24/10/2008

Geography and GIS Enter a Second Life

A interesting article about the increasing presence of GIS in Second Life.

23/10/2008

Internet Librarian Conference 2008 in London

I am back from the Internet Librarian Conference 2008 in London. A mixed experience, but some interesting sessions. The most disappointing was that some of the sessions had to be cancelled due to the fact that some people didn't turn up. Two days packed with librarians, sessions about "emerging technology" and social mingling in the afternoon and evening. A bit disappointing that the social events lacked any organization at all. One of the best sessions at the conference was being held by my good colleague Rurik Thomas Greenall, focusing directly on the term "emerging technologies".

14/10/2008

XML in libraries

Eric Lease Morgan has made a great introduction workshop about the use of XML in libraries, look here.Eric Lease Morgan also has a blog.

06/10/2008

Facebook and students

I have tried to create Facebook groups in relationship with my introduction courses on how to use library resources. Why? It's a well known fact that very few students use our library portal and our gateway to qualitative good information resources. So my idea was to meet some of the students on their homeground, most students already have a profile on Facebook so it's no extra effort on their part in getting hold of the information on this groups. I sent a direct url to the Facebook groups to all of the students participating in my introduction courses and one direct url was posted by a teacher inside our learning management system "It's Learning".

It's to early to evaluate the result, but 26 students, spread over 3 different courses,has actively joined these groups and shown interest in the links that I have shared with them and that's very uplifting. Here is a small (more) detailed report about the "experiment" written in norwegian.