A few last minute details before the Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium officially starts on Monday. First of all, to the 131 of you coming, you ROCK! I can’t wait to meet each and every one of you, so please say hi.

Some organizational details:

• Sunday night, we’re going to have an unofficial meetup at the Wyndham Hotel’s bar around 7:00 p.m. (map). Anyone and everyone is invited to come sit and chat about all things gaming, all things libraries, and all things in general. Consider this your invite.
  
• Let’s decide now on tags for blog posts, Flickr pictures, del.icio.us bookmarks, etc. I’m proposing GaminginLibraries2005, but I’m open to suggestions. Leave ‘em in the comments.
  
• My advice for attendees is to wear casual clothing and comfortable shoes. During lunches and for two hours on Monday night, we’re going to be gaming, gaming, gaming. At the very least we’ll have Mario Kart, Dance Dance Revolution, and Donkey Konga, so be prepared!
  
• We weren’t able to find a way to record video from the sessions, but I do plan to try to record the audio for later podcasting. If you have any candles handy, Sunday night or Monday morning would be a good time to light them and say a few hopeful words. I’m much more confident that we’ll be posting the presentations on the GLLS website next week. I heard from a lot of people who really wanted to be there but couldn’t for various reasons, and I just want you to know we’re going to do our best to make as much of the material as possible availabe to you.
  
• There is one internet port in the room, but I’m bringing a wireless access point, so hopefully we’ll be able to light up the whole room. Another candle would be appropriate for this exercise. Unfortunately, we won’t be broadcasting live, but if we get this working, I’ll try to be on IM and email during the day so that anyone with questions can ask them. Send me your stuff and I’ll see what I can do.
  
• Other people you might want to meet while there include Michael “My Library Is Gaming and Wiki-ing!” Stephens, Aaron “I Do Such Cool Stuff on My Library’s Website” Schmidt, Kelli “Hey, We Do Some Pretty Cool Stuff on My Library’s Website, too!” Staley, Chad “Accidental Techie, All-around Nerd, and Most Excellent Blogger” Haefele, Chris “I’m Going Ahead with Systemwide Gaming” DeWeese,  Mindy “We Have an Online Game for Our High School Students” Null, and many more (not to mention all of our wonderful speakers!). Take advantage of all of the brainpower that will be in this room and spend some time talking to your peers, your fellow gamers, your fellow librarians!

SJCPL Subject Guide WIKI Goes Live Today! Check It Out!

“http://www.libraryforlife.org/subjectguides/index.php/Main_Page

Our Reference Librarians and Web Developer are hard at work on this new project! And let me be the first to say they are making great strides to move SJCPL toward Library 2.0! What you'll find is librarian created subject pages in the grand tradition of Kansas City PL via a Mediawiki installation. All of the staff have been trained and are creating pages in their areas of interest and expertise. It gets me going!

Our library users will be able to get logins and post under the TALK tabs. Let the conversations begin!” [Tame the Web]

This gets me going, too, and I can’t wait to see what happens here. I’m going to channel Michael and say HOT X 3! Major congrats to SJCPL for moving forward so boldly – nicely done!

Merriam-Webster is picking up on the value of collaborating with users. Check out their Open Dictionary, a “a live, day-by-day chronicle of neologisms based completely on contributions from our users.” View entries most recently added, alphabetically, or by category. [via Slashdot]