The third Learning and Research in Second Life workshop was organised on wednesday, October 7 at Internet Research 10.0 conference in Milwaukee by me, Kim Holmberg and Terry Beaubois. The day was very intense and we had a very productive continuous seven hour discussion that touched multiple aspects of education and research in the virtual world of Second Life.

Kurssilla syvennytään Second Life –virtuaalimaailman käyttöön käytännön opetus- ja koulutustyössä. Second Life –ympäristö nähdään kurssilla välineenä ja pääpaino on tämän ympäristön tehokkaassa ja tarkoituksenmukaisessa hyödyntämisessä. Kurssilla painotetaan henkilökohtaisen tuen ja ohjauksen merkitystä sekä ryhmässä oppimista ja ryhmältä oppimista. Kurssille on varattu aikaa osallistujien kahdenkeskiseen ohjaukseen ja  projektien toteuttamisen tukemiseen ja arvioimiseen.

Library 2.0 has been a phenomenon that has been under discussion for almost four years. Perheps oddly, perhaps illustratively enough there has been many attempts to present definitions of the term. Most of the definitions so far have been, however, individuals' personal views of that what the 2.0 of library is all about. An article weitten by me together with my colleagues describing a definition based on empirical study of library and information professionals has been published in the Journal of Documentation (Vol 65, Number 4, pp. 668-681).

Information studies at Åbo Akademi University is seeking a PROJECT RESEARCHER for a fixed-term position in a ESF (European Social Fund) funded project AVO - Open networks for learning (Avoimet verkostot oppimiseen).

I have enjoyed an intensive week in Croatia participating this year's Libraries in the Digital Age (LIDA) conference in Dubrovnik and Zadar. Like last time two years ago when I attended the  meeting, it was an excellent combination of interesting papers, surveys of some present issues in digital libraries, library and information issues. My contribution focused on semantic wiki based information repositories with a special reference to documentation of archaeological entities.

Call for Abstracts/Participation

Please join us in a workshop on Learning and Research in Second Life on October 7, 2009 in Milwaukee at Internet Research 10.0 (http://ir10.aoir.org/).

Upon request by researchers and educators around the world, there is a new

Emerald Insight service does not offer many options for exporting article metadata. I am myself using JabRef for bibliography management and it is always helpful if there is an option for downloading or copy-pasting a reference in Bibtex format. The following script does the trick for Emerald by scraping metadata from the article web page.

My new article Analytical information horizon maps was published in Library and Information Science Research 31(2009) on using researcher drawn information horizon maps (based on Sonnenwald's theoretical framework of information horizons) as an analytical research instrumen

I am running a survey on the significant aspects of the by now closed Google Lively service at http://survey-3.istohuvila.fi/index.php?sid=11279&lang=en. The preliminary findings indicate that the most highly appreciated aspects of the service were its friendly atmosphere and ease of meeting people from around the world, ease of use and the possibility to build a room without having to purchase anything in the first place.

EduFinland, the Finnish Education Island in Second Life, was featured in Helsingin Sanomat, the national daily newspaper in Finland. EduFinland is an effort to bring Finnish educators to one archipelago in Second Life and to foster cooperation and coordination of use, learning and development of Second Life as a tool and environment for education.