Readings for Christmas on the Prairie

I am going to read an excerpt from A Little House Sampler edited by William T. Anderson. It's a collection of writings from Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane. The piece I am reading is called "Home for Christmas" by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

I also found a piece by Harriet E. Adams within Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier by Joanna Stratton. Harriet's father, Franklin G. Adams, was the first secretary of the Kansas State Historical Society.

I timed the Laura piece at about 6:30 minutes. The Harriet Adams piece is about 5:30 minutes.

I also have four other little excerpts which also come from Pioneer Women that are about 1 minute in length each.

Now, to find the perfect hair!

Program plans!

Photo is of me at work on the library. Stop by when you get a chance....spent much of the weekend working on it. I've added a slideshow that is now located on teh wall over the windows.
Here's the scoop:
*Site director for the Mahaffie Stagecoach Stop will be in this week with some additional material for readings. If you haven't seen anything you want to read yet, we can get some more stuff from him. I need for you all to time your readings and let me know approximately how long they are.
*I am working on a "script" introduction.
*This weekend I made a poster for posting around SL...it has an imbeded notecard with more details about the program. The program has been posted on the librarians' google calendar of events and is posted at the reference desk in SL. I'll be asking for notices to go out to groups shortly before we start on the 16th.
*Daisyblue Hefferman gave us a little pot that gives out free hot chocolate. This saved us a little money and a LOT of prims, so if you see her it would be nice to thank her.
*I have arranged the room with stools for the readers to sit on. I also have a "reading to an audience" poseball if you want to use it. I'm trying to set it up so the readers have to move as little as possible, but I need you ALL to take time to visit the library and try and the stools and give me any feedback...now is the time to speak up if you have preferences or concerns.
*my preference would be to meet with each of you individually for just a few minutes to go over the program generally and check out your headsets and sound set up, and then meet as a group either this week or next week for an abbreviated run through. Once I know who is reading what I'll make up an order for the readings.
*I've given you all $300 Lindens to spend on period clothing. Tina and I got some nice dresses from the vendors at Deadwood. Remind me to give you a landmark for Deadwood, or you can do a search for it.

New ideas and staff day presentation

The picture at left is intended to put you in the mood to think about a holiday season programming idea....Ana (Stacy) suggested we try a readers theatre type presentation, and in the process of thinking about that I had an inspiration! (sort of). To keep our program somehow unique and identifiable as a Kansas/Olathe endeavor, how about if we do readings but use some of the real life text left as diaries and memoirs of early Kansas settlers? You can find a ton of this type of material at http://www.kancoll.org/index.php, the Kansas collection of Carrie:an electronic library, which is the digital library created by the University of Kansas. We might want to collaborate with the state library and Topeka on this. We could decorate to our hearts desire in the library, or take it to the colleseum to accomodate more people (although I thi nk we could get a pretty good crowd seated at our own library.) Give it some thought. I talked to Ralph about it and he might even come in world to help out as a reader! I will be emailing you all a sample collection of potential readings.

We are set I think for staff day. We only have a half hour, so there isn't a whole lot we can do with it. I will take about 10 minutes to go through the power point Tina did, then we will introduce ourselves and tour the library, leave a few minutes for Q and A. I would like all of us to be in world if possible, and I think we can do that. You will just have to find a terminal with Sl on it in the library. I will ask that you all wait outside the library and then when I say your name come inside, OK? at the end we can all dance to show them how much fun it can be. If that is ok with everyone. Does this sound ok?

Tonight I started my in-world class, offered through the Univeristy of Illinois library school. Class is every Wednesday night for five weeks, and it is called "Setting Up Your Library in Second Life: an Appliled Approach." This is going to be a truely excellent class. I will have some notes and other stuff and can send you copies via email if you want. Let me know if you would like a copy.

Tallyho!

Idea for Staff Day Presentation

It might be fun to make a game out the presentation. If Lori introduces us and we introduce ourselves from in-world, we could not give our real name, just our avie name. Then we can each talk about what we have been doing in SL. At the end of the presentation, staff can try to figure out who is who, since we haven't told them our real names and we are not in the room. We might want to give out small prizes to whoever can figure it out. Don't have the logistics figured out yet, but thought it sounded like a fun idea.

Leeorie asked me to post some pictures and the only one I have is this old one of me (now i'm a little less....um.....tan). I'll try to come up with something better in the future.

