Twittering librarians

Attended a meeting via Twitter yesterday, which was a first for me. Can't say it had quite the same sense of 'being there with others' as meetings I've attended in real or Second Life, but it did at least allow me to be somewhat involved in a meeting that I had no hope of attending in person due to work commitments.

It was also excellent in that it was discussing how librarians and specifically CILIP (1) could make use of web 2.0 tools, and it was doing it by.... making use of web 2.o tools! What a good idea!

The only realistic way I've found of discovering which web 2.0 tools I might have a use for and which I don't is to try them. It's also almost impossibly difficult to convince anyone of their usefulness in the abstract but a demonstration, or better yet opportunity to try them out for real, can be a lot more persuasive. (Hmmm, that probably applies to information skills too!)

Lots of interesting issues were raised but I think the only vaguely useful input I made was to suggest that CILIP might look to the ALA (American Library Association) as a role model. I've since realised - after being reminded by a colleague - that the US SLA (Special Libraries Association) also does a lot of good things.

If you'd like to see how it went here is a Twitter feed transcript and wordle.

(1) Note for any non-librarian or non-UK based readers this is the UK librarians professional body.

Open access lectures

Academic Earth looks interesting. Video lectures from the world's top scholars - or so they say themselves. I haven't had time to have a proper look at it yet, (I am on leave today after all!) but the entrepreneurship section could be useful. Thanks to David Burden for alerting me to this resource.

Buying books

Went to Blackwell's bookshop in Oxford today. Bought a lot of books for the library and one for me.

JISC Libraries of the Future debate

Now THIS is the sort of thing that Second Life is good for. I was interested in the JISC Libraries of the Future debate, but it coincided with a day of in-house SFX training. The option to attend via Second Life meant I could - just - do both.

It's always interesting to attend a combined Second Life/'Real' Life event. (I do dislike the way that terminology implies I am somehow less real when mediated by an avatar than I am when physically present.) The focus is - in my experience - always firmly on the physical meeting. This event was better than most in that respect, with someone aware of what was happening in both spaces and chanelling communications between them. When it came to questions though, the sl audience only managed to get - if I remember correctly, and it's quite possible I missed some - two communicated to the panel.

As to the substance of the debate I was surprised to hear that the future of libraries is to be buzzing with activity and groupwork. I must have time travelled and be living in the future right now! I enjoyed the lively debate started by the speaker who had some good, if provocative, points to make about the relevance of libraries to the scientific research process, and the madness of a system whereby universities buy back the products of their labours from publishers at outrageous prices in the form of journal subscriptions. Long live the glorious Open Access revolution! Or maybe not?