by McMaster has been the talk of the town for a while – mostly because we have a new, exciting, innovative University Librarian, Jeff Trzeciak. We have lots of cool new positions (including a gaming librarian) and we’re doing lots of new things. He’s been very supportive of my exploration in Second Life. It seems we got some media attention for what we’ve been doing too! They even managed to take a picture of the McMaster Library space in Second Life while I was there (I had no idea they were taking a picture or that they were associated with the paper)! All in all – pretty cool.
library 2.0
Heads Up!
I just thought I’d warn you that you will see a lot of library 2.0 posts in the next while. This is not a bad thing. Starting Monday, the Emerging Technologies Group will be launching Learning2.0 at McMaster and will last for 12 weeks – each week a new library 2.0/web 2.0 technology will be introduced. Although I have played with many, if not all of these technologies, I’m quite excited by the program. In fact, many of the staff our excited – which is great! We even had Michael Stephens come and give a talk and start the excitement!
On a related note – I’ve finally gotten a hold of Jenny Levine’s Gaming and Libraries report! Can’t wait to read it. I’ve been doing a lot of research lately on virtual worlds and gaming and teaching and libraries and have a couple of talks coming up on the topic. I’ll post on that another day.
Libraries as Friends
We just had a great talk by Alane Wilson of OCLC here at work, looking at a myriad of things, including the OCLC Environmental Scan, trends and branding. One of the questions after her talk was in regards to social networks and friends. This also relates to the point she made that people inherently ask friends for information first. In order to become a place which people more frequently use for their information needs, we need to be considered friends and to accomplish this we must be in their social networks (ie. Facebook, MySpace, etc). This also raised questions about what a “friend” is becoming in the social web, with the answer being that there are varying degrees of “friends”. Further to this was the fact that many are now finding and creating friends rather than simply finding existing friends in these realms.
This got me thinking about how friends are made in the virtual world of Second Life, which probably isn’t too far off from social networks. In Second Life, I befriend a number of people, particularly librarians involved in the project and I do this mainly so I can find someone to help me out in SL and who I may be able to approach to bounce ideas off of; since we are both librarians in a virtual world, we likely have similar outlooks. I also befriend newbies and others I have longer conversations with and I do this so that they may have someone to approach again if they have any information needs. My list of friends continue to grow, but in actuality, I don’t know any of these individuals. Little personal information is shared yet friendship is extended. They are simply a name on a list that I may never actually speak to or encounter again.
Libraries may find their Facebook and MySpace pages in the same place, on numerous lists but never contacted. What will be difficult to do is to stay on the evergrowing list of friends or contacts and not be forgotten or overlooked. Yes, it is important to be in the spaces that our existing and future patrons will be and I fully support libraries reaching out to user groups. What we need to do is figure out how to make ourselves important and useful in these spaces and not just a name on a list that is never thought of again. Do I have an answer for this? Not yet…..
Check it out!
I’ve added a new page on the Second Life Library on Information Island, in Second Life of course. Check out the links and feel free to get involved in the project!
Find it here!
There’s a radio commercial that I heard this morning for the yellow pages (I think, I’m still waiting to hear the commercial again to confirm this). They are advertising themselves as the Find Engine. This got me thinking about our library catalogues again. The debate has been raging about how our OPACs suck and there is a lot of merit in the arguements for this. The biggest question is whether our students can Find It; are we a Find Engine, should we be? The number of students who come to the research help desk looking for materials in our catalogue, I’d say we are not a great find engine. I’m not going to wade too deeply in the catalogue debate but perhaps we need to think of ourselves as Find engines.
Our library is presently undergoing transformation, a very exciting time as we start surveying all of the exciting opportunities we could be a part of. Part of a discussion at a meeting today turned towards blended librarianship. By considering learning theory, how students and faculty learn, rather than straight librarianship we may be able to move towards a catalogue that acts more as a Find engine. By considering how people learn, how they search, we can design more intuitive catalogues and help simplify the process. I’m interested on how this way of thinking would affect all aspects of the library, especially for instruction. A thought I think I will mull on for a while.
Much Ado
According to the Chronicle of Higher Education (may require subscription), Facebook is planning on opening membership beyond university communities, much to the chagrin of the students. The academic library community has been debating whether we should have a presence in this area and it will be interesting to see if the decision to open membership changes opinions.
I’ve been interested in the place of the library in Facebook and have gone as far as setting up an account but not much more than that. All of this is particularly interesting as I’ve recently discovered a similar student site just for students at my institution, complete with chat and forums for discussions. While browsing the site as far as I could as a guest, I noticed a thread involving the library. I contacted the administrators to see if I could participate and, surprisingly to me, they said yes. I’ve had a lovely response to my presence, which is more than I was hoping for. I intend to check in occasionally to see if there are any library or research questions I can help with. Hopefully it will remain so positive.
Congrats!
Congrats to everyone involved in the Second Life Libraryon Info Island in Second Life! They’ve won second prize in the Talis Mashing Up The Library Contest! Read all about it from the Second Life Library Blog.
Government RSS
As I try to catch up on the backlog of rss feeds in my Bloglines account, I came across this and thought I would share (for all those gov pubs enthusiasts – and I know you think it’s your dirty little secret but it’s time to be proud of your love for gov pubs). FirstGov now has a list of many of the US government RSS feeds. A nice neat place to sign up for feeds. I’ll pass on any other neat things that I may have missed over the summer.
Learning all over again
At least, that’s what it feels like when I start to try to walk or sit in Second Life. My adventures in this virtual world continue. I finally left the island to see what else the world has to offer. I’ve been nervous to leave the comfort of an area I understand.
I’ve signed up to provide some virtual reference on the island. The meetings before the service starts (Sept. 6) have been very interesting. A whole new host of issues to consider in a virtual world, along with the standards (ie. privacy, service standards, etc). I’m not sure I’m sold on the idea that a library has to have a place in a world like this. However, this will likely change, for the good or bad, as I continue to read up on gaming and education and become more proficient in Second Life.
Although it seems to be taking up a lot of my time (so much to learn!), I will continue to write about other issues.
The Wee Librarian 2.0
Well, I’m starting my adventure in the Second Life Library 2.0! I’ve created my avatar but she’s still pretty basic. I’m still a pretty wobbly walker and I just learned to sit. I’m hoping to do some virtual reference and maybe even some Canadian gov pubs collection development in the SL Library. I’ll keep you posted. If you’re in the Second Life Library, look for me, I’m Danu Dahlstom
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