-Ana, aka Stacey

Book discussion; meeting; workshop

Mark your calendars! The inaugural Skytales Book Discussion will be at 4 p.m. SLT (6 p.m. CST) on Oct. 18 at Rachelville. This is a collaborative project with Rocky and Cindy. We will be discussing two picture books that deal with gender issues, and both are controversial - And Tango Makes Three and Uncle Bobby's Wedding. We are hoping for a good crowd and a lively discussion. Stacy (Anastazia in SL) has been helping out with this. The photo shows the sign Rocky came up with....hoping to see it posted around. I put a copy in the OPL library at Talis, and it is also on the events slide show at the reference desk on Info Island.

Don't forget the meeting 10 to 12 on Wednesday, Oct. 15. Stacy and I will be participating from in-world since we will both be at home at the time. Major agenda item will be the staff day presentation....Emily has asked us to show SL. We may not have more than 1/2 hour. What do we want to do? Looking for ideas.

BIG NEWS!!! KCMLIN has asked me to do a workshop on Second Life, tentative date April 28! All who want to help out let me know. We may be doing a full day to let participants set up accounts it they want. KCMLIN is the metro area library association, including both Kansas City library systems, Mid Continent and Johnson County, so this is quite a feather in our caps! I've asked Rocky to help out and he will, circumstances permitting. I'll also be asking Cindy to help, and I'd like to get as many of you involved as possible. I will probably also be seeking input from Abbey Zenith and Lori Junot from the Alliance System in SL. Don't know where the workshop location will be yet. Would be great to have it in Olathe but we probably don't have space.

A REMINDER: you are all invited to comment AND POST to the blog! If you need help let me know. You can experiment with taking and posting pictures. I would LOVE to see some images of someone besides myself! I think you all have permissions to post and publish, but if not I will try and figure it out and fix it.

Later my sweet little avatars!

Update and meeting!

FLASH! Two new objects at the OPL library....on the left is the "reference" kiosk. This is an LM and TP to the reference desk on Info Island. Its part of the Alliance Library System project to provide reference services as close as possible to 24/7 for all libraries that want such service, since none of us is able to provide such service on our own. Its a collaborative project. We help out by my volunteering for a ref. shift every Monday morning. If you would like to volunteer for a ref shift, just let me know and I'll direct you to the right contact.

On the right is an info kiosk for the islands in the Aliance Virtual Library group, with information about AVL. There are LMs to each of the islands in the group.

PLEASE take time to get familiar with these resources, for you own benefit and to assist anyone who may ask about them. Both are provided to us free of charge, by the way.

Stacy/Anastazia and I will be helping with a book disucssion at 4 p.m. SLT (6 p.m. CST) Oct. 18 at Rachelville. The discussion is part of Skytales Book Discussions, created in collaboration with Rocky and Cindy, to discuss children's literature. I think this will be a really fun and interesting series, and its open to all. Thanks Ana for helping with this!

SO when do we meet? Let's shoot for sometime in the first half of October. Please post your optimum times/days as a comment to the blog. We'll compare each others availability and come up with something. Since some of you haven't been there, maybe we can have the meeting this time in the garden at my house? (music and dancing provided!)

Thanks all! See you later inworld or out!

Update

Here I am in my new astronaut suit...pretty cool huh? I got it for an Allilance Virtual Library dance with a "future" theme, then got stuck in a meeting and didn't get there until the dance was over. So I just hung out in the suit for a while.

Still struggling with finding a meeting date. I'm on vacation and will be back at work on Wednesday, Sept. 17. Stacy/Anastazia and I met with Bill/Rocky about the Skytales childrens' literature discussion program and we have several tasks to do in connection with that. If you'd like to get involved get with Stacy or with me. We'll be able to post a sign and notecard at the OPL SL library to promote it, so it is related to OPL's SL project.

Still no word on the author project. Rocky's been swamped and we are still launching the children's book discussion series so I'm not pushing it real hard right now, but will try to meet with Rocky and Cindy in late Oct. to see what our next move will be.

Don't forget to check your Google list to keep updated on SL news and activities. You can also check in on the Metaverse Messenger, that's the SL newspaper the libraries use the most for publicity and it's available free on line.

Tina/Alexandria is putting together a power point for our SL program at the end of the month. All of you are welcome to participate in that program if you want. A short power point will be followed by in world touring. We'll be using a projector at the ICB meeting room.

More later. Have fun in world!

Next meeting.....

Below is another just for fun photo....exploring the new classical music sim with Rocky and HollyJean.

