SLIS Faculty Colloquium addresses virtual worlds and reference services

 The second lecture of the Faculty Colloquium at the University of South Carolina School of Library and Information Science (USC-SLIS) will take place Thursday, October 25, at 6 p.m. in room 216 of Davis College. The subject of the presentation by Dr. Feili Tu, assistant professor at the school, will be Virtual Worlds and Reference Services.

Dr. Tu, whose academic background is in reference and information services, will address the delivery of virtual reference services via the World Wide Web and through Second Life, which is an Internet-based virtual world that has steadily grown in popularity since it was launched in 2003. Dr. Tu will present her ongoing project to build a virtual reference center in Second Life and will discuss how technologies like Second Life are changing the ways in which reference services are delivered to students.

Virtual reference services are of particular interest to Dr. Tu, who is overseeing the participation of USC-SLIS in the “Ask-A-Librarian” Online Chat Reference Service for the 2007-2008 school year. USC-SLIS was selected by the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL) to participate in this program, which provides more than 100 hours of online chat reference service per week to the students, faculty and staff at eight ASERL institutions, including the University of Alabama, the University of Central Florida, the University of Memphis, the University of Mississippi, Mississippi State University, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Virginia Commonwealth University, and the College of William & Mary.

“It is a great opportunity for our students to gain experience with the provision of real-world virtual reference services (VRS),” Dr. Tu said. “In addition, research will be conducted to examine how effectively students provide VRS, as evidenced by application of knowledge and skills learned from the USC-SLIS curriculum.”

For those unable to attend the lecture in person, it can be viewed via a live Breeze Presentation at the following address: http://breeze.sc.edu/tucolloquium.

The Faculty Colloquium is a joint effort of the USC-SLIS student chapter of ASIS&T and LISSA, the Library and Information Science Student Association. The first speaker in the series was SLIS Director Dr. Sam Hastings.

For more information about the Faculty Colloquium, please contact Matt Landau, co-chair of ASIS&T, at mattlandau@yahoo.com, or contact LISSA at slis_lissa@yahoo.com.

For More Information, Contact:

Matt Landau, co-chair
American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T)
University of South Carolina School of Library and Information Science
Davis College
Columbia, SC 29208

E-mail: mattlandau@yahoo.com