RILA 2007 Annual Conference -

This year's Rhode Island Library Association conference (RILA), Libraries : Network, Socialize, Transform was held at the Rhode Island Johnson and Wales campus located in downtown Providence. I attended Thursday's session as a volunteer (thanks to Karen McGrath!) and was able to make it to 3 of the 4 sessions offered for the day. During the first portion of the conference, I was entrusted with the duty of manning the 'Party Bus', which shuttled arriving attendees from the J&W Harborside campus parking lot to the main library on Dorrance Street in downtown Providence. Oldschool bus + balloons + free chocolate + librarians = one wild time, let me tell you!

The first session that I was able to attend was the 11:00 with Rhonda Trueman of Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte, North Carolina. Rhonda's talk, Second Life : A Virtual World Even Librarians Can Love covered the basics of the virtual reality program created by Linden Research, Inc. This program, considered a 'game' (though no gaming construct is present, unless it's user-created within the virtual world) by many, has multiple RL (Real Life) applications, including library services.

Lori Bell of the Alliance Library System helped to create the first virtual library in Second Life - the first of many that appear in the virtual environment. Several of these libraries that have been created appear in areas such as Info Island, Cybrary City, Eduisland I&II, ALA/Arts Island, Health InfoIsland, Imagination Island, Renaissance Island, and the Eye4You Alliance.

Rhonda went on to explain the advantages of virtual librarianship, listing a series of benefits including the easy access of information regardless of geographic/physical limitation, the ability to ask anonymous questions, the freedom of creativity, and the limitless options of material representation. Rhonda also explained the concept designing your own avatar, showcasing her own 'Abbey Zenith', and went on to describe the construction of SL environments using prims (primitive objects).
It was good to finally get a chance to meet Rhonda in person, having collaborated with her as a part of a consortium of librarians working on the Johnson & Wales Virtual Morocco.

Now that I have finished with my graduate program, I plan to dive right back into the collection development for the library in Casablanca, as well as the construction of objects for the library. I go by the name Jeet Hykova in Second Life, if any other avatars out there care to get together in virtual Morocco!

The next session was presented by Ben Vershbow of The Institute for the Future of the Book. The avid if:book blogger spun fascinating tales in a far-too-short amount of time.. the concept of the book as a transition from print to a work in progress through time; Vershbow also made a statement that I am in 100% agreement with - he hates the term 'ebook'.

Ben discussed the e-presence of books as a work in progress, using examples such as Mitchell Stephen's blog on Without Gods, which promotes discussion on philosophical and theological issues, as well as on basic editing techniques - all of which will be used toward the final revisions of the book (still a work in progress).

Another example of this type of collaborative online work, or 'networked' book is McKenzie Wark's Gam3r 7h3ory, which began as a collaborative wiki (version 1.1), created with The Institute for the Future of the Book. This wiki allowed users to comment on book content and layout, as well as provide original ideas and contribution. Wark also used this social networking editing and collaboration technique to revise and eventually publish his book Gam3r 7h30ry with Harvard University Press in April of 2007.

One of the issues that must bee contended with, as one could imagine with this type of social collaboration, is the issue of copyright and intellectual property. As the amount of library material offered online becomes more expansive over time, this issue is constantly being debated and discussed. Basically, there is no answer to what belongs to whom (as of yet) in these types of situations. Intellectual property right can span across literature into photography, and could potentially raise issue in collaborative image projects such as Microsoft's latest brainchild, Photosynth, which creates large-scale collaboratives using potentially thousands of digital images gathered from just as many user-based sources. Digital copyright is always a juicy issue, one of which I am sure will continue to present itself in this forum.

The last two sessions I attended today were less satisfying to my curiosity, though productive to some, I am sure. The first, Dealing With Difficult Patrons, presented by k. Carey Baker, addressed the issue of dealing with patrons that act out, either verbally or physically toward you in any situation. Have been a therapist in my former life, I found much of this information to be simplistic.. though surprisingly, there were many people there who seemed to legitimately take much of this session to heart, which is a good thing. Learning how to deal with people on an emotional level is important, even outside of library service!

The second session, Teaching and Learning Online : Skills and Tools, presented by Vivienne Piroli, was again, intended for a specific audience - of which I was not a part. This presentation covered what online tutorials were, why you should create them, and what benefits they have. So I'm left thinking - "what's next?!" Again, it seems as though this session barely skimmed the surface of what should be a very familiar topic to librarians at this point. I would like to have seen some in-depth coverage of using programs such as Captivate to create interactive tutorials. Again, just my humble opinion.. but I think that a great deal of underestimation of the preexisting knowledge of conference attendees may have been present in certain situations.

All in all, I took away a good deal of information (and great tote bags!) from the first half of this conference, most of which was delivered by Ben Vershbow. Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend the second day of the conference tomorrow, since I will be making a partial move into my new apartment in Connecticut (as well as signing the lease - finally).