I'm rather behind with Week 6. I saw the Four Corner's program when it was first aired as Doug and I basically watch most 4 corner's programs that we are interested in unless going out to a concert/film etc, and don't get around to taping it. My first impression was 'boys with toys' and how clumsy a lot of it looked. Today I looked at the slides mentioned on our library blog, briefly looked at bits of the interviews with the other people that Ticky Fullerton interviewed and had a look at a segment that the ACRL put on Second Life. I think almost especially because I am reading a book about the Alaskan composer John Luther Adams I am finding it very hard to take the atrocious musac that accompanies the couple of Second Life sites I looked at. My first impression of the ACRL which was created for a conference poster session was that there are probably some useful sites that are out there but this wasn't one of them. I couldn't believe how clumsy and clunky the whole thing looked. Looking at porn (of course depending on how skillfully and artfully done!!!) was becoming quite an attractive temptation...

I'm sure there are some good library sites out there and I will look at other people's blogs in our group. I do feel rather a Luddite with this, and I'm sure we do need to explore the possibilities, and I do want to see how this is being used academically, but I feel that this is such a world away from say the scholarship that I associate with research in libraries... It will be a while before I can come up with what I think are good directions that we can take with any of this - sifting out the useful from the purely jumping on the bandwagon stuff.
I would also be really interested to hear what other alternatives there were and have been to Second Life. Where libraries/are libraries experimenting with presences in those virtual worlds?

On a last note - I love THIS sensual world that we are in the process of destroying. I can just imagine the survivors of the cataclysm, those few who have access to electricity, sitting in their bomb shelters, playing in their virtual world because they can't go out into the real one.

My wildflower work cubby hole gallery

My wildflower work cubby hole gallery, originally uploaded by naga productions.

SnowflakesWilsonBentley

SnowflakesWilsonBentley, originally uploaded by Soul Dirty.

Again, I hope that this isn't doing the wrong thing! I adore looking at photos of ice and snow crystals. I recently read a novel that mentioned this guy Bentley and it was great to see some of his photos.
Kathy

I hope I haven't broken the etiquette with these photos given that if anyone clicks the description the person is taken to the original photo details! Someone can comment and let me know!
Kathy

Aurora Borealis

Aurora Borealis, originally uploaded by C0E.

I am reading a book on Alaska at the moment and I would love to see the Northern Lights (or Aurora Australis for that matter!). Unearthly beauty!
Kathy

Home of the 'peacock throne'

Home of the 'peacock throne', originally uploaded by paulswarbrick.

I have just finished reading an absolutely superb Indian novel titled
The Peacock Throne which I rank as right up there in the pantheon with Such a Fine Balance by Mistry - this would be a good illustration for the book.
Kathy

One idea I got from looking at some material on
http:libsite.org/ was to use a wiki for library documentation (not sure if depending on what it was there would need to be someone who signs off so is official)
Another idea I had was to have a staff whereabouts wiki - might be useful. That means across campuses we could know who is on hols etc/who is contactable.
KL

I did most of my Week 4 work last week and of course now can't remember what I wanted to say about it except that I think wikis could be very useful for us for some work such as staff contributing to a wiki on our preferred priorities for improvements to Innopac.
We could have wikis for all work that required lots of collaboration and a wiki for terrific new ideas/websites that we wanted to alert our colleagues to.
More posts to come when I have refreshed my memory!

KL