SLA in Virtual Worlds

Alliance Library System announces changes in Second Life (and questions about SLA involvement in SL)

Alliance Library System (ALS) has been responsible for introducing many library workers, libraries and library organizations to Second Life.  The work they have done has been incredible.  Earlier this month, ALS announced changes that they will be making to the Second Life areas.  SLA's land is on Cybrary City II, whose lease will expire in Dec. 2009.  SLA will be paying rent on its land for 2009, and so will be on Cybrary City II until the lease for it runs out.  However, it is possible that another organization will pick up the lease on Cybrary City II.  Prior to December 2009, SLA -- HQ and members -- should decide what ongoing commitment we want to Second Life. Is this an environment that is important to us?  Is it a place where we should be?  Have we learned enough and is it time to move on?

How about a Group Photo for Leadership Summit?

One of my favorite parts of the SLA Second Life Wiki, is the photo section.  It captures the virtual pictoral history of SLA's first year in Second Life.   The first photos, from May 5, show only the empty grass--there was not even a building.  By, May 15, we had a building and early June it had already been redesigned.  The site included a firepit, skygrass, SLTV and and streaming video capability.  There was even a bookcart that could be pushed around.

In June, the SLA build team held its first meeting  On June 10th, they filmed the machinima for the SLA Conference in Seattle.  Amalie Amatine taught an impromptu class on how to build--sort of a Prims 101 class that month.

Since then, SLA has hosted a book talk on Virtual Worlds, Real Libraries with author Abbie Zenith, held a meeting with library school students, and sponsored a lecture by Testy Outlander on her research into Information Seeking Behavior in Second Life.   Violet Portola and Steven Source have been teaching a number of two part ClickU classes on Introduction to Second Life.  Although Part 1 is a webex session, Part II takes place in Second Life.

December will provide several more photo opportunities with two different sessions on Economic Education and Second Life and Economic Education/Research and Virtual Worlds on December 3 between 8 and 8:50 am SLT.  SLA President Stephen Abrams will be speaking on December 17 about  Developing a Global innovation Culture in Second Life at 5 pm SLT.

If you attend one of these events, take a picture.  Post it to the wiki.  Help us capture virtual moments from our first year in Second Life.

And what if we were to all gather together either before or after Stephen's lecture for a group picture?  It would make a great virtual Christmas card.  It would also be a wonderful way to demonstrate the vitality of the SLA in Second Life presence at the Leadership Summit in Savanah in Jan 2009.

Articles on Google shutting down virtual world 'Lively'

Google's Lively appeared to much fanfare, but then usage flat-lined.  Google will re-deploy people who were working on Lively to other projects.

• Google shutting down virtual world 'Lively'
• Google Kills Lively
• Lively no more

How do you get there from here?--SL Library Directory

Sometimes getting the last few meters can be the hardest part of navigating in Second Life.  If you have a SLURL (Second Life URL) or a friend/group member who is will to teleport you to a site, then you may not have a problem.  However, if you are trying to find a specific site on a particular sim then you may be in trouble.     The Second Life search capability seems to be a hit or miss proposition.

If you are trying to find a library related site, try out the SL Directory of Libraries and Organizations:

  http://infoisland.org/directory/

The site offers a quick alphabetical list, a complete directory, a browse by type and a browse by sim.  ALA has its own sim so you could find it that way.  However, SLA has space in Cybrary City so a sim search will not work.  If you search under Professional Organization, you can find it with the following information:

Name:	Special Libraries Association
Type:	Professional Organization
Sim:	Cybrary City II
SLURL:	http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cybrary%20City%20II/59/100/22
Contact:	Jillianna Suisei (SL) / Jill Hurst-Wahl (RL)
Description:	In-world location for the Special Libraries Association
URL:	http://wiki.sla.org/display/SLASECONDLIFE/Home

 

KZero Blog Reviews 2007 Virtual World Predictions

Kzero Blog. self advertised as resident experts in Virtual World, reviewed the predictions for virtual worlds made in November 2007 by TechDigest.  The predictions were made during the Virtual Worlds  Forum event in London in November 2007.

