Literature in Second Life

The librarians are at it again - gearing up for the latest round of conferences focused on introducing attendees to educational places/builds in Second Life.

Last month's Stepping into History conference was successful and introduced attendees to Babylonian and Renaissance themed sims, as well as a 'Virtual Harlem' and 'Land of Lincoln'.

In August, attendees will venture to Literature themed sims, and find such fascinating builds such as a reading of Poe's 'The Raven' in a dark, spooky house in the sky, and a recreation of scenes from Carroll's 'Alice in Wonderland'. For more information and to register, visit the Stepping Into series site.

Google Adds New Searching Algorithm

Wow! Google has announced the addition of a new algorithm to their searches - they now have the ability to search text in Flash!

This is great news for web developers - instead of having to create regular text information as backup to Flash pages, they will now be able to solely integrate text into their Flash...

You can read Google's blog post here.

Slide Show of Second Life Presentation

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Second Life Presentation

I presented an introduction to Second Life to the Southwest CO Librarian's group on Tuesday. There were twelve librarians in attendance, and I enjoyed presenting very much! They all seemed interested in SL, and asked great questions.

I gave an overview of what Second Life is, and then spoke about things librarians can do in SL. We then did an in-world demo (and got logged out by a sim reboot just as we were starting to dance with another avatar!), and I wrapped up with some real life statistics on Second Life.

All in all, I was pleased with the presentation and how it went. Nervous beforehand turned into an adrenaline rush afterwards which lingered 'til I went to bed. :)

Way Cool - First Interplanetary Library

You can't get more rural than Mars, can you?!?

From Resouce Shelf
May 25, 2008 at 7:28 am · Filed under Libraries and Librarianship, Science, Search News

First Interplanetary Library Will Land on Mars

The Planetary Society’s Visions of Mars DVD aboard Phoenix will land on Mars on May 25, 2008. This first of NASA’s Scout missions is led by Principal Investigator Peter Smith at the University of Arizona. Attached to the deck of the Phoenix lander, the DVD includes a collection of 19th and 20th century science fiction stories, essays and art inspired by the Red Planet, as well as the names of more than a quarter million inhabitants of Earth.
…
Visions of Mars – the first library on Mars – contains materials that represent 20 nations and cultures. Visions of Mars includes works by The Planetary Society’s co-founder Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Kim Stanley Robinson, Arthur C. Clarke, Percival Lowell and many more.

Source: The Planetary Society

Photo Credit: BlueDharma

Experimenting with Diigo

I've just signed up for Diigo, a true social bookmarking tool in beta. It takes the social aspect of bookmarking a step up from del.icio.us, and has an interface similar to other social sites, such as Facebook.

You can do the traditional social things such as finding friends, seeing what they bookmark, send messages, etc. An aspect of Diigo that I'm looking forward to using is the annotation feature - you can highlight text on the bookmarked page and make notes/comments on the highlighted area. From the social end, you can see what others have annotated on their saved bookmarks, share, and I believe, make comments on others annotations.

Cool! I'll share more once I have a little time to experiment.

Peace, Love & Wifi

Peace Love Wifi (free) - Decatur, GA

Originally posted by Tame the Web by Michael Stephens.