We need to set up another meeting date and time....do you want to shoot for a Tuesday again? I know we have all been swamped with one thing or another, and I am on vacation the first two weeks in September (darn! Missing Old Settlers AGAIN! :( ....) So how about Tuesday Sept. 23? From 10 a.m. to noon? We may have to futz around with meeting times and dates with all the scheduling changes.

Also, heads up, Stacy is joining us. Her in world name is Anastasia Bookmite, so if you get a friend invite from someone by that name you could probably safely accept :) I'm meeting with Stacy for a bit this week privately to bring her up to speed.

Quick update....still awaiting word from Hoy re: book talk in Second Life. We may end up having to find a different author. I'm open to suggestions....I know Ralph has been reading a new book by a Kansas author about sustainable agriculture, so that is a possibility.

In the meantime, I am working with Rocky and Cindy on a series of discussions of children's literature and we are starting out with two picture books that address gender roles: "And Tango Makes Three" and "Uncle Bobby's Wedding." If you would like to get involved in this project let me know.

ALSO if you have a hankering for some in-world activities, let me know and I will help coordinate. There are all sorts of classes and book discussions all the the time...it's just a matter of knowing where and when. And of course I'm still looking for ideas for displays/exhibits/digital collections for our library!

Open house final report

Sorry I didn't get any pictures at the open house...I was a little nervous cause I was responsible for the introductions etc. Sara was able to come, and I'm guessing there may have been 15 people there...a smaller turnout than I had expected, but it was our first time for this event. The presentations were extremely interesting and I learned a lot about our neighbors on Talis. Our sim manager Teo arranged for a DJ for danceing after the program. Here is the final text I used for the presentation about our project:


My Second Life name is Leeorie Alter and in real life I am a reference librarian in the adult services department of Olathe Public Library. We are a mid-sized library in a metro area just outside Kansas City in the U.S., and those of us on the adult services staff do a little bit of everything, including collection development and maintenance and programming as well as staffing the reference desk.
I became interested in SL a little over a year ago after reading about it and became even more intrigued after hearing about how libraries were becoming active here. Initially I came in just to look around, with hopes that my library might eventually be interested in an SL presence. But when spots became available on the new Talis Cybrary Island sim, I took the chance my library would eventually back me up and committed us to a project here. In May we received formal backing from my library to experiment with this project and established a committee.
Members of this committee are myself, Sadie Ecksol (who in real life is our Library Specialist for Electronic Resources); Hyen Lowe, who is our Support Services Tech Extradonaire, adult services librarian Alexandria Gumbo; young adult librarian Tasmine Andel; children’s librarian Anastasia Bookmite; and Mary Linse, support services supervisor.
It is still a work in progress. Like so many others, we are inventing what library services mean in a virtual environment……particularly for public libraries. While we explore what is possible in Second Life, we are also offering interested staff members a chance to explore the possibilities and enjoy the richness of the network possibilities. Our most exciting project to date is a collaboration with the State Library of Kansas and the Topeka-Shawnee County Kansas public library to bring a Kansas author into Second Life for a program. We hope to have that program this fall, along with related exhibits at the library here on Talis, where you will also find information about the real life Olathe Public Library as well as links to our catalog and additional information about the community.
We hope you will take time to visit us and take a look around. I would be happy to answer questions during the break.

Text of open house presentation

Here is the text of the presentation I'll be giving at the open house on Sunday. Please leave comments or email me with suggested revisions, changes etc.

"My Second Life name is Leeorie Alter and in real life I am a reference librarian in the adult services department of Olathe Public Library. We are a mid-sized library, and those of us on the adult services staff do a little bit of everything, including collection development and maintenance and programming as well as staffing the reference desk.

I became interested in SL a little over a year ago after reading about it and became even more intrigued after hearing about how libraries were becoming active here. Initially I came in just to look around, with hopes that my library might eventually be interested in an SL presence. But when spots became available on the new Talis Cybrary Island sim, I took the chance my library would eventually back me up and committed us to a project here. In May I received formal backing from my library to experiment with this project.

It is still a work in progress. Like so many others, we are inventing what library services mean in a virtual environment……particularly for public libraries. While we explore what is possible in Second Life, we are also offering interested staff members a chance to explore the possibilities and enjoy the richness of the network possibilities. Our most exciting project to date is a collaboration with the State Library of Kansas and the Topeka-Shawnee County Kansas public library to bring a Kansas author into Second Life for a program. We hope to have that program this fall, along with related exhibits at the library here on Talis, where you will also find information about the real life Olathe Public Library as well as links to our catalog and additional information about the community.

