Work cat.: Avatars at work and play : collaboration and interaction in shared virtual environments, c2006: p. 17 (digital proxies of people, called avatars)

Wikipedia, June 13, 2006 (Avatar (virtual reality). Among people working on virtual reality and cyberspace interfaces, an avatar (sometimes AV or av) is an icon or representation of a user in a shared virtual reality. This definition has recently been applied to online virtual communities and Internet forums in particular, as a picture that a member/user of such a community/forum has elected to display alongside his or her contributions in order to represent him- or herself. Avatars have also become popular in instant messaging, and are sometimes referred to as buddy icons.)

The psychology of avatars and graphical space in multimedia chat communities, via WWW, June 13, 2006 (Avatars refer to pictures, drawings, or icons that users choose to represent themselves; Avs fall into two overall categories. The first are the standard set of "smileys" that come with the Palace program. The second major category of avatars [are] those created by the members themselves)

Hughes, C.E. Shared virtual worlds for education, 1997, via WWW, June 13, 2006: abstr. (Players enter and interact in a habitat via their animated alter egos, called "avatars") footnotes (The term "avatar" to denote an on-screen animated figure representing a player was introduced by the authors of the Habitat system (Morningstar 91) and independently in Snow Crash (Stephenson 92.))

Free on-line dict. of computing, June 13, 2006 (avatar 1. An image representing a user in a multi-user virtual reality (or VR-like, in the case of Palace) space)

The social life of avatars : presence and interaction in shared virtual environments, c2002.