Way to go Nintendo on such a great donation to help get users back to showing an interest in the library!  After the research I did last spring on how gaming programs impact teen use of the library I really understand what a positive impact these gaming initiatives can have on library usage.

It’s great to see large companies like Nintendo supporting the library!  I hope a lot more decide to jump on the bandwagon.

When I would tell my friends and family about the project I was working on the most common reaction was “what’s a Ning?” Well I got tired of trying to explain what Ning is and how it works, so I came up with this simple definition… it’s like MySpace but with a purpose.  What I mean by that is while MySpace is one giant social network where the sky is the limit and people only tend to communicate with the people that are “friends” with, Ning however is a bunch of mini-social networks that people join based on a common interest.  This is what Henri and Pudelko might call a “community of interest” or a “community of practice.”  These people are gathered together in their own little virtual community because they share an interest or a profession.

What does all of this mean for academic libraries you may ask?  Well look at why most college students join Facebook.  They want to be able to connect with their friends from school virtually.  And what is the commonly understood time-waster for most college students? Facebook.  So if the academic library offers a virtual meeting ground where students can connect with each other and maybe have the opportunity to tap into some library resources while they’re at it what could be the harm?

In the mean time YouTube has made tech news this week with its new multifile uploader.  According to a C|Net article the new uploader will allow users to upload multiple files and has increased the maximum file size from 10MB to 1GB.  I also learned something new about YouTube that I had always wondered about.  I knew that videos were limited to 10 minutes, but I would always come across videos that were much longer and I always wondered how those people got around the time limit.  Apparently YouTube also has a “director” category that people can sign up for.  This category is designed for people who create their own content to upload.  According to the YouTube help center, however, they are no longer allowing anyone to upload anything longer than 10 minutes but people who had the option previously will still be allowed to.

The Librarian’s Guide to Etiquette blog is just the pale to go for this type of humor.  The blogs tagline alone is enough to get a small chuckle… “A Polite Librarian is a Good Librarian.”  Recently the two bloggers who contribute to the site, Sal and J, have had a series of posts related to Library 2.0 and the Internet Librarian 2007 Conference.  Four of these posts are “Library 2.0, Believing in,” “Library 2.0, Embracing,” Wikis, and “Conferences, Blogging.”

And of course I have to quote my most recent favorite, as I had an experience with the same situation….

“Unexpected, Expecting the

Librarians should not waste time preparing for library instruction sessions. It is a law of librarianship that a teaching faculty member will always ask something random and unrelated of you in the middle of your guest lecture to the class. With little or no warning, you’ll be asked to spend 30-45 minutes demonstrating how to do mail merge in Microsoft Word?”

I was both shocked and excited when I learned that Dwight Schrute from NBCs The Office was going to be exploring Second Life on last week’s episode. Then I got even more excited when I learned that just the night before CSI: NY had done an episode featuring Second Life! And to top it all off there is now a Virtual CSI: NY in Second life where you can go and solve the crime just like the detectives did on the show!

Hopefully exposure in these two popular television shows is just the push Second Life needed to take off and we’ll all be seeing a few more people walking around now.

Here’s a clip of Second Life in The Office in case anyone missed it…

I think something like this has great potential for libraries both on the staff and user level.  First, it would be a great way for staff to stay connected and share things with each other instead of the old fashioned (ok it’s going to be weird saying this is old fashioned!) let’s-send-out-an-email-and-copy-the-whole-staff way of communicating.  Also, it would be great for users to be able to be a part of their library’s Ning group and learn about library news and events that way.  It’s just a way of stepping outside of the library website box!

Some libraries are using custom content generators to create ads for their events. For example, Lewis and Clark Library System hosted a gaming night for which they created these really cool looking poster ads with different characters talking about going to gaming at the library. You can see an example on their Flickr account. One way that I keep track of the latest, and sometimes most interesting, content generators is through The Generator Blog. They usually post 2 or 3 different generator sites per week that can do some really cool things for your library or just might be fun to play around with. My recent favorites are the Pocket Emo Generator and the M&Ms Character Generator.

Meet Madame Punky In Your Face (they provide naming options for you!)

Who’s to say all librarians can’t be M&Ms out there on the internet?!

• When did you start using IM reference?
• What prompted your library to start using IM reference?
• On average, how many questions do you receive by IM per day?
• Do you publicize that you offer IM reference anywhere besides your website?
• Is there any type of question that is harder to answer via IM?
• Are there any barriers or problems that you have encountered using IM reference?

This particular library started using IM reference about 2 years ago.  I was very surprised when the librarian told me they usually only get 2 or 3 questions per week!  Then when I asked what they do to publicize the service she said that they have it on the website and will occasionally mention it in instruction sessions.  I’m wondering if there’s a correlation between the number of students that use it and the lack of publicizing?!  She also mentioned that any question that’s at all complicated is harder to answer through IM.  I can see where some questions that you get in an academic library setting would be harder to answer because of the whole information literacy movement.

While free IM clients like AIM and Meebo are excellent, I tend to the the new wave in academic libraries will lean more towards services like Elluminate.  Elluminate is video conferencing software that allows the conference administrator to push content at the other people in the conference and receive instant messaged or voice questions.  I know it’s not as nice for on demand information literacy instruction, but I can see where IM clients wouldn’t work as well either.