An anonymous benefactor has bought the American Library Association half an island on Second Life. Mark Bard had already set up shop on behalf of ALA’s Washington Office in space courtesy of the Alliance Library System. The Washington Office hosted a presentation by David Lankes (more information here).

While in Chicago for meetings, Mark got together with Jenny Levine to work on terra-forming. Jenny invited colleagues to stop by to get an introduction to Second Life and learn about what Mark was doing. With some trepidation, I took a look, along with TechSource’s Teresa Koltzenburg and from Marketing, Tina Coleman and Sam Florio. I can feel the time slip away into the vortex. We asked a lot of questions. (Yeah, one of mine was: How long did it take you to build that?) Jenny urged us to get in there and experiment, see where it takes us. OK, I’ll loosen up and play. But somebody else go first.

In the world of cataloging, nothing has ever generated quite the fervent discussion currently surrounding the content of the forthcoming Resource Description and Access (RDA)–well, nothing since AACR2 anyway. Such is the way of standards creation. Stinging jabs and left hooks aside, I’m finding the whole process very stimulating–from my seat on the sidelines–and I have a great deal of respect for those in the fray.

My role as editor on the publishing side is not my usual one. Instead of being involved with the content creation, I am focused on product creation. What features and functions should this online tool have to enable an effective and efficient workflow? What will the development of those features and functions cost, and how long will they take to develop? And, assuming we can’t have our entire wish list (can we ever?), how do we prioritize?

We took a giant step toward sorting these things out in an extremely productive one-day meeting here at ALA headquarters last Thursday. RDA content editor Tom Delsey flew in from Ottawa to meet with Nannette Naught (our product development consultant) and several other members of the project team to discuss exactly what is being done and what still needs to happen in order to make the features put forward in our original prototype possible. We were able to clarify for Nannette the purpose behind many of these functions, putting her in a good position to finish writing the draft functional requirements that will be a part of the RFP that we’ll send to software vendors.

A couple weeks ago we published Out Front with Stephen Abram: A Guide for Information Leaders, edited by Judith A. Siess and Jonathan Lorig.

Judy Siess and I were talking on the phone when she floated the idea of collecting Stephen Abram’s writing and speeches. Acquisitions editors customarily look to the podium for author leads. As much as I got charged up by Stephen’s energy, I couldn’t imagine his sitting still long enough to write a book. On the other hand, for an experienced and knowledgeable editor to gather his ideas — now that sounded promising.

Another author teased me that I had broken my rule not to publish collections. Up against such a charge, I always recall the words of Father Dwyer, who taught grammar with jesuitic style: “For every rule there is an exception, and for every exception there is a rule.” Who knows? We could go Out Front with somebody else.

Bob Kieft, general editor of ALA’s Guide to Reference, talks to LIS students whenever he gets the chance. During Midwinter in Seattle, he spoke to students and librarians at University of Washington on their career day. Getting off the beaten convention center track is always a treat. Seattle local Cindy Cunningham of Corbis, formerly of Amazon, and further back an undergraduate library assistant working with Kieft at Stanford, drove us out and gave us a quick tour of UW’s library, a mix of modern and traditional with its classic reading room.

Guide to Reference Books was first published in 1902. Long the canon of reference service, the venerable GRB, Kieft admits, may get more respect than use. Kieft outlined these questions that he and his team face as they invigorate GRB with an online makeover.

1. How do we account for changes in scholarship with the organization of content. especially in age of the Web?
2. What does it mean for Guide to be part of network of resources?
3. What is the online equivalent of guidance?
4. What do we lose when reference moves from print to online?
5. Can we restore the Guide to the library school curriculum?
6. How do we create a distributed contributor structure center with a light central editorial center?
7. How to integrate electronic and print publication in one subject directory?
8. How do we account for changes in reference publishing and reference services?
9. What is reference anyway?

I was pleasantly surprised to hear Kieft at the beginning of his talk put out a call for contributors to the Guide. Could there be room for these newbies in the Land of Reference Giants? Well, it was career day. Kieft said that academic libraries need young people who are willing to take on a middle manager role; and (this is where the Guide comes in) people who know instructional technology and can use it in a hip way.

New librarians will be defining today’s sphere of reference service. Any digital natives ready to bravely venture out to the Guide’s new section Web as Reference Source? The one Kieft says, with irony, that will put us all out of business. Any takers? We have an outline, thanks to Kelly Mueller, who unfortunately had to step aside due to the obligations of a new job.

Today was our first weekly editorial meeting since conference. It took two full hours for Patrick, Laura, and me to give one another the lowdown on all of the current and prospective author meetings we each had during the conferences. Now that’s what I call a productive conference trip!

I saw one of our authors, Chrystie Hill, at the ALA Publishing reception at the Science Fiction Museum. I was very pleased to hear that she and Steven Cohen are in the final stages of writing Inside, Outside, and Online: Libraries Building Stronger Communities and Social Networks. They’ve been very productive as coauthors, and I’m really looking forward to seeing the complete manuscript.