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!