We hope you will take time to visit us and take a look around. I would be happy to answer questions during the break.

Open house plans

Open house on Talis sim (including the OPL building) will begin at 4 p.m. SLT (6 p.m. our time) on Wednesday, Aug. 13. All residents of the island, including US, will give short presentations at the colleseum, followed by a half hour break from 6 to 6:30 SLT (8 to 8:30 our time) for tours and ending with dancing beginning at 7 p.m SLT (9 p.m. our time).

Please try to be there at least for the presentation part of it. I would think you could count this as work time. I'll present for our library but it would be really nice to introduce you all, and the presentations should be really interesting. some of the presentations may be in voice (including ours) so be sure and have your headphones handy. If you don't have SL at home, maybe you could take a laptop home with you? I will be setting up here in the board room if anyone would like to join me there.

open house at my crib!

I'm switching houses...will still be on the same land, but putting up a different cottage. So to say goodbye to my old house I'm having an open house Friday starting at 6 p.m SLT. ALL are welcome...there will, of course, be dancing and a chance to poke around in my SL stuff....

In other news: last night Rocky helped me set the land so that the library would show up when someone does a search. The way I had it set, we showed up as a group but not as a library. He suggested we also change the description so that "Kansas City" and "Johnson County" also become key words. Haven't done that yet.

AND don't forget the Talis open house is Aug. 13 starting at 4 p.m. slt (6 p.m. Central time). I'll need to check with you all at some point to see who can be there.

Art Work

Last week i was able to get the two peices of art from the Main branch into SL. I left everyone with access to move them if you want to practice moving objects or if you find a better place for them.

SL weekend

his Thought I would share with you another wacko weekend in SL. Most times I forget to take photos, but this weekend I remembered! At left is Saturday night's pajama party at the Den. The Den is the lounge adjacent to the reference desk on Info Island. We are doing a Greek line dance. That black smudge in the middle is Krull, who always appears as a black cat.
On the right is Sunday evening's "wear white" dance at the Jazz Cat on Info Island.
Below are links to two videos: the first is of the Bookbinders Ball on Friday. This is an annual Info Island event....not sure of its origin, but this year the theme was "come as your favorite Shakespeare character, actor or play." The second video is just for fun! There were also two staff meetings, including one that was an update on Alliance Library collections; an open house and benefit for Doctors without Borders; a RezLibris magazine staff meeting. Gosh darn, just ran out of time to mow the lawn.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e79O5xQ5Czw
http://www.youtube.com/user/bourgery

project update

I am posting a copy of the email we came up with for our author, Jim Hoy. I am going to start spending some time getting our exhibits ready. Let me know if you have the time and inclination to help!

Dear Dr. Hoy.
Not long ago you received correspondence from Roy Bird at the KansasCenter for the Book inquiring about the possibility of yourparticipation in a unique Kansas-inspired presentation. We arecontacting you to follow up on that inquiry.
"We" are Bill Sowers, Kansas Documents Librarian at the State Libraryof Kansas, Diana Sowers, Acquisitions, Topeka-Shawnee County PublicLibrary and Lorie Hyten, Reference Librarian and Second Life projectCoordinator, Olathe Public Library, Olathe, Ks.
At present, we represent the only Kansas libraries with a presence inthe virtual reality world of Second Life. We are hoping tocollaborate on projects that will highlight Kansas and educate thenational and international residents of Second Life regarding Kansas'unique history, resources and culture.
We are asking you to consider speaking at a program inside SecondLife. The program would be sponsored by our three institutions as wellas the Kansas Center for the Book. We envision related exhibits at ourSecond Life libraries emphasizing aspects of Kansas natural andcultural history Your expertise in the history of Kansas and yourspecial knowledge of the Flint Hills and its cowboy culture would bean ideal topic for SL residents who come from all over the world aswell as the American Midwest. The presentation may also be shown in"real life" (via a projector hooked up to the Internet) in Olathe.
This entire project may sound outlandish to you! Please be assuredthere is a vital and active library community in Second Life, andauthor presentations are common. Kurt Vonnegut is among many who havestepped inside the virtual world to make new friends and fans. Otherauthors include Howard Rheingold and Cory Doctorow.
Such programs involve setting the speaker up with an "avatar" and amicrophone for speaking and responding to questions. You would notneed prior experience with Second Life to participate. We would bepleased to take care of all the details to make this as easy andenjoyable for you as possible. In fact, you may participate seated inyour own office! One of would also be willing to come down to Emporiaduring your presentation to trouble shoot if any technical problemsarose.We would be happy to come to Emporia to give you a brief introductionto Second Life and its various wonders! We hope you will seriouslyconsider this invitation to join us in a celebration of the state thisSeptember.
Thank you,Lorie HytenBill SowersDiana Sowers

