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For May 2006 we share highlights from the 7th Annual Virtual Reference Desk Conference, pointers to resources on instant messaging reference, and examples of virtual reference consortiums.

Metaversed.com helps companies stay ahead of the virtual curve. In a rapidly changing virtual world landscape, information is key.

A video I (joe sanchez) made a few months ago for educators who have never heard of or seen virtual worlds.

Eye-tracking studies are hot in the web design world, but it can be hard to figure out how to translate the results of these studies into real design implementations. These are a few tips from eye-tracking studies that you can use to improve the design of your webpage.

Our profession has been talking a lot lately about centralization of cataloging efforts, digital library efforts, and even IT services. In retrospect, the conversation about centralized reference services was a bit premature, but a new distributed—but as yet unmanaged—infrastructure seems to be emerging. (Perhaps a new cottage industry opportunity?)

So I was in a OhioLINK meeting yesterday, and one of the committee members told me that her colleague, Andrew Whitis, had gotten a meebome widget to work with Pidgin. They use Pidgin instead of Trillian to connect to multiple IM clients. Being able to connect to the meebome widget through my IM client sounded like a dream come true, so I decided to check it out. For libraries who staff IM with Trillian, a Meebome widget with meebo, and skype with skype, logging into to three different things can be quite the ordeal. Even NASA doesn’t have to start as many programs when launching the shuttle. I’ve written before about using multiple clients, so this seems to help get rid of the need to log into meebo. I downloaded and installed this plugin, and thus far it seems to be working great.  Here’s what I did. 

Get acquainted with Twitter, a social networking application that is finding traction in the online communication world.

The goal of the Digital Reference Electronic Warehouse Project (DREW) is to create a large database of reference transactions so that researchers might better understand the process and then create tools for measurement and evaluation that managers of reference services could employ.

This is an idea-sharing wiki for librarians who post to answer boards, like Answers.com's WikiAnswers (http:wiki.answers.com), Yahoo Answers or Amazon's Askville.

To promote its forthcoming users' conference in Boston next week, Blackboard, the academic-software company, has posted to YouTube a video that parodies the awkward ways in which avatars — digital characters — move around and communicate in Second Life.

University libraries are natural users of open source software, which offers a good fit with open access to information and collaborative working.

This international study, conducted jointly by OCLC and the Rutgers School of Communication, Information and Library Studies, will investigate factors influencing the selection and use of chat-based VRS study user and staff perceptions of satisfaction investigate why non-users of these services do not choose VRS seek to develop research-based recommendations for VRS staff to increase satisfaction.