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January 26, 2010

For Immediate Release

Everyone is invited to participate in The Future is Now:  Libraries and Museums in Virtual Worlds, an online conference to be held on Friday and Saturday, March 5-6, 2010 in OPAL, the webconferencing collaborative service, in Second Life, and in other three-dimensional virtual worlds. 

Throughout this two-day conference there will be dozens of presentations, panel discussions, poster sessions, demonstrations, tours, and social events.   You need not be proficient in virtual worlds to participate in this conference.  Orientation sessions will be held prior to the conference dates. 

Keynote Speakers:

·         Marilyn Johnson, author of the new book, This Book is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All.  She also wrote The Dead Beat:  Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries.  

·         Tom Atkinson teaches Instructional Technology at the U. of Central Florida and has over 30 years of experience in designing, producing, delivering, and evaluating interactive instruction on mobile learning platforms and in virtual worlds

·         Sharon Tettegah and Cynthia Colongne, co-authors of the 2009 book, Identity, Learning and Support in Virtual Environments. 

Conference Website:  http://bit.ly/7L8M1j

Registration Fees:

• $25 for individuals who are members of the American Library Association (ALA).
• $45 for individuals who are not members of ALA.
• $10 for individuals who are students, retired, or between jobs.
• $75 for Groups (A group is defined as two or more individuals who are currently directly affiliated with an organization. Participating members of the registering organization need not be in the same location in the real world when they attend conference events.)

Register Now:  http://bit.ly/7cB88t

Twitter Hashtag:  #FIN10

Poster Session Proposals:  Although the deadline for submitting program proposals has passed, the deadline for poster session proposals is Monday, March 1, 2010.  See the conference website for details. 

Sponsor:  LearningTimes (http://www.learningtimes.org/), an open community of education and training professionals. 

Conference Co-Organizers:  ALA VCL MIG (Virtual Communities & Libraries, Member Initiative Group), ACRL Virtual Worlds Interest Group, the Alliance Library System, and TAP Information Services. 

Conference Archive:  We plan to record and archive as many events as possible. Only paid registrants, presenters, and members of the conference planning team will have access to the conference archive for 3 months after the conclusion of the conference. On June 6, 2010 the conference archive will be made available to everyone.

More Information:  Please contact Tom Peters (816.616.6746; [log in to unmask])