Learning new stuff

I was lucky to have the day off today and was able to attend a one-hour session on "advanced SL" with Wilbur Smith, CEO of Learning Times, as the presenter. A freind gave me some photos of the event, but I couldn't find a way to convert the file to a format that would work on the blog....so my substitute is this one, showing me at the Info Island reference desk asking reference desk volunteer Gareth Osaka if he knows how I can convert it. Gareth was very helpful, but ultimately I couldn't make it work.

The session was extremely good. Smith was an excellent low key, fun presenter who didn't seem to mind answering even the most basic questions, and I picked up some good info as well as a few useful freebies. Perhaps at our next meeting I can share what I learned about settings in preferences that affect how well SL works for you. Cleared up a problem I'd been having for WEEKS!!!!

There are lots of these kinds of sessions....some educational, some more recreational. You can check and see whats on tap (including parties and dances) if you go to the SL Librarians blog and check the calendar: http://infoisland.org/
There's a lot of good stuff on this blog, so you might want to add it to your RSS feed. And there are so many events its the only way I can keep track.

AUTHOR PROJECT: Rocky and Cindy are are work dissecting the letter I drafted to go to Jim Hoy...anxiously waiting to see what they come up with in the way of revisions, as I was nearly brain dead at the time I wrote it. Hard to ask someone to participate in an SL presentation when they don't know you OR SL.

RENT UPDATE: Checked with Teo....we are rent free until March 2009, when our annual rent will go to $100. Not a lot, but we do need make sure this is a viable project if we want to make a case for continued funding.

Projects update and misc.

Projects: I had a very productive meeting with Cindy and Rocky this weekend. As you may or may not recall, this project with the State Library of Kansas, Topeka-Shawnee County Public Library and the Kansas Center for the Book, calls for a Kansas author presentation in Second Life. Roy Bird, head of the Kansas Center for the Book, has contacted Jim Hoy of Emporia State University, with a request to be our presenter.
Hoy's book, "Flint Hills Cowboys: Tales of the Tallgrass Prairie" was a 2007 Kansas Notable Book. I understand he is a very entertaining speaker. At Emporia he is an English professor and the director of the Center for Great Plains Studies.
So far, the plan is for Olathe to develop related exhibits about the Hyer Boot Company and about the Mahaffie Stagecoach Shop. Cindy is looking into doing an exhibit on rail road history in Kansas. Rocky will probably do something on Kansas geology and perhaps the natural history of prairies. Rocky also knows a Fort Hays State University earth sciences professor who is also in Second Life and may assist with an exhibit and perhaps also give a presentation.
Each of our exhibits will refer visitors to the other two, and so promote all three organizations as well as a the Kansas Center for the Book and probably also the Center for Great Plains Studies.
The three of us will be drafting a letter to send to Hoy seeking his participation. We may also need to plan a trip to Emporia to introduce him in person to SL. The author programs I have seen so far (when the author is not already in SL) involve setting up an avatar for the presenter and getting them set up with a microphone for voice, so all they have to do is talk into the microphone and answer questions. They don't need to move their avatars around if they don't want to, nor do they need to establish an account.
We don't know yet if we would need to come up with a payment for the presenter.
We are looking at having the exhibits up well ahead of the presentation, and having the presentation possibly in September.
SO, your involvement, to the extent you want to be involved, is needed in the following areas:
*Mahaffie Farmsted exhibit (slideshow with photos, notecards and links and MAYBE some objects on dipslay if our prims allow it. Means selecting images to use and writing up or cutting and pasting the info into notecards)
*Hyer Boot story (same as above)
*Publicity...both "in world" and also in the real life (RL) library?
Much of this work doesn't need to be done in-world. Learning to set up a slide show might take an hour. Most of the work will be finding the images, making sure we permission to use them, and writing up the notecards that accompany the images.
Be thinking about this....you can put comments, suggestions, ideas etc. on the blog pending our next meeting.

OPEN HOUSE: I am involved in planning an open house for our sim, Talis Cybrary Island. Don't have a date yet. Each of the residents would give a short presentation on their projects, followed by mingling, a dance and GONDOLA RACES! It would be awesome if as many of you as possible could attend. More on this later.

