Update for Week 3

  With the exception of a couple more interviews to transcribe, I am almost reaching a new level in the internship for The Association of Virtual Worlds. Later in the week, or perhaps the following week, my job will be to collect and put together blogs written by members of the Association. I will be putting them together in a particular order, most likely by date; although my supervisor will explain more about this task during our next telephone meeting.
 
The two interviews I transcribed this past week were more on the corporate perspective. One was an interview with Matthew Warneford who specializes in virtual products that will help companies market, advertise, and promote their business. The other interview was with Scott Kellner who has helped companies set up virtual environments to enable people to have live chats and forums with professionals, to help people learn about foreign or third world cultures such as those in Africa, and to allow business professionals like sales people get together and learn about new products. Warneford and Kellner in other words, help companies set up virtual environments so they can become knowledgeable and skilled in the latest products, and thus be competitive in the workplace.
 
I do like the idea of libraries using virtual environments to allow librarians to communicate and collaborate with the public, and also librarians using virtual environments to work together on all aspects of their business from discussing and creating library policies to collection development. I worry, however, that many libraries may not have the budgets for virtual environments. In these harder economic times, libraries have more important things to worry about such as developing and managing their collections, meeting the specific needs of the communities they serve as inexpensively as possible, struggling to hold onto their staffs considering all the layoffs that have occurred in recent years, and maintaining an environment and facilities that are user friendly and enable the public to easily navigate through the library and find the information that meets their needs.

Christopher Zeidel- February 10, 2012