Robin Williams is the newest member of the ALA TechSource Blog Team.  Welcome, Robin!  Recently she and I met and chatted on ALA Island in Second Life, the 3-dimensional virtual world.  The text chat transcript of our conversation is pasted below.  Greylin Fairweather is the name of Robin's avatar in Second Life, and Maxito Ricardo is my avatar. Read more »

For the past two months I have been involved in a fascinating team effort to plan a one-day conference that will be held in a virtual world environment on Saturday, March 8th. The official name of the conference is "Virtual Worlds: Libraries, Education, and Museums" -- VW LEM for short. Although the conference will be held in Second Life, the speakers will be discussing other virtual worlds as well. As the name implies, the participants in this conference will explore how similar but distinct "public good" institutions -- libraries, educational institutions, and museums -- are using virtual world environments to pursue their missions. Read more »

While in Denver for LITA Forum recently, I read an article in the Denver Post entitled “We are our friends, our friends are us: MySpace and its offspring have transformed our link' thinking.” I found this article interesting for two reasons.

First, the author, John Wenzel, stated that MySpace will make $1 billion in ad revenue this year. One billion dollars. I had no idea, but I am not surprised. With all of the money we spend on things everyday, why wouldn't MySpace's 200 million members be clicking on those ads?

The second reason, and the one that really caught my attention, was this line:

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By Kelly Czarnecki
Presented July 23, 2007

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By Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe
Presented July 23, 2007

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By Tom Peters, Lori Bell, John Kirriemuir
Presented July 23, 2007

Libraries Get a Second Life: "First lives are often busy enough but a second one can allow you to be anyone you want! Alliance Library System started the Second Life Library in April 2006. We have found that people in virtual worlds do want libraries, and even books. We have offered some traditional and some new services. This program will cover how we got started, what works and what does not work. Tom Peters and Lori Bell will discuss the project. " More info....

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By Barbara Galik
Presented July 23, 2007

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By Jami Schwarzwalder
Presented July 23, 2007

"In Second Life, Schwarzwalder has taught classes on how to create items for interactive display. Here she will show the audience how to make a prim book using the same instructions she gives for in world." More info....

Listen to an MP3 audio file of this session (35MB, 38:09)

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The dog days of August 2007 may be remembered as that magic moment when librarianship as practiced in Second Life finally received permission to dine at the adults' table. 

On August 3rd the Library of Congress announced a new initiative -- Preserving Creative America.  They made eight grant awards totally $2.15 million "...to address the long-term preservation of creative content in digital form."  The creative content being targeted includes the usual suspects, such as digitally created motion pictures, digital music, and digital photographs, but it also includes comic strips (Doonesbury) and editorial cartoons (Pat Oliphant) -- which I assume were not born digital, but perhaps I'm just revealing my quaint, old-fashioned notions of how cartoons are drawn these days.  Read more »

We live in an age in which social networks, online communities, and the wisdom of crowds are all the rage.  This rage may have all the superficiality and transience of a dust devil, which appears to contain the destructive beauty of a real tornado, but actually only kicks up some dust and leaves.  But I think this is an enduring rage with potentially profound and positive effects on humanity in general and librarianship in particular. Read more »