WEB MONITORS AND PHOTOS IN THE LIBRARY: I need some help decided what links we want on our web monitors and also need some photos for the library walls. Steve is going to take pictures and photoshop the big mural in the library and the Kansas prairie woman picture, and maybe the children's storytime room quilt. I need help from ALL of you selecting other photos that show OPL in action. Stacy, could you look through kids program photos and suggest two or three? Angela, could you do the same for teens? Sara and Tina....help me sort through other photos?

NEXT MEETING: how did the Tuesday 10 a.m. to noon work for you all? Shall we try that again? and what date?

DON'T FORGET to try and steal some time to do some exploring on your own, PARTICULARLY libraries and museums. Be sure and visit Info International and the reference desk there. I am always happy to help, so don't hesitate to call on me. :)

cooperative reference services

Please read the following notice carefully. The Alliance Library System, which operates Info Island and coordinates library developments in SL, has proposed pooling resources to offer 24/7 reference service. This is a very important initiative. It may not be practical for us to participate at this time, but we will want to discuss this at a future meeting. Just FYI, I am a volunteer on the Info Island reference staff and have a two-hour shift each week. As such, I am a sort of unofficial representative of our SL library:

Consortial Reference Services

The Alliance Virtual Library, the innovator in reference services is pleased to invite you and your organization to partner with us in the development of a network to offer collaborative virtual reference services.

Reference was one of the first services started by the Alliance Virtual Library in SL, just over two years ago. It was a small, somewhat ad hoc service with four regular volunteers, covering about six hours of time a week. The vision was, and continues to be, to provide a generalist reference desk that could serve patrons arriving 24/7. By the end of 2006 we've grown to cover 80 hours a week, with around 38 regular volunteers, each covering a two hour shift. We help in the neighborhood of 300 patrons a week at present. The volunteers vary from MLS librarians to allied professions to paraprofessionals to friends of the library (i.e. classic library volunteer).

Our service has succeeded for a number of reasons. The foremost is presence. The presence of a live reference service person surprises and delights people and they do keep coming back. The success of our service depends entirely on our volunteers. They aren't employees; they are people working for their love of libraries.

More and more libraries are working to establish a presence in SL, and reference will be the flagship service they will want to offer. The success of a new venture might very well depend on that key element; a live presence to assist the patrons. Also, many individuals seeking to obtain permission and funding to begin a library in SL are often met with roadblocks having to do with this same service issue.

If you agree that there is enormous benefit to all concerned, your next questions must be, what must I do, and how will my library benefit. Collaborative virtual reference partners pledge time (ideally a two hour weekly shift) or other support to help expand the centralized reference services at Info International. In exchange the Alliance Virtual Library will offer your patrons a direct link to our services via intersim teleporters, landmarks, and notecards to be placed in your library in a unified kiosk. In development is a group of mentors for new libraries and librarians in SL. Also planned are programs targeted to help libraries create a viable and valuable presence in second life. Participation also offers a chance to make your presence more viable and to produce statistical proof for their home institutions and administrators.

We believe the goal of collaborative virtual reference to expand the live library services may be one of the most important things we will do. Please contact one of the Alliance Virtual Library staff members to discuss this concept at length. We are eager to begin our partnership with you.

Hypatia Dejavu - Reference Services Coordinator

Teofila Matovav - New Librarians/Library Group

Sonja Morgwain - New Librarians/Library Group

Abbey Zenith - Director of Library Services

New furniture!

Steve/Hyen and I did a little shopping today (Tuesday, July 1) and bought some new living room furniture for the seating area. The store we shopped at is a new one specializing in ultra low prim furniture, and much more stylish than the stuff we had before. Steve and I liked it....stop in and see what you think. The menus on the furniture don't seem to be working correctly tho, so I will contact the designer to see if he can fix them.

Meeting addendum

The image above was taking Thursday night while I was exploring New Toulouse during the New Toulouse Library grand opening party. This is an area to put on your list of interesting places to visit....it is based on Louisiana/New Orleans style and building, lots of quality building, neat details, interesting shops and artists.

Actually wrote up some follow up stuff from the meeting yesterday to go with that heading "great meeting but what happend to the agenda" but then accidently deleted it! Arrggghhhh....

Is this blog working for you all for communication, or would you rather receive emails? Also, please consider posting something about your "adventures" in SL....share your insights, places you were impressed with, tips you pick up etc.

