I would like to thank Abbey Zenith for the powerful and important message she shared with us in writing “Community Virtual Library: where do we go from here?”

Like many of you, I have felt the frustration of trying to share even a little of the incredible work done by Second Life professionals with others, and I have trouble understanding how library professionals can dismiss the work done by other professionals without even looking.

For me, professional development in virtual communities depends on peer-to-peer support from all of us in any way we can. I do not have the experience and talents of most of the information professional investing their time and effort but I can help toot the horn Abbey is talking about.

I was able to attend the first meeting on Publishing for Library Professionals, and recorded the session to share with those unable to attend. ---Snow Scarmon

Alexandria Knight: 20 Jul 2011

What, me? Publish?!! Why Not!

(RL: Esther Grassian, Information Literacy Librarian, Retired, UCLA College Library

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Hi! It’s great to be here to talk with you about publishing

We’re going to talk about…

•The WHAT, WHY & HOW of publishing in various venues and formats. I’ll try to give you some tips based on my own experience…

•First, WHAT to publish…

Just about anything—opinions, advice, how-to, factual information, research, or literature reviews and analysis

But…here’s the first tip: make sure you have something to say that interests your intended audience

•Now—why publish?

To make a statement or argument, rebut, agree with and to share with others

So, here’s TIP 2: it’s important to check to see if anyone else has already published on your topic.  If so,

are you adding a new twist? updating previous research? commenting or critiquing something?

•Ok, now for HOW…

There are many ways to publish, some free and unmoderated, others highly moderated, edited and costly in many ways, including time—both yours and others.

Here’s a kind of time-based/experience-based continuum

Starting at the bottom will help you build confidence in writing and publishing, and will provide time for you to gain experience and expertise.

Let’s start with FREE MEANS OF PUBLISHING

•FaceBook or Google+ postings (your own & comments), tweets, blog posts and comments, listserv posts and responses, and some website authoring tools like Google Sites

•Next—websites

Has anyone seen or used LibGuides? It’s very popular software that allows you to create web pages easily, for many purposes, including course web pages, even if you don’t know any HTML. It’s an example of how you can publish something when you’re working at an institution, organization or company.

An example is provided by the UCLA Library’s LibGuides: http://guides.library.ucla.edu/index.php.

Now a caveat—if you use licensed software like LibGuides to create something and then you leave the institution that licenses it, you need to determine whether you can take the material you created with you, or whether it belongs to the institution.

•Another link is to a FREE Google Sites website I created:

http://www.springshare.com/libguides/, https://sites.google.com/site/teachinfolit/

It used to be a LibGuide I created, for teaching assistants, to help them learn how to incorporate information literacy into their curricula and assignments. But librarians have also been interested in it as a tool, so I put a lot of my instructional materials up on the site.  When I retired, I moved all of the content to this new free site, as all UCLA Library webpages have a Creative Commons license on them: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike.

•Next… Poster Sessions. These provide a more informal way to publish, and sometimes a way to get feedback on work in progress. Usually, poster sessions take place for an hour or so during a conference. You have a space to mount a poster that visually illustrates and describes your work. You stand next to your poster, explain what it’s about, answer questions, and provide handouts or a URL. Many sites tell you how to create effective posters—just Google it. Conference presentations would be a next step up, with more stringent review; more selective. But again, they provide a good way to start publishing your work.

It all starts with a call for proposals—usually the deadline for conference papers comes before the poster session deadline.

If you present at a conference, they may publish your paper in the proceedings.

•Then…Magazine articles, similar to those I’ve published in American Libraries and Change…

Can you publish just anything you want to in magazines like these? No, although American Libraries does publish opinion pieces, as well as Letters to the Editor.

So how do you get published in a magazine? Read some articles in magazines that interest you and don’t restrict yourself to library-related magazines.

Check the magazine’s requirements for submission—Writer’s Market and the magazine’s own website are good starting points. Both will describe what the editors are looking for in terms of subject matter and if they pay for manuscripts—what a concept! Getting paid for your writing! But again, have something to say and base it upon something you’ve done, research, experienced, observed, or thought about.

For my American Libraries article, I had a strong opinion and wanted to share my ideas; for Change, they asked me to write for them. Some publications will ask for an outline or a draft manuscript before agreeing to publish something. They may have requirements for length of manuscripts, how they want material submitted, to whom, when to submit and how long it will take them to get back to you with a decision.

