Friday, November 21, 2008

CAL SLIG Now on Colorado Association of Libraries Website!


I cannot believe that I haven't posted anything yet on the new Colorado Association of Libraries Second Life Interest Group (CAL SLIG). I guess when you're busy in the middle of something, it can still slip under the radar.

My co-presenter at CAL '08, and friend, Eileen Dumas, and I have been working on forming a new Second Life library; in addition to creating a new library beneficial to Second Life residents, we wanted this library to be a way for Colorado librarians to become more involved in Second Life.

The first step was to formulate a library concept. With so many Colorado libraries (including my library, the Mancos Public Library) building green buildings, and no libraries in Second Life currently of this type, 'green' was a natural fit. Eileen and I worked on a mission statement for the library, and the Sustainable Living Library was born.

We then needed to explore a way to excite interest in the project amongst Colorado librarians. After speaking with a few librarians, we were pointed to Martin Garnar, then the President of CAL. I had recently met Martin at a Town Hall meeting, so I felt comfortable 'cold calling' him. He was wonderful, and enthusiastic about the project. He recommended coming to the November Board meeting and presenting a proposal to start an Interest Group.

To start an interest group, a statement of purpose needs to be drafted, explaining what the benefit is of forming the group. Also, a petition with 8 signatures of CAL members needs to be attached. Being scattered all over the state, getting the signatures posed a problem at first, but we finally ended up with 15!

At the board meeting, our proposal was greeted by much excitement. Some people even wanted us to further our scope into other virtual worlds! It was discussed that if this initial project is sucessful, a Virtual Worlds Division of CAL would be considered.

Voting was conducted, and the board returned an unanimous vote in favor of forming the Second Life Interest Group. I just found out today that SLIG now has it's own page on the CAL website. We're official!