Kzero offers an opinion on the 20 trends defining virtual worlds in 2007.  http://www.kzero.co.uk/blog/?p=2619

Second Life is specifically mentioned before the end. 

Sonja Morgwan mentioned the Kzero Blog in an email.

New Journal of Virtual Worlds Research available

JVWR (Journal of Virtual Worlds Research) Vol 1, no 2 (November 2008) http://jvwresearch.org/ has just been published with the theme of Consumer Behavior in Virtual Worlds.

The journal is free and does not require registration.  Each article is available in both abstract and pdf full text.   The issue is divided into three sections:  peer-reviewed research papers, research papers, and think pieces.

Topics ranged from the problems of new avatars (newbies), how avatars are perceived by aother avatars and by their real life humans, how virtual worlds affect behavior both as consumers and participants and the demographics of virtual worlds.

The quality of the writing is high; the documentation is detailed.   Even the abstracts provide some insight into the sociological, technological, and commercial impact of virtual worlds.  As might be expected, many of the article focus on Second LIfe.

Brief Review of Introduction to Second Life--Part II

Part one (the webex session) was reviewed previouly.  http://sla-divisions.typepad.com/sla_in_second_life/2008/10/brief-review-of.html

I attended the second session of Part II, which took place at the SLA property in Second LIfe.  Check the SLA in Second Life wiki for the schedule.  You will need to register for the sessions.  Several more one hour sessions are planned for November and December.

Approximately five of the eleven people who registered showed up for the class.  Instructors Steven Source (RL Scott Brown) and Violet Portola (RL Christy Confetti Higgins) both from Sun MicroSystems  began the class with general introductions and some basic instructions on how the class would proceed.  The instructions to begin questions with @ and indicate that a task had been completed with # were a handy way to aid communications.

Violet then provided the class with a syllabus on what would be covered:

* SLA Space
* How to communication in Second Life
* How to make friends
* Sitting
* Profiles
* Home locations
* How to teleport a person
* Creating a home location or landmark
* Search
* Groups
* Security
* Away from keyboard guidelines (AFK)
* Second Life Voice / Media
* Creating a Notecard
* Visting Info Island

We had just covered  SLA space and had begun walking from the fire pit to the building, when Violet disappeared.  Steve took over and covered the rest of the class.  He did a good job.  It is hard to manage a class when so many of the students are new to each other, the class, and even Second LIfe itself.

We were shown how to teleport, offer friendship, pass out notecards, profiles, groups, set landmarks and home. We ran out of time before we covered security or visited Info Island.  I was looking forward to learning how to create a notecard.  An hour past too quickly and I wish we had had more time.

It was nice to see that the SLA building now offers a teleport board to get to other locations within Second LIfe.

Photo of the instructors--Steve is sitting on the left, Violet is standing on the right.  Biblio is sitting in the middle

Note--Christy/Violet and Steve/Scott have offered a makeup class because of the technical diificulties that were experienced in this one.  These avatars really go the extra mile for their students.   See Christy's comment for an explanation of the technical difficulties.

Notes from the ALA Life Symposium on Library Related Organizations in SL

There were so many avatars attending the first half of the ALA LIfe Symposium that the location was switched from ALA to the Open Air Auditorium in Cybrary City. 

 

Tom Peters, (sl:  Maxito  Richards), author of the current Library Technology Reports on Virtual Worlds, gave the intro.  He discussed the emerging age of virtual worlds as the third wave of knowledge that combined the first wave (school of hard knocks) and the second wave (book learning)   Virtual Worlds put the fun back in learning.   He also discussed how library participation in Second LIfe might change as LInden changed it pricing strategies. Libraries might move on to other virtual worlds.  Even though Second Life might not last, virtual worlds were here to stay.  Tom/Maxito also discussed how the average age in Second LIfe was now down to the mid-30s.  Younger players, who are digital natives, as opposed to the older digital immigrants, were more comfortable with an open ended scenario like Second Life.  Older users of virtual worlds were more accustomed to a game type of environment where there was an expected outcome.