With the holiday weekend coming up etc. I suggest we not meet for a couple of weeks but instead I would encourage you all to try and set aside AT LEAST TWO HOURS for exploring etc. The next time we meet I'm hoping we can get started on identifying specific projects and goals, but that means you will have to continue doing some learning on your own. Any time you are in SL a great place to go for assistance and to meet really cool library folks is the reference desk at Info International.

GROUP JOINING: I strongly encourage you to stop by Info International and join at least one of the library groups listed there....you will get in-world notices of events etc. I belong to Second Life Librarians, Kansas Librarians in SL, Informaniacs, Info Groupies and Caledon Libraries.

How did the day/time work for you all? Shall we plan to meet again at the same time on a Tuesday? I have meetings on the 8th and 15th, so I wouldn't be able to do it on a Tuesday until
July 22. Is that too long?

If you want me to meet with you "in world" for practice sessions, explorationg etc. just let me know.

6/26/08 Meeting minutes

Lorie Hyten, Tina Barnes, Steve Nielson, Angela Parks, Sara Eccles
(first attempt at using voice chat to conduct a meeting. Getting settings up and going initially took some time but otherwise it seemed to work quite well. “in-world” location was the OPL library.)

Agreed the revised mission statement and goals will suffice for now. Lorie will see about getting the revision to sim manager Teo.

Lorie will be meeting with Bill and Cindy Sowers (Rocky and Cindy) probably early next week to discuss the collaborative project between OPL and the state library and Topeka.

The new visitor counter seems to be working but Lorie and Sonja are still testing it to see if it is reporting the right numbers.

Rocky stopped in for a brief visit and complained about there being no donuts.

Everyone seems to have received their invite for the SL Librarians Google Group.

No action taken on the web links, slide shows, photo uploads or interior decoration and no date set for a grand opening party. The committee spent much of the meeting practicing new skills.

Great meeting! But what happened to the agenda?

new draft mission statement and goals

Here is a revised copy of the mission statement and goals for the SL Library. I've changed some of the goals around to more easily identify them with action steps from the strategic plan:

June 23, 2008 (draft)
Mission of the Olathe Public Library
Effective date: October24, 1994
(Excerpt from Olathe Public Library Administrative Policy Manual)
The Library actively pursues a role as the primary information center in the community. Accurate and useful information is provided to the citizenry through the use of technology and resources materials. Further emphasis is placed upon young children and their families through materials and services which will encourage reading and lifelong learning.
(The Second Life branch of the Library focuses on services for adults only, although many services and resources are intended to benefit families.)

Goals of the Second Life branch of the Olathe Public Library:
To promote the services and resources of the Olathe Public Library.
To explore and experiment with the potential of Second Life for providing library services and resources.
To take advantage of the opportunities for staff to learn new technologies and to collaborate, network and share with librarians from all over the world. (Objective 7.4, Action Step 6)
To enhance computer services to customers through technology (Objective 7.2)

headsets

Steve got us headsets so we can try them out. You will need to set your preferences to enable voice chat. We can fiddle with it some Thursday but I don't want to take up a lot of meeting time with it....would rather work with each of you individually. Let me know if you need help figureing out the preferences settings.

PARTEEEEE!!!

A party is in the planning stages for our sim, Talis Cybrary Island. As it's being discussed now, this would be a sim-wide open house in July, probably including an opportunity for each resident of the sim to give a brief presentation about their projects. Probably be some gondola races so get out there and try them out! More on this later.

Speaking of parties, I think it would be great to have a grand opening at OPL. I've been putting off making a general announcement of our new status on the list in hopes we could also announce the grand opening, but we're really not ready for a celebration just yet so I'll go ahead and make the general announcement in the next few days.

We have two new neighbors (new sim residents) and I can't tell you a whole lot about either of them yet....they are the James A. Kirkpatrick Library of the University of Central Missouri; and Hypatia Pickens and her "Robbins Library." According to her profile, Pickens is a college professor and she is trying to get her university to establish a presence in Second Life.

We also have a new sim teleport board and on it our name is changed from the generic Olathe to Olathe Pub. Lib.!!!!! Yippee!

Olathe notecard

Last night Rocky helped me set up a "notecard giver," an object you click on, it offers to give you a notecard, and you can read and discard the notecard or stash it in your inventory. Here is a DRAFT notecard I put it the notecard giver today, just so we would have something. Take a look andb please make any suggested changes as a comment on this post. We can decide on a final version at the meeting and then run it by Emily for approval:

Welcome to the Second Life branch of the Olathe Public Library!

