Second Life

Second Life vs. Real Life

September 10, 2007 by 2 Comments

Second Life has been the subject of praise and contempt, and rightly so. Second Life has a number of issues (ie. stability) but also offers us some interesting opportunities (ie. distance education). I have admitted that I am still in the exploration phase of Second Life after a year and that it still needs a lot of work before I’ll be completely sold on this virtual world. That being said, I also find that I have to defend my exploration of Second Life.

A recent post on the Hunger, Homelessness & Poverty blog notes that talented librarians are devoting time to a leisure world rather than doing good things in the real world. I have a couple of problems with this statement. First of all, while Second Life is certainly a leisure world, many librarians are not working on leisure activities. We are trying to supply needed resources (ie. links to library resources) that may have gone unnoticed to a new user group. The user group in Second Life may not be the user group we see in the libraries and we need to reach all patrons. Higher education has taken an active interest in Second Life and academic libraries are looking at ways to support the classes, as we would in the real world. Being in Second Life is a point of need issue. The post quotes a letter sent to the American Libraries journal. This letter assumes that Second Life consumes all free time. While some individuals become addicted to the virtual world, many of us are there for work and continue to have a life outside of the virtual world. I still have enough time to teach a distance education course and if I was really ambitious, other volunteer projects. Other librarians are not as lucky as I am and are exploring the virtual world on their own time. They recognize virtual worlds as a technology that needs to be explored and are devoted to helping the profession stay current, even on their own time. I can’t speak for their free time but most I know do not spend all of their time in the virtual world.

Second Life is not something that everyone can understand. Many of us, myself included, are still trying to understand the importance of virtual worlds. Virtual worlds however, can not be ignored. If we do not stay current and examine new technologies, we will be blindsided and be in a constant state of catch-up. Second Life is part of my job, not my sole job, and I do not feel I am doing a disservice by exploring opportunities in this virtual world. Something will replace Second Life but at least we’ll be ready for it.

Academic Librarianship - odd stuff

Where did summer go?

September 6, 2007 by 0 Comments

Well, the campus is thriving again, the student centre is chaos, and there is noise again in the library. Yes, it is the first day of classes. Yesterday was our annual Clubsfest and we handed out 1125 waterbottles (pic to come) in an hour and a half! The bottles promoted both our campus libraries and the local public library. Students were asking for them all day! Guess we’ll have to order more next year, although I hope to do more with our welcome week, something more akin to the Ubiquitous Librarians‘ events.

It’s a busy fall ahead, with my distance course to teach, instruction to do, new responsibilities as a liaison and presentations to prepare for.

We’ve been busy at the library. We’ve relaxed our food policy, started an online group study room booking system, are constantly updating our website to function better and are working have a new popular fiction collection. And, I’m going to buy  I bought a Second Life Island today! We have 5 new librarians with 2 more on the way and 4 interns to help shake things up too. It’s going to be a busy and interesting fall!

update: I forgot to mention that we added Amazon links to our catalogue and have gotten our first self-check-out machine! – there’s just so much happening!

Academic Librarianship

New Library Wiki!

August 3, 2007 by 0 Comments

I created a wiki to go along with the First Year Experience Liaison work I do. The Mac Library Experience provides important information to first years and those new to Mac in one convenient place. Presently, you have to apply to leave comments but I’m questioning that decision at the moment. Check out what the UL has to say about it too (sorry, a little pat on the back).

Oh, and a personal shout out to my mother and grandmother who are celebrating their birthdays today 🙂

Update: The wiki made the Daily News. Also, I’m on vacation, so posts will be infrequent. More when I get back!

Second Life

Celebrate!

July 31, 2007 by 0 Comments

I’ve been pretty quite lately as I get ready to change to a liaison model of librarianship and try to finish projects before the needed vacation.

