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Happenings

March 4, 2008

SLISLife Goes Live

SLISLife is the new social networking site where SLIS students, alumni faculty can connect in cyberspace. Susie Quinn writes, "SLISLife is a valuable tool that will enable the community of SLIS to connect socially in positive ways. I am excited to see it grow."

Tutorials for getting started with the various components of SLISLife are at SLISLife: Getting Started. The direct link to SLISLife is San José SLISLife.

Dr. Linda Main, School of Library and Information Science associate director, has prepared a voice thread to introduce you to SLISLife: voicethread.com/share/72018/. Dr. Main discusses issues related to distance learning; the new technology has enabled SJSU SLIS to grow and prosper in a competitive market, yet many students feel disconnected. This complaint about the distance learning paradigm is true for all disciplines, not just SLIS. Online social networking is one way to overcome these natural feelings of isolation, and to connect users who are widely scattered geographically but working together virtually. Dr. Main continues…

As a result there has been a huge proliferation of social networking sites (the most famous being MySpace and Facebook and LinkedIn). Dr. Haycock and the SLIS faculty decided to do the same for SLIS faculty, students, 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
• recent graduates can let us know of their success in the job market
• alumni can connect with current students.

We invite students to get involved!! — help run discussion forums and groups (always good for the resume).

Gina Lee, who has been the SLIS Office Coordinator in Fullerton since 2006, oversaw the development of SLISLife.

Student Susie Quinn, working as a graduate assistant to Professor Linda Main, assisted in testing the product and developing the SLIS specific tutorials for SLISLife. She writes, "We customized SLISLife for the SLIS community by creating the multitude of messageboard topics and group categories." Quinn is about half way through the MLIS program.

Second year student Echa Schneider, graduate assistant to Professor Linda Main, assisted in preparing SLISLife for use by SJSU students, alumni, faculty, and staff, composed user tutorials and engaged in product testing. Schneider writes, "In a largely online learning environment, it is easy to feel disconnected from one's school and fellow students. I am excited to be part of a new platform for distance education students to connect with one another and share their stories."

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