Olathe is a growing suburban community of about 122,500 people, located 20 miles southwest of downtown Kansas City, and is the 4th largest city in the state of Kansas. Our public library serves nearly 94,000 card holders through our two branches. In 2007 staff answered nearly 80,000 reference questions. Our collection stands at more than 290,500 items and our circulation in 2007 was 1,332,800!

In Second Life we hope to expand and enhance our services while offering staff an exciting opportunity join the global library community active in this information-rich virtual environment. Please feel free to drop us a notecard with any comments or questions, and come back often to see what we are up too!

Our official Library Vision is to: “meet the lifelong informational, educational and recreational needs of the community through quality services and resources.”

Google list

You should all have received an invite from Lori Bell to join the alliancelibrary google group. This is a list serv for SL librarians and includes announcements of all kinds and sometimes discussion threads of interest. If you did not receive an invite please let me know.

Mission Statement and Goals

Feb. 27, 2008 (draft)
Goals of the Second Life branch of the Olathe Public Library
To promote the services and resources of the Olathe Public Library.
To explore and experiment with the potential of Second Life for providing services and resources to Olathe Library patrons.
To explore and experiment with the potential of Second Life for providing library services and resources to the larger library community.
To take advantage of the opportunities for learning, and to collaborate, network and share with librarians from all over the world.
Lorie Hyten/Leeorie Alter
Reference
Olathe Public Library


Mission of the Olathe Public Library
Effective date: October 25, 1994
(Excerpt from Olathe Public Library Administrative Policy Manual)
The Library actively pursues a role as the primary information center in the community. Accurate and useful information is provided to the citizenry through the use of technology and resource materials. Further emphasis is placed upon young children and their families through materials and services which will encourage reading and lifelong learning. In addition, the Library features current, high-demand materials of popular interest for users of all ages in various formats.
(A branch library in Second Life will focus on services for adults only. LH 2/23/08)

directions to the library

Can't remember if I have given you the landmark to the library, so I am dropping one in your inventories. Because of the sim construction you can't teleport directly to the library...you will be dropped at the landing site and a teleport board is nearby. Click on the Olathe on the board.

I am also giving you a landmark to my house. It will drop you in the living room. Please feel free to set my house to "home" if you wish. You can return there before logging off so that when you log on again you are in my living room. If you want to explore (I have a very nice yard and garden!) click on the front door to go out the front way....for the back go to the stained glass window and click onthe "kiss."

Accept blog invite! and another question....

I'm showing only two people have accepted the invitation to blog....you need to accept that invitation so you can post and publish, and that will be essential for keeping track as we work on projects. The invites have gone to your Gmail accounts. Let me know if you think you should have received one and haven't. It's super easy to publish.

VISITOR COUNTER:

Sonja Morgwain has installed our visitor counter, but I need to get with her figure out all its bells and whistles. It will count how many UNIQUE visitors we get, and also total number of visitors, then send me a report periodically via email. We can exclude ourselves from the count....I need to know your thoughts on this so Sonja can help me make the changes. In order to keep an accurate count we need to decide one way or the other SOON so if you could leave your comment on the blog it would be GREATLY APPRECIATED!

update and staff lounge

I THINK I have invited all committee members to become contributors...if you didn't get that invite, let me know and I will resend. It means you can post to the blog, and please do so whenever the spirit moves you.

I've set up a 'lounge" are in the library for staff to use. we can leave it or get rid of it in favor of using the space for something else, but I do suggest we need a private place for altering appearance (changing clothes). I bought some low prim pillow furniture for the lounge, but it is for ALL of us so we can change it to be whatever you (collectively) want. The pillows have some cool poses, just click them and select sit or relax or whatever. The beanbag chair has multiple poses so if you click on it select Touch and it will offer you a menu. I think all the pillows are also modifiable so the colors/textures can be changed. And I put that rug down cause I had it, but we can use something else or nothing at all....it's up to you!!!

Please pardon the image accompanying this post....I meant to insert a snapshot of the lounge but screwed up and then couldn't figure out how to delete the image. HOWEVER, this is a REALLY good book....cross any nonfiction book on early explorations of the arctic with anything by Stephen King or Dean Koontz, and this is kind of what you get.....I highly recommend it.

experiment with photo

Here I am on my horse, William, who is a Shire. So his name is WillShire.

Welcome!

Welcome to OPL in SL! Check back often as I am hoping this will replace emails to a great extent! Please place your comments, suggestions etc. here unless you need more privacy. And check daily if you can.