thoughts and rants

well that was awesome and terrifying.

my first presentation at Internet Librarian. i think it went pretty well. i know i spoke way too fast but i was worried that we wouldn’t have enough time.

click here to go to my list of presentations and check out our slides.

many thanks to erik and jaap of the shanachies who were on the same panel, and the wonderful mary auckland for organizing the whole enchilada.

when i started this blog i really thought i would be blogging about library-related matters in Second Life. i have, and i will again, but i don’t think calling this blog “informing MUVEs” is entirely accurate.

since my motto/mantra/catchphrase/thing i like to write is “knowledge requires collaboration” maybe i should try and incorporate that. but how, without it seeming awkward.

and after chatting with Jill, i also like keeping the whole “informing” angle. but that seems a bit daunting - does that mean i have to always inform when i blog?

what about in.forming ? thoughts?

today i helped some folks who live in countries where a lot of news is censored, find quality information to answer their immediate needs.

Amy Kearns had an idea a few weeks back about having a 24 hour “twitter librarian” that would answer questions shot into the twittersphere.

Metafilter offers similar reference services (tho not answered specifically by librarians), through a community of users.

THIS. THIS is why i love the possibilities of the web. getting information to people, via avatars, micro-blogging, or discussion forums.

get.
information.
out.
there.
now.

if you click on the link in the bar above you’ll be able to see transcripts of my live-blogging using Cover It Live (which is a genius app and i’m really happy with it.)

for some reason i lost connectivity (i blame SNOW) and had to rewire my house so there’s a big chunk missing between the first two sessions.

okay, first, i want an iPhone. us Canucks can use them but only with some hacking, and as techie as i like to think i am, really i just like to play with the toys, not program them.

according to the International Business Times (thanks for the tweet about this Fleep!) Vollee plans to develop an interface which allows users to access SL from their mobile phone.

i love this idea in principle - especially given the number of educational resources in SL. if i’m late for my SL class/meeting i can access it while i’m sitting on the bus in traffic. awesome.

but part of the fun of SL is that it is an environment which is visually stimulating - how are they going to maintain that on a teeny mobile screen?

and how big is your av going to be?

and the chat - my gawd - the chat!

and while i’m sitting on the bus in RL attending my meeting in SL, will i be sitting next to someone in RL who is doing naughty sexy-time things in SL?

and if i lose my phone, does this mean that i’m vulnerable to having my SL account hijacked? (not Jambina - no!!!)

all this being said, if i had a phone with a big enough screen (maybe the MLIS graduation fairy will bring me one) i’d probably try it out. but that’s because i’m an SL junkie.

… but maybe not the best use of my time.

to do today:

• finish berloody CAIS proposal so that i can tell folks about chat reference in SL (don’t get me wrong, i really wanna go and think my research is interesting - but CFPs kill me)
• wade through the pile of amazing submissions to Library Student Journal and tell some very patient authors that they are about to be published
• begin reading Strategic and Competitive Analysis: Methods and techniques for analyzing business competition by Fleisher & Bensoussan. (I’m told it’s an oldie but a goodie.)
• finish Everything is Miscellaneous because it was recalled by the library and due last Friday - which means I already owe 4$.
• wrap my head around Blair’s “futility point” [David C. Blair, "Searching Biases in Large Interactive Document Retrieval Systems," Journal of the American Society for Information Science 31 (July 1980)] and what this means in terms of current information retrieval
• listen to some Feist and P Funk (ya, that’s how I roll)

okay.

here i go.

bye!

this week at Library Student Journal i posed a question about the focus of MLIS programs: too much theory or too much practice? last night in Second Life i was speaking with a group of librarians - some were newly minted, others were old pros - asking what they thought was most important. everyone seemed to agree that theory was important (”that’s why you’re at university - to use your brain”) but that the hands-on was also essential. “two sides to the same coin.” but i’m concerned about this dichotomy - or maybe it’s a continuum?

there is a divide between theory and practice in the LIS discipline, and i fear this has an impact on students, one that will see the discipline offically split down the middle - where only those interested in theory will get an MLIS (a two year program) and those interested in practice will get library tech degrees (also a two year program). (and i am by no means denegrating library tech degrees, but the supposed difference between that and an MLIS is the inclusion of theory for MLIS students). this split will hurt both the creation of theory and the advancement of the profession. if the LIS field continues to be presented as either “you can do a PhD” or “you can work in a library” then there’s no wonder the divide exists!

so i have been thinking about theory and practice as part of a continuous cycle. one must fuel the other. the two are part of each other, and push each other re-evaluate their parts.

if web 2.0 is concerned with collaboration, constant re-evaluation and the (web) user, and library 2.0 is concerned with collaboration, constant re-evaluation and the (library) user, then why can’t we have LIS 2.0, concerned with collaboration, constant re-evaluation and the (LIS-lover) user?

so as i sit here trying to get a move on, and finish these two assignments, i’m determined to figure out the best way to apply some theory to these two very practice-related papers (meeting report recommendations in a hospital library, and addressing the knowledge management needs of a military organization). the LIS city of practice was built on theory.

(my city, naturally, was built on rock n’roll.)

someday soon i’ll be a librarian and i want to make sure that i’m not thinking in terms of the theory-practice dichotomy, because it doesn’t really exist.