If they accept your manuscript, expect it to be edited and remember to retain the copyright! For Change I kept the copyright and was able to make the article freely available through the CDL’s eScholarship repository.

•Now, have any of you thought about writing a book chapter?

If you subscribe to listservs like ILI-L, the Information Literacy Listserv, you’ll see calls for people to submit proposals to write chapters for edited books. I’m working on a co-authored book chapter with Abbey right now on professional development in virtual worlds.

If you submit a book chapter proposal, will it be accepted? It depends on the Editors, the pool of submissions, your qualifications to write, your topic, and the quality of your proposal. Book chapters are edited, but they aren’t peer-reviewed like many scholarly journal articles are.

•Let’s talk about scholarly journals next…

As you may know, some peer-reviewed journals are very stringent about the manuscripts they accept, while others are not. Whether or not journal articles are peer-reviewed, your article will probably be edited in some way. But remember that peer-reviewed journals publish more than just journal articles. They publish book reviews, editorials, opinion columns—these are all publishing opportunities. Again, find out what kind of content the journal is interested in. What are their requirements? How should you submit, to whom, in what format, and when?

Community Virtual Library: where do we go from here?

Libraries and librarians have a history in the virtual world of Second Life that goes back to early 2006, when Lori Bell of Alliance Library System entered SL as Lorelei Junot and gathered librarians and other interested people together to create Second Life Library 2.0. Nearly six years and many, many changes later, this group continues to function as Community Virtual Library.   Through all the changes— the policy changes by Linden Labs; the financial issues; the numbers and purposes of library sims; the changes to builds, collections, programming; the development and dissolution of partnerships; the ebb and flow of volunteer participation—one thing has remained constant--the belief that libraries and librarians have a place in virtual worlds.

Over the years I’ve heard people expressing their appreciation for what we do in Second Life, time and time again. Perhaps we have not yet realized the potential we envisioned, but we have reached out to people and offered assistance to people through this medium. Sometimes assistance was through an answered question by a volunteer steadfastly manning the reference desk. Reference volunteers have answered thousands of questions throughout the years, ranging from those that are SL based to genuine research needs, to "stump-the-librarian" attempts. Is reference work in SL a successful enterprise? Yes! Libraries in SL provide access to information. Collections, exhibits, and programs are all a part of the library services found in SL. We’ve reached out to scores of people and in return we’ve received support through donations. As a bonus, we’ve learned that librarians, library staff, and library students can use SL as a place to volunteer, to teach, to network, to collaborate, to gain experience, to learn, and to share information. Libraries have accomplished much in Second Life.

But, where do we go from here? We’ve had success at being a better community library for the residents of SL, but in the process we seem to have lost the momentum we had in providing professional development opportunities to librarians, library staff, and students. As volunteers learn and grow in SL, they find other interests and projects that divide their already limited time in SL, or discover they’ve neglected real life, or simply burn out over time. Too much of a good thing can be wonderful, and it can be detrimental as well. There is less excitement now about virtual worlds than a few years ago. To be honest, in introducing virtual worlds to library professionals now, we get reactions ranging from those who still aren’t aware of what libraries do in Second Life, to those who are vehemently opposed and those who feel that this technology has run its course and is “over." It is understandable that in today’s economic climate, where librarians are fighting for their jobs and to keep libraries open, that there is little interest or energy to invest in virtual libraries. Yet, still hundreds of library professionals devote their time to providing library services in virtual worlds and find doing so worth their time and effort. We still see the potential and the value.

Those of us still standing with our virtual shoes firmly planted in virtual worlds—where do we go from here? I would like to see professional development for library professionals re-kindled, and would like to see this taking place through the American Library Association’s Virtual Communities and Libraries Member Interest Group and the ACRL Virtual Worlds Interest Group on ALA Island. Interested in being a force behind this movement to continue and broaden peer-to-peer support and development? This is an opportunity to make a difference. I would like to see us tooting our own horns—more often and more loudly. Promote, publish, promote! These are areas in which I feel we should move, but I’m asking you—where do we go from here?

Let’s start by getting together. Please join us on October 16^th at 1 PM SLT on Info Island for a discussion on this topic.