It’s hard to believe, but today marks my 1st birthday, that is in Second Life. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been there a whole year! I feel I’ve still got so much to learn. I’m still trying to figure out the role of libraries and education in Second Life. I think there still lots of growth to happen and I’m excited that I can still be a part of it. Let’s see what happens in the next year!

While on the topic of Second Life, I thought I’d also note that today is the last day of our virtual reference pilot project there. It’s been an interesting project, successful I think and will likely continue. I’ll be preparing a report over the next week or so. I’ll be presenting on it in a couple of places, so watch out for it if you’re interested (or you can contact me if you can’t see it).

odd stuff

Odds and Sods

July 17, 2007 by 1 Comment

Well, I’ve found a bunch of interesting tidbits. So here they are:

  • There was a tremor near-ish my hometown in Nova Scotia. I have relatives in the area of the tremor too. Most unusual for this area. Not big but strange to hear about!
  • They’ve found a golden mask for a Thracian king! Most exciting – they’re quite a rare find.
  • Work is being done on Open Library. Here’s the site description: “Imagine a library that collected all the world’s information about all the world’s books and made it available for everyone to view and update. We’re building that library.” Kudos! Something we should have been working on for some time now. This is a site to watch!
  • Meredith Farkas has a great post on risk-taking. It’s something I think I need to try to do a little more. I’ve done more than I thought I might have but there’s still room for improvement. It’s good to get out of our comfort zone and grow as individuals.
odd stuff

Falling Prices

July 12, 2007 by 1 Comment

Finally! For far too long Canadians have been paying for books at a high price. The strength of the loonie is finally going to change that and we can expect to see book prices lower. I’m not sure if CLA has been advocating for this change but it seems the Canadian Booksellers Association has been pushing to reduce book prices. More can be found in this news piece.

odd stuff

New Words

July 11, 2007 by 1 Comment

Merriam-Webster is adding new words to their dictionary, including ginormous, sudoku and speed dating. It always amazes me what gets added to a dictionary and sometimes feel that many should be in a slang dictionary instead. That aside, I was pleased to find “gray literature” – defined, at least by the news article, as hard-to-get written material was being added in. Perhaps we’ll be able to help students find it now that it’s officially recognized. The only thing I might change is that gray literature should also include online material as well. Here’s an article on the topic.

Academic Librarianship

Changing Info Needs

July 11, 2007 by 0 Comments

There’s a great article in the new issue of Educause which shares the result of a recent survey of librarian and faculty views of libraries (quick, now go read it). Most of the results are not surprising and it suggests that librarians and faculty still don’t always see eye-to-eye. I found it unsurprising that faculty are using the library less frequently but that’s not to say they’re not using our resources. While faculty see the library becoming less relevant they do not want library funds to be directed elsewhere and still see the library serving a preservation need. Libraries provide essential resources and this role will unlikely change, it is the manner in which we offer these resources and even our services that will change. Unsurprisingly, both faculty and librarians see electronic resources become an increasingly dominant format.

One thing that I tend to disagree with is that the article suggests that librarians generally see their role remaining unchanged. This may be what the survey suggested but many of the librarians I know, myself included, do not feel this is the case. A session I attended at CNI on the future of academic libraries also suggested the need for libraries and librarians to start reconsidering their positions and roles and I think many of his predictions, although they may be hard to take, may not be far off the mark.

I do agree with the idea that libraries need to take a leadership role in a number of areas, including preservation and collections (the future of the e-book and the move to online journals).

Surveys such as this are essential in reminding librarians that faculty may not have the same opinions on important issues. Libraries are a’changin’ and we as librarians will need to change too.

library 2.0 - social networks

Facebook and Library Catalogues

July 7, 2007 by 2 Comments

Well, it seems Ryerson University Library has added a Facebook application that allows you to search their catalogue. Kudos to them! I’m going to have to give it a full test run, but my brief search seemed to bring back good results. I thought I had read earlier that some libraries were having difficulty getting library catalogue applications added to Facebook, so hopefully this one will remain. If you have a Facebook account, check it out!