I am a medical and consumer health librarian who worked in public and medical libraries for 20 years before getting my MSLIS - and now my PhD. While my current research is in evidence-based library and information practice (with a particular focus on librarian information behaviors), I have for some years retained interest in consumer health information. Prior to my involvement in Second Life, I conducted several research studies with people who are active in a web forum about smoking cessation, QuitNet.com. I have a very strong belief in what peer communities can achieve in terms of supporting health behavior change, and even in sharing a process of critical evaluation of health information - I’ve seen it happen again and again.

This experience is very much what has drawn me to become involved in Second Life. In 2006, Lori Bell wrote the contract application that funded Healthinfo Island, with the objective of exploring the provision of consumer health information services in a virtual environment. It is this basic objective that has formed the basis for the ensuing three projects, all funded by the National Library of Medicine (the first three, through the Greater Midwest Region of NN/LM, and this most recent, directly from NLM), and all administed by Lori Bell through the Alliance Library System in East Peoria, Illinois