Archive for November, 2008

Salon Huron 11/20 at 3:30 PST/SLT: Honoraria Paine, Full-Time Second Life Librarian

This week’s discussion leader at Salon Huron on ALA IslandÂ  (196, 206, 29) at 3:30 PST/SLT will be Honoria Paine — who is Debbi Duncan in real life, a technical services and library systems librarian for the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. She may be the first academic librarian who works FULL TIME in Second Life as Second Life and Immersive Education Coordinator!

Everyone is welcome! Please join us!

If you have other ideas/topics for discussion, please send an IM to Lorelei Junot. These will take place each Thursday as part of the ALA Virtual Communities and Libraries Member Initiative Group (ALA VCL MIG).

FYI: Joint meeting with members of ALA’s ACRL in SL (Association of College and Research Libraries in Second Life).

(Thanks to Abbey Zenith for the original event description.)

If youâ€™d like, RSVP at the Facebook Event Page, at:
http://www.new.facebook.com/event.php?eid=37550752011

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ALA SLymposium Draws 80 Attendees (and doesn’t crash)!

The ALA Fall 2008 Second Life (SL) Symposium — called the ALA SLymposium for short — on November 8, 2008, stood firm with as many as 78 avatars on its last-minute relocation to Cybrary City, an island next door on the Second Life Information Archipelago of the Alliance Virtual Library which could better accommodate such numbers (I thought our Second Life avatar attendees would have enjoyed crowding off the stage and ending up watching our informative speakers from underneath the ALA Island waters, but I was outvoted!). ALA’s Virtual Communities and Libraries Member Initiative Group (ALA VCL MIG) worked quickly to ensure an otherwise seamless SLymposium experience, which counted over 100 registrants the day before the event.

The SLymposium drew a wide range of Second Life avatars interested in how this online virtual world can be applied to the theory and practice of librarianship, a mix of library professionals and library school students. There were attendees who have made logging in to Second Life a part of their daily routine as well as a few who had signed up as much as two years ago but had not found reason to return — until the event.

As pointed out by Steven Harris on his Collections 2.0 Blog in the entry, SL Riffing, the ALA SLymposium speakers were streamed in — courtesy of Gabriel Riel of RielRadio.org — which left the usual chat communication box free to provide instant commentary as well as ask questions in-the-moment.

Tom Peters (SL Avatar: Maxito Ricardo) opened the ALA SLymposium promptly at 8 am Pacific Standard Time (which is also Second Life Time), welcoming the attendees with a message that reflected the ideas found in more detail in his Librarianship in Virtual Worlds issue of ALA’s Library Technology Reports, exploring libraries and library-patron relationships in a multi-user virtual environment (MUVE).

Sonja Morgan (SL Avatar: Sonja Morgwain) explained how SL helps her, a librarian in a rural area,Â  feel more connected to the profession, in providing the opportunity to speak with library workers from around the world, exponentially expanding her network of contacts and reliable resources.

Tina Coleman (ALA SL Avatar: Kay Tairov) spokeÂ  of the various library associations, including some of the state library associations, that have created a presence within SL in order to better connect with and serve their members.

Carrie Pennell (SL Avatar: Carrie Kent) spoke only half-jokingly of her early expeditions into Second Life as a librarian but not necessarily as a duly named librarian of her place of work — which she can now openly declare is Harvard. Being in SL helped her to connect with her university student patrons. (Scheduled co-presenter FT Takacs wasn’t able to appear due to being on a plane somewhere between Thailand and… not Thailand!)

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This week’s open discussion at Salon Huron on Thursday, 11/6 at 3:30 pm PST/SLT: The Librarian as Second Life Campus Leader

This week’s Salon Huron table talk discussion on ALA Island ( 196, 206, 29) on Thursday, November 6, 2008, at 3:30 pm Pacific Standard Time/Second Life Time will be led by the newly crowned Alliance Library System (IL) Librarian of the Year, Barbara Galik, known in Second Life as Puglet Dancer. She will speak about The Librarian as Campus Leader in setting up a virtual presence in Second Life.Â  These discussion sessions are informal and free.Â  Join us!

If you have other ideas/topics for discussion, please send an IM to Lorelei Junot. These will take place each Thursday as part of the ALA Virtual Communities and Libraries Member Initiative Group (ALA VCL MIG).

If you’d like, RSVP at the Facebook Event Page, at:
http://www.new.facebook.com/event.php?eid=33250273075

(Thanks to Lorelei Junot for the event description!)

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Now showing at Galen Noltenius Sky (Video) Platform: Crafting the Virtual World and The Art of Interactive Storytelling by Douglas Wilson (30 min), a brief history of videogames!

Just in time for ALA’s first annual National Gaming Day on November 15, 2008, ALA Island in Second Life is showing the two-videos-in-one video, “Crafting the Virtual World and The Art of Interactive Storytelling” which was recorded, edited, and written by Douglas Wilson. Watch the video at the Galen Noltenius Sky Platform on ALA Island (206, 100, 46).

The 30-minute video, which features scenes from various video games — from 1987’s “Legend of Zelda (shown above)” to 2002’s “Neverwinter Nights” — can also be viewed at blip.tv, at:
http://blip.tv/file/1431972

Full details:

This video was recorded, edited, and written by Douglas Wilson for an exhibit curated by Henry Lowood and Casey Alt of the How They Got Game Project, Stanford Humanities Lab, called “Fictional Worlds, Virtual Experiences: Storytelling and Computer Games.” The exhibit was hosted by the Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University and ran from 12 Nov. 2003 through 28 March 2004.

Crafting the Virtual World and The Art of Interactive Storytelling are actually two separate loops, which is how they appear as part of the Archiving Virtual Worlds video archive hosted on the Internet Archive.

Crafting the Virtual World’s featured games include The Legend of Zelda, The Legend of Zelda: Windwaker, Sim City 2000, Grand Theft Auto 3, Super Mario Brothers 3, Super Mario 64, Everquest, Doom, and Metroid Prime.

The Art of Interactive Storytelling’s featured games include Adventure, Ultima IV, Final Fantasy 4, Final Fantasy 7, Half-Life, The Secret of Monkey Island, Neverwinter Nights, and The Sims.

ALALibraryVal Miles watches a scene from Legend of Zelda -- Its dangerous to go alone. Take this.
ALALibraryVal Miles watches a scene from Legend of Zelda — “It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this.”

Douglas Wilson was kind enough to join the two loops together as a single video, using the original high-quality footage. I asked him to do this so that we could show these videos in Second Life, on ALA Island, to celebrate ALA’s first annual National Gaming Day, happening November 15, 2008 — which is hopefully happening at a library near you!

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