Communication was an intregal part of the symposium experience.  Speakers used voice to give their presentations.  Avatars were offered membership into a group as soon as they entered the sim so that they could more easily communicate with each other using both IM and chat.  DJ Radio Riel  set up the sound in world and also provided sound via her website, for those that had trouble listening within Second Life.   When the second speaker, Sonja Morgain, spoke, the first ten minues were difficult to hear because a movie soundtrack was also playing.

Sonja Morgan (sl:  Sonja Morgain) spoke about Public and Rural Librarians in Second Life.  She spoke about being a global librarian.  Were global librarians anarchists?  She talked about belonging to more than one library organization and how Second Life provided an excellent collaboration tool.  Sonja argued that a library that participated in Second LIfe gained more from the collaboration and access to the collective knowledge of the global librarians than it cost to participate in Second Life.  There was a lively discussion about what constituted a sense of community within Second Life.  Was it the number of avatars congregated within a single simulation/event or was it the number of avatars in world with whom one could communicate at any given point?  Building a library, arena, art gallery or museum was not always sufficient.  It was also necessary to hold events to give a  purpose for visiting a particular venue.

Tina Coleman from ALA discussed the role of library associations with virtual worlds.  She discussed how ALA had originally created a building that resembled the ALA headquarters.  It was hard for avatars to fly or TP into such a structure.  Transportation modes within Second Life played a big part when ALA redisgned the simulation.   Tina also talked about the need for various library organizations to cooperate in Second Life when putting on events and programs.  LL Drinkwater compared the ALA island to an Olympic Village because of the free form international aspects.  He said that each sim should have a unique feel to it.  The audience appreciated that many of the events in Second Life were free or low cost.  Other audience participants mentioned how they were looking  forward to annual conferences that included virtual world events for people who did not have the budget or time to actually travel to an annual conference.  At one point, I asked how many of the several dozen  particiipating avatars were SLA members, four of us responded.   

Carrie Pernell from Harvard was the final speaker for the first half of the Symposium.  She talked about the sense of community she had with the librarians within Second LIfe that she might not have with the 500 hundred librarians who worked at Harvard.  There was some discussion about what type of classes were best suited to virtual worlds and the type of navigation aides that would be of the most help in offering library service within virtual worlds.

Upcoming event: Talking, looking, flying, searching: A research report on information seeking behavior in Second Life

Talking, looking, flying, searching: A research report on information seeking behavior in Second Life

November 21, 2008 - 8am SLT/PT
SLA space in Second Life:  http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cybrary%20City%20II/59/100/22

Does a 3D immersive environment suggest new models of information seeking behavior? Just how are people getting at information in virtual worlds? What does this mean for libraries and librarians?

At this event, Margaret Ostrander (SL: Testy Outlander) will outline five key information seeking factors from her research in Second Life. Margaret's research was ethnographic in nature and involved in-depth interviews of everyday Second Life users, as well an ethnographic approach involving in-world observation of how avatars interacted with the information environment. Margaret will also discuss her research methodology, challenges and process.

We will be using SL Voice for the presenation, please enable your SL Voice (edit>preferences>voice chat>enable>push talk to toggle box>apply>ok).

Hope to see you there!

Christy (SL: Violet Portola)

RezLibris, (web based magazine) is Launched with a party in SL

Rez Libris is a brand new web-based magazine for librarians in Second Life.  http://www.rezlibris.com/. It is licensed up the Creative Commons.   The first issue is a wonderful way to see what librarians are doing in Second Life and how much can be accomplished by volunteers.

The new magazine was launched at a Rezzing Party on Sunday, November 2 in Second Life.  Valeria/Valibrarian Gregg created a machinima of some of the dancing.  The infectious music, stylish avatars, and one very cool kitty will have you dancing in your seat.

http://blip.tv/file/1428807