300 PLN users, leadership institutes and mentoring–plus more on open source
Continuing the catch-up group of posts that originally appeared on PLN Highlights, here’s the post from February 5, 2008–noting that PLN is now up to 371 users. If you’re not one of them, go to PLN to sign up.
A lot’s happened at PALINET Leadership Network (PLN) since the last post. Among the highlights:
- More than 300 participants: PLN’s user list passed the 300 mark last week. (As of this writing, there are 319 registered users–up from 190 when PLN launched at ALA Midwinter 2008 and 70 when the “soft launch” began in December 2007.) Do you know library people who would benefit from PLN? Let them know about it!
- Library leadership institutes, mentoring programs, new member round tables and other resources: Jess Bruckner of the Kilbourn Public Library, Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, initiated the LIS Future wiki in December 2007, just as PLN was about to emerge. He developed excellent sets of links for library leadership institutes, library mentoring programs, new member round tables and other resources. (Bruckner also maintains the WisLISjobs.com site.) With Bruckner’s cooperation, those links have now been folded into PLN, expanding the “Other resources” page into a set of pages linked from near the bottom of the PLN home page as the heading “Leadership training, mentoring and other resources.” Thanks to Jess Bruckner for this pioneering work. (LIS Future no longer exists; the domain points to PLN.)
- Open source: You’ll find two new items on open source software to complement John Houser’s essay from last week. The PLN Challenge Panel offers diverse notes on how individual libraries are (or aren’t) ready for open source; Joe Lucia adds a second piece, “From open stacks to open source.”
- Revaluing words: Glen Holt offers controversial views on the value of words and the place of fair use.
- Citizens, engage! Jamie LaRue provides a stirring commentary on the place of public libraries as places and community centers and the need for community members and libraries to engage in community integration.
- Leader’s Digest: Leslie Dillon’s Leader’s Digest for January 2008 includes lots of trends (library and otherwise) and other new material, which you’ll find here and also distributed elsewhere.
Talk pages may not be mentioned here, but they’re the easiest way for you to participate actively in PLN. Disagree with an article? Have another perspective to offer from your own experience and your library? Add it to the article’s Talk page, add a link and write your own article, or send me your draft article (crawford@pln.org or pln.content@gmail.com) with a note on the article it relates to!
The PLN Forums are also starting to see some activity. They’re there for you–another way to communicate with other current and future leaders.
