Minitex DIME staff at 2017 Minnesota Library Association Annual Conference

The Digital Initiatives & Metadata Education (DIME) staff will be presenting and staffing the Minitex booth and the Minnesota Digital Library professional table at the MLA Annual Conference, October 5-6, 2017. Below is a list of sessions we're speaking at and where you can visit us in the exhibits space. We'll see you soon!

SESSIONS

Radical all along: A historical look at Minnesota librarianship
Presented by Sara Ring (Minitex), Olivia Moris and Ann Walker Smalley (Metronet)
Thursday, October 5, 8:00 a.m. - 8:50 a.m.
Learning more about our past can give us the strength to meet the challenges of our shared future. Presenters will highlight early examples of radical librarianship in Minnesota, with a focus on the people who founded and contributed to the MLA, the Public Library Commission, Twin City Library Club, and other radical collaborations. Libraries are often the first to adopt new technologies, advocate for intellectual freedom, and push for and provide equal access to information. We'll share some examples of how Minnesota libraries have done this. We will look to the audience for an engaging discussion of our future. What can we learn from these early examples of radical librarianship, and what new connections, projects, or advocacy should we engage in today?

Digital Preservation Day at the Library: A How-To Guide
Presented by Jolie Graybill and Sara Ring (Minitex)
Friday, October 6, 9:15 a.m. - 10:05 a.m.
In US libraries, museums, and archives, it is estimated that at least 1.3 billion items are at risk of being lost forever. Light, pollutants, heat, and moisture can all cause damage to our physical collections. Individuals in your communities hold their own treasures such as photographs, slides, letters, and more that are also at risk. As libraries, we can play a role in educating our communities about preservation. But, how do you start? This session will cover scanning 101, and offer tips on how to preserve your content after digitization. The second half of the session will describe one model for hosting family history preservation days at your library. You will learn about what hardware and software is needed for digitization/scanning, metadata, types of collaborations with other community groups, and educational topics you can offer to the public.

Mapping the State: Place-based Discovery in Minnesota Reflections
Presented by Greta Bahnemann (Minitex) and Jason Roy (University of Minnesota Libraries)
Friday, October 6, 10:30 a.m. - 11:20 a.m.
This session explores two enhancements to the Minnesota Reflections digital library. Greta, MDL Metadata Librarian, will discuss her participation in the Mountain West Geospatial Task Force and the work they did to identify existing geospatial metadata practices and establish new best practices for geospatial metadata creation. She will then outline how these new standards were implemented within the Minnesota Reflections metadata. Finally, she will discuss how this work optimizes the geographically-based discovery of resources in Minnesota Reflections. Jason will next provide an overview of the new discovery layer that was designed and built for Minnesota Reflections, including the new geo-viewer that takes advantage of the work of the enhancement project. The outcome of this work has been the creation of a much more robust user discovery interface and a much more effective and rich browsing and searching experience in Minnesota Reflections. The ability to engage with visual collections using place-based geographic mappings will be demonstrated, including views by keyword, format, and proximity.

BOOTHS AND TABLES

• Minitex Exhibits Booth (staffed by Minitex, including DIME)
• Minnesota Digital Library Professional Table (staffed by Greta Bahnemann, MDL Metadata Librarian)
• ALA Professional Professional Table (staffed by Sara Ring, ALA Chapter Councilor for MLA)
• MLA Membership Professional Table