Blog posts from April 2006

Three new Biblioblogosphere-related blogs (well, actually there are five and counting) to get acquainted with over the weekend... Read More »

Avatars need libraries, too, you know. An avatar—in this context—is "an icon or representation of a user in a shared virtual reality." Last Thursday, the Alliance Library System officially announced that this summer it plans to begin offering library services to avatars who live and work in the 3D virtual space Second Life. Second Life has significantly more than 100,000 registered avatars, but at any given time a few thousand are actually online and active, so this global virtual village currently is about the size of Vegetable City, Iowa. You can set up one avatar for free, but the real folks at Second Life do ask for a credit card number or Paypal info. for verification purposes.
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In my first article in this series, I wrassled with the biggest bear in the forest: how most online catalogs lack relevance ranking. That's one big hairy bear, but as some readers pointed out, it's a little forced to pick on relevance ranking, out of the context of all the other important features most online catalogs don't offer—or are features implemented so badly that librarians disable these features rather than further confuse the poor user, who just wants to find a book or DVD, for crying out loud.
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