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CHICAGO - Registration is available for the 2011 LITA National Forum, "Rivers of Data, Currents of Change," to be held Sept 29- Oct. 2, 2011 at the Hyatt Regency at The Arch in downtown St. Louis. Visit to register.

Keynote Sessions anchor the event and include speakers John Blyberg, Karen Coyle and Barbara McGlamery. On Friday, John Blyberg of the Darien Library in Connecticut will kick off the forum with the Opening General Session. Saturday, Karen Coyle will present "On the Web, Of the Web: A Possible Future." Coyle will discuss the influence libraries can bring to “the cloud” and whether traditional library values of longevity, neutrality and dedication to users can be translated to this growing information space. Barbara McGlamery of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia will close the Forum on Sunday with "The Evolving Semantic World." McGlamery's talk will examine the changing landscape of the semantic Web and share her experiences of building a Semantic Web tool from scratch.

More than 30 concurrent sessions and a dozen poster sessions will provide a wealth of practical information on a wide range of topics. Two preconference workshops will also be offered. Starting Thursday afternoon and concluding Friday morning, Erik Mitchell of Wake Forest University will present "Learning to Leverage Cloud-based IT Resources and Server Configuration Software." The hands-on workshop will guide attendees through the implementation of digital library services and will include technical exercises focused on helping participants plan a deployment of cloud-based services. Also spanning Thursday afternoon and Friday morning will be "Technology Impact by Design: Using Goal-Based Assessments to Achieve and Document Success," presented by Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The workshop will be an active exploration of a project and initiative design approach based on the “Understanding by Design” instructional model, including opportunities to apply the principles to participants' own scenarios.

Corporate sponsors of the LITA Forum help to bring programming and networking opportunities to attendees. LITA gratefully acknowledges the support of OCLC and Relais International. LITA welcomes up to 12 corporate sponsors for the National Forum; visit for information on sponsorship opportunities.

Registration is limited to 500 in order to preserve the advantages of a small conference. Networking opportunities, one of the small conference advantages, are an important part of the Forum. Take advantage of the Friday evening reception and sponsor showcase, Saturday evening networking dinners and meals and breaks throughout the Forum to get to know LITA leaders, Forum speakers, sponsors and peers. For more information, visit .

LITA is the leading organization reaching out across types of libraries to provide education and services for a broad membership including systems librarians, library administrators, library schools, vendors and many others interested in leading edge technology and applications for librarians and information providers. For more information about LITA go to , or contact the LITA office by phone, (800) 545-2433, ext. 4268; or e-mail: lita@ala.org LITA is a division of the 91´«Ã½.