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!

CAL Leadership Institute

I'd like to share a bit with you about the new Colorado Association of Libraries Leadership Institute. In it's inaugural year, 25 Colorado librarians were chosen to participate in this year long program. A co-worker of mine from the Mancos Public Library and I were lucky to have been chosen for this Institute. Over the course of the next year, we'll be making 4 trips to Denver, and participating in virtual sessions in between. We will be learning about Colorado librarianship, and how to take part as a leader.

Our first session coincided with the CAL Annual Conference. Pat Wagner, of Pattern Research, led the first session, and was amazing. While I've met Pat before, I have never attended any of her talks or workshops. She created three group activities, the first of which began the 'bonding' process with all of the members. Her energy, examples, and stories made the workshop content easy to understand and fun! This was a great way to start the Institute, and the group activities were a fun and informal way to meet and learn about the other members.

Our member group has a wide range of experience, education, come from all types of libraries and have many different job descriptions. What's better, everyone is excited to learn and get the most out of the Institute. I've already had several conversations with some of the other members, and we've all found common ground. The networking opportunities alone make this Institute worth it.

And our Leadership Institute Task Force members - not only are they a great bunch of smart and fun people, they are all library leaders themselves! We will have a lot to learn from them in the next year.

Something I love about the Institute is our online group Ning. It is a wonderful way to communicate with the other institute members. Most of the members are many hours away by car, so in the times in between face-to-face workshops, I can still chat with them about Leadership topics and other things.

Another thing that I love, is that I'm in this with a co-worker, Charlene Swansen. Being from such a remote area of Colorado, we have someone readily available to discuss the Institute; we can really talk in-depth easily, and quickly bounce ideas and thoughts off each other.

Here is a picture of our Leadership members, taken on the day of our first session:

Jessamyn "Librarian.Net" Blogger at CAL Annual Conference

Last week I had the pleasure of hearing librarian, blogger, and techie Jessamyn West speak at the CAL annual Conference. She spoke about open libraries; how through using Web2.0 tools, libraries are creating a culture of transparency and what this means to us and our patrons.

She was a very entertaining speaker, and got some non-tech people revved up about what 2.0 tools they could implement at their libraries.

And, I even got to meet her afterwards! :-)

She has posted the notes and slides from the keynote on her blog, Librarian.Net.

Jessamyn, thanks for coming to CAL!

Cell Phone Fail

Well, for the first time today I attempted to transfer pictures taken on my phone, to my computer. I've never had a phone that takes pictures (Remember: Rural), so I've never had the joy of transferring pics.

Joy?!? Total FAIL.

Here's Why:

• No USB - What?!?


• Phone does Not Automatically Save to Micro Disk - I went through the process of taking out my micro SD card, putting it in the larger SD adapter, finally found the removeable memory... No pictures! Duh.


• No Mass Move - There is no option on my phone to move pictures to the micro disk all at once. You. must. move. each picture. individually. Ouch.


• 4 Pics to a Screen - I have 157 pictures on my camera (Yes, I have been procrastinating, my bad.). To remove the pictures, one by one, I must scroll through Multiple screens of 4 pictures each. Double Ouch!


• TIME! - It took me about 1/2 hour to transfer 23 pictures. Wah.


• Attention Drain - I'm used to multitasking. I Deal. But with the image to card transfer so labor intensive, I'm working with just one hand. I get distracted. This is not a good thing.


• No Dating of Images - Again, what?!?

Enough of the rant. Now that I have gotten this far with the pictures, I have to put them to some use. *Sigh* ;-P

Photo: Thanks, CNET!

ALA Tech Source Interview

I was recently interviewed by Tom Peters for the ALA Tech Source Blog. Tom and I are working together with other librarians across the globe on a 'green' sim project in the virtual world of Second Life.

This interview, however, focuses on my real life library, Mancos Public Library, and our Leadership in Energy and Environment Design (LEED) building project.

As Tom points out in the article, it is a wonderful thing when Second Life [and all social networking sites] gets us out there and communicating with other librarians and people that we may not usually meet. Living in a remote rural area, networking is naturally limited; the Internet is a crumbler of those barriers.

Long live the Interwebs!!!

Please read Mancos PL Builds Green to hear more about MPL's journey through building a green library.

My Upcoming Activities at CAL '08

Gearing up for several events at the Colorado Association of Libraries (CAL) Annual Conference has me speeding around in a blur!

Besides collaborating on a presentation for the conference (Everybody Needs a Second Life!) with Eileen Dumas of the Aurora Public Library, we are preparing a proposal to the CAL board to start a Second Life Interest Group (SLIG). The general buzz behind the scenes sounds good, so we are very hopeful. Eileen and I are starting a new model for a Second Life library - a state association backed library! As far as we know, there are no other state library associations out there owning their own virtual world library. Also, within Second Life, our library is a new concept. The Sustainable Living Library will focus on all things 'green' and sustainability. While there is one sim in SL focused on the environment, and various exhibits scattered around, there is no one library focused on sustainable living.

If the Interest Group is formed, CAL will be partnering with the Alliance Library System of Illinois and TAP Information Services, a library consulting firm from Missouri. CAL, Alliance, and TAP will be working together to form the Emerald City sim, and entire island in Second Life devoted to all things 'green'. The Sustainable Living Library will find it's home on Emerald City, and will be the main library on the sim.

Exciting prospect!

While in Denver, I will also be participating in the inaugural "CAL Leadership Institute" (CALLI). 25 CAL members were chosen for this year long institute; sessions will be held in person and virtually. Wo0T! This makes it possible for participants like me in a rural area (8 hours away from Denver) to attend and benefit. The first session begins the day before the conference. Looking forward to learning and meeting all my fellow CALLI members!

And if that ain't enough, I'm actually going to have to squeeze in attendance at the various conference sessions... lol

National Gaming Day @ MPL!

At the Mancos Public Library, it has been decided to participate in the ALA's National Gaming Day!

Currently, we have a Dungeons and Dragons club that plays the game weekly in our meeting room; however, the library has not hosted any kind of gaming event for our community.

We're really looking forward to participating in the National Gaming Day event on Saturday, November 15. We will be playing games at two venues, the Library and the Mancos Community Center, from 10 am to 3 pm.

Games to be played tentatively include:

• Wii


• Twister


• Monopoly


• Akoha


• Various card games, and


• a Second Life demo!

I am really excited about this event. For a while, I've been trying to go beyond the Dungeons and Dragons gaming, but I hadn't quite figured it out. Once the ALA NGD was announced, I formulated a quick proposal, and everyone said yes when I presented the idea at our weekly staff meeting.

To organize the day, we are collaborating online, on our staff portal. All interested staff will list what game they would like to host, and any other ideas or comments that they have about the project.

Photo: Thanks, ALA!