Technically a Librarian

Business Week posted a Second Life tip sheet on November 27th. Here is what they suggested: NOVEMBER 27, 2006 RELATED ITEMS Chart: Second Life Stats Graphic: Real World Brands In Second Life Graphic: The Most Popular Developers To Help Design And Execute Your Company's Virtual World Strategy Slide Show: Life Before (or After) Second Life INSIDE INNOVATION -- IN SIDE Second Life Tip Sheet Steps to take and mistakes to avoid 1. Design your avatar. The first place to start -- even just to research firsthand what other corporations are doing -- is to sign up for a free Second Life account and create your avatar, or online alter-ego. If you want to buy property for your virtual store, you need to sign up for a $9.95-a-month premium account through PayPal ( EBAY ). 2. Buy some land. Fees range from $5 for 512 square meters of a region to large islands priced at $5,000 for 262,144 square meters (about 64 acres) and $780 in monthly maintenance fees. Most real-world companies have been spe...

A new blog at infoisland.org has recently posted this announcement about how to set up a library in Cybrary City on Second Life: "The mayor of Cybrary City, Paul Miller of Talis, will officially welcome Cybrary City residents and other interested librarians on Wed, December 6 at 2:30 pm sl time, 4:30 central, and 5:30 Eastern to welcome everyone. The welcome will be held on the plaza in front of the new conference center. After the welcome, we will briefly discuss guidelines for your areas and divide you into groups who will work with BlueWings Hayek and Eiseldora on how to do things to set up your places the way you would like. I know there is no time that is good for everyone. We will schedule another time soon after that if you cannot make this one. I know many have questions about guidelines and how to set up so I wanted to go ahead and get this scheduled. " So if you are interested in setting up a library, please log in on Dec 6th.

"I’m gobsmacked! I just popped into Cybrary City in Second Life for a visit before bed, and have come out with a building for all Australian Libraries to share . Ooops. Cybrary City is an island sponsered by Talis and administered by the Alliance Library System . It provides free buildings for libraries for a year, in return for a couple of hours staffing per week. It was created last week, and I was checking out the island because I’d blogged about how great I think the initiative is. " To read the rest of this post click here . Are any other libraries thinking of joining Cybrary City?

The World’s Fastest Librarian is a twelve minute short film following Mary, a fictional public librarian at the Madison Public Library (as played by the UW SLIS Lab Library) as she prepares for the World’s Fastest Librarian Competition. The World’s Fastest Librarian is a humorous tongue in cheek film that shows a different image of librarians than that usually found in films. This film was a collaborative project involving over a dozen library school students. It was a labor of love and is meant as a tribute to librarians everywhere.

If you have your own library in your house, this is the site for you! LibraryThing This website allows you to enter/catalog the books you are reading. It links you up with other people who have the same interests. You can join a group, blog, discuss a book, or just arrange your books on a virtual bookshelf. The first 200 books you enter are free. Enjoy!

Ok -I admit, I am as IM crazy as anyone. I have accounts with AOL, Yahoo! & MSN . I found a cool site Meebo . At this site you can log into all the other chat sites you use and it lists them down the right hand column. You only need to log into Meebo and set your profile to log in your accounts automatically. I also created the widget that is on this page. I named him Rex after Stephanie Plum's hamster in Janet Evanovich's books about the New Jersey bounty hunter. Please feel free to IM me if I am on.

For those of you who haven't heard of Teen Second Life here's a blurb that describes it quite well: "Teen Second Life is a 3-D, international gathering place on the Internet where teens 13-17 can make friends, play, learn and create. Teens create a digital version of themselves, called an avatar, that they use to travel around the "virtual world," meet new people and participate in a variety of activities." This was an announcement from Oct 6th: http://alliancelibrarysystem.com/article.cfm?id=1176 Charlotte, NC - Oct. 6, 2006 -The Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County (PLCMC) and the Alliance Library System are pleased to announce a partnership to collaborate on the "Eye4You Alliance," an island in Teen Second Life that will offer virtual library services to teens. If any of you attended the 2006 SLMS conference in Rochester, NY you heard Chris Harris (aka Infomancy) discuss the possibilities of Second Life. It is nice to see a libra...

If you ever get a chance to take a workshop on Blogs, Podcasts, or Wikis-do it! Our local GST Boces is offering classes on these topics. Here are some notes: ---Wikis--- You can create new pages You can edit other people's pages, unless someone else is editing Not all wikis have to be logged into, not all are free. If you want a closed wiki, you have to pay. Wikis allow you to edit (and others). What I Know Is....(wiki) Collaborative space Good place for peer editing You information can be changed by others.... England Wiki site: http://www.wikiville.org.uk/index.php/Main_Page Free Wiki sites: http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers http://www.jotspot.com http://www.pbwiki.com ---Podcast--- Cross between radio and blogging should be scripted before broadcasting Takes advantage of RSS ---Blogs--- Online journal/diary You can comment on a blog but alter a wiki

If you are interested in what different universities are doing with ipods, check out the article in this month's issue of Multimedia & Internet @ Schools entitled "The Proof is in the Podding" by Stephen Abram. His email is stephen.abram@sirsidynix.com The article discusses Duke Universities purchase of an Ipod for every student and the applications they used for them. What a great boost to education! There is also a great list of resources at the end of the article including: Chris Harris's blog Infomancy http://www.schoolof.info/infomancy Duke University iPod First-Year Experience: Final Evaluation Report http://cit.duke.edu/pdf/ipod_initiative_04_05.pdf

If you are working with teens and are interested in what's new for teens-this is the website for you. It is a blog done by two teen librarians http://www.yalibrarian.com/ Great information & updated often!

I have been altering MyYahoo! page to be easier to use. I am setting up RSS feeds from the websites I tend to visit such as CNN entertainment-Books & the NY Times book section. It is very easy to set up. If you have a lot of websites you visit daily, you might want to see if they offer RSS feeds and set up your own page.

We only have one more day before midterms begin. I have been trying to get the magazine order straightened out and the rest of the books cataloged in. I taught database researching this week to another class of seniors. I have to say I love http://citationmachine.net if you have never used this site, it shows you how to cite resources in MLA and APA format.

Thank goodness for the new year! I plan to copresent at the SLMS conference in Rochester, NY in April, rejoin all the professional organizations I belong to, and continue to write reviews for the School Library Journal-I even sent them an article. I hope the new year finds you well! Don't forget to make professional New Year's resolutions!