The School of Library and Information Science has opened SLISLife.  This 
is a new social networking site where SLIS students and faculty and staff 
and alumni can be more of a community.

I have prepared a voice thread to introduce you to SLISLife:

http://voicethread.com/share/72018/

In there I talk about the fact that delivering classes in an online format 
has enabled SLIS to grow in a competitive market. Nevertheless a common 
complaint about distance learning - not only in SLIS, but in general - is 
that some students feel a sense of isolation. Many disciplines are setting 
up social networking as a way to overcome the feelings of isolation and to 
connect users who are widely scattered geographically but working together 
virtually.

As a result there has been a huge proliferation of social networking sites 
(the most famous being MySpace and Facebook and LinkedIn). We decided to 
do the same for SLIS faculty, students, staff, and alumni. We want 
SLISLife to be a place where students with similar professional interests 
(perhaps academic libraries, perhaps archives, perhaps information 
technology) can "talk". It can be a place:

where people can find out who lives near them geographically

where recent graduates can let us know of their success in the job 
market

where alumni can connect with current students.

We hope students and alumni will get involved and help with running 
discussion forums and groups (always good for the resume).

We are looking  for students and alumni who would be willing to lead 
discussion on the groups and forums already set up. (Check out groups
and forums after you sign up). We are also looking for suggestions for
other topics of interest.


If you are willing to monitor and lead discussion on one of the forums or 
groups please let me know (lmain@slis.sjsu.edu)

Please consider joining us in this new SLIS experiment.


Tutorials for getting started with the various components of SLISLife are 
at:

http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/resources/slislife/index.htm


The direct link to SLISLife is:

http://slislife.spartasocialnetworks.com/Index.do

It can also be accessed from the SLIS Web home page


Feel free to discuss on the SLIS21 blog

http://senna.sjsu.edu/lmain/wpress/wordpress/