series of presentations:

• Librarians as Campus Open Access Leaders: the University of Alberta Experience. With Denise Koufogiannakis and Leah Vanderjagt
• The Perfect Storm: Rethinking Service at the University of Alberta Libraries. With Kathleen DeLong, Alexa Jaffurs, and Anne Carr-Wiggin.

• The CACUL Great Debate: Be it resolved that social software is not what users want from the library. With Melody Burton, Lisa Goddard, and Wendy Rodgers.

Those familiar with the Great Debate are aware of the gravity of participating in this annual debate. I’m trying to remember why I thought I’d want to do this but can only vaguely trace it back to this moment in Cambridge last year with Melody (and Kit and Jackie).

I’m also really looking forward to getting back to work on CLA activities as incoming CACUL Vice-President/President Elect. Looks like a great group to work with; certainly one of the best perks of association and committee work.

A new ARL report, Research Library Publishing Services: New Options for University Publishing, is worth a read.

The report discusses the results of a study of publishing services provided by ARL member libraries. Key findings include:

* Publishing services are rapidly becoming a norm for research libraries, particularly journal publishing services.
* Service development is being driven by campus demand, largely from authors and editors.
* Libraries are addressing gaps in traditional publishing systems, not replicating traditional publishing.
* Substantial investment in open source applications such as Open Journal Systems, Open Conference Systems, D-Pubs, and DSpace is facilitating service development.
* Library publishing services are part of a range of new kinds of services libraries have developed or are developing, such as repository and digitization services.
* Library publication services are developed in ways that are consonant with research library service culture, including close consultation with researchers and frequent use of partnerships.

Pretty spot-on when thinking about how we’ve approached the development of OA publishing services at MPOW.

Canadian ARL members make a very good showing for high salaries among ARL University Libraries.

Steve Hiller (Director, Assessment and Planning, University of Washington Libraries) was in Alberta recently for The Alberta Library’s Collections Analysis Symposium and he kept referring to the “high salaries of the UofA librarians” in his data examples. I just had a chance to have a look at the ARL 2006-07 Salary Survey and the Median Professional Salaries in ARL University Libraries Top 20 are below. Good stuff!

A couple of videos worth viewing:

• A One on One video clip on “The Trouble with Medical Journals” with Peter Mansbridge interviewing former BMJ editor, Richard Smith.

• A short author rights video from ACRL / ARL / SPARC. I’ve been updating the OA/UofA website so I’ll link to the post there.

EBLIP Vol 3:1 Published

With a special congrats to Katrine Mallan who took over as Production Editor from me starting with this issue; good to see the baby is in good hands.

Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (EBLIP) is open access, peer reviewed, and is the first journal to focus specifically on evidence based practice in the information professions. EBLIP is published by the University of Alberta Learning Services, and proudly uses the Open Journal Systems (OJS) journal management and publishing system developed by the Public Knowledge Project.

Interested in OA? Interested in finding out more about the SCOAP3 Model?

The presentations from the SCOAP3 U.S. Focal meeting from Feb 29th, are now available. Salvatore Mele’s “The SCOAP3 model” is well-worth the hour: