I spoke on Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library’s teen Second Life projects (slide will be posted in another post)…

Kelly Czarnecki

They have set up a way for teens to pay library fines in Linden Dollars – and the teens set it up!

take it to another level – being able to interact with people you couldn’t normally interact with is a great opportunity for teens

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John Lester (Pathfinder Linden!):

- introduction to second life
- fundamentally not a game
- asked “is the web a game?” There are games on the web… SL is the same
- online augments face-to-face just like the phone augments – doesn’t replace
- median age 35
- goal – host your own SL grid (they went open source in January 2007)
- emotional bandwidth – constantly want to connect with people (emoticons vs avatars with facial expressions)
- over 200 universities represented – doing experiential learning
- creating immersive experiences
- imagine learning about ancient egypt, in a replica of ancient egypt
- real vs virtual worlds… are people you talk to real? Cell phone? What’s the difference?
- don’t get mired in past frameworks – ie., movies are not plays

ala2007

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Computers in Libraries 2007: Day 3 – Alliance & Charlotte Libraries Get a Second Life: Library Services in a Virtual World

Lori Bell, Tom Peters, Kelly Czarnecki, and Matt Gullett

Lori – intro to second life and their projects
two main projects – adult and teen focuses

5000 daily visitors to the Alliance Information Archipelago and 2-3000 teen visitors per day to the Eye4You Alliance Island – cool.

explanation of avatars

Gone from 1 to 10 islands, 10 partner islands!

starting to work with immersive environments – ex. Sci Fi and Fanstasy portal – looks like a space ship.

Pantheon Performance Center – live piano concerts, student productions

Cool – they mentioned Topeka & Shawnee County Library’s teen project!

explained second life library’s services:
reference
programs
exhibits
collections
book and genre discussions
training

Why are librarians in Second Life?
this is a new professional frontier
this is where many of our users and non-users are
to attract new users to the traditional library through referral
to investigate library services in virtual worlds
to provide library services 24/7
to meet and work with librarians worldwide
to learn and use the 3D web, the emerging web interaction interface

what have we learned?
virtual world residents do want a library
collaboration is the key and partnerships are essential
exhibits – very popular; events attract crowds
SL is fun – fun factor is a catalyst

cil2007

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Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library has been developing a Second Life presence. We have a storefront building in CybraryCity, so we formed a library committee to figure out what to do with it. This post explains what we’ve done so far.

Last night, we held our first event – an open house at the storefront. From my perspective, it was a success – we had about 50 attendees (two of which blogged about it)! We had a few things set up for the attendees to do. They could:

• sign our guestbook
• get a free t-shirt
• network with the other people/avatars who attended the event
• get an impromptu tour of our facility
• get some food (including chicken wings, sushi, and cake)
• get a free coffee mug with my library’s logo
• Join in on the rooftop dancing

And, of course, see what we’ve been up to. So far, we have focused on “original content,” including:

• a click-through display of artwork in our library’s art gallery
• exploring web links to info on Topeka and Kansas
• information about our library

Meeting and events are a HUGE thing at our RL library – so we have tables and chairs set up in our storefront “branch” to facilitate SL meetings.

And did I mention we’re “dance-party-capable?”

That’s what we’ve been doing with our storefront. If you’re interested, here’s a link to some “pictures” I took of the event, and here’s a video I made about the event.

Stay tuned for more as we continue to develop it!

secondlife

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This is cool. Adaptive Path, a company that focuses on building digital experiences, is apparently going to help Linden Labs improve the digital experience that is Second Life.

I find that to be an extremely interesting project. Usually, improving a digital experience means improving someone’s website, or a function of the website – not improve something that, in many ways, is mimicking real life in a digital way.

They also say this: “So, after we spoke with them for a while, we discovered that, while there may be a few issues with the world and it’s amazing growth rate, there is one issue in particular that’s affecting the usability for the residents. While I can’t divulge the exact issue, I can say that it’s a very complex and interesting problem -– something that we’ve not tackled in this manner before.” I sure hope that means actually talking within Second Life, rather than just being able to type/chat to each other!

And I hope they write it up, speak about it, etc – I think we’d all learn much from their “experience.”

second life, secondlife, experience

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This is my first attempt at making a movie using the Second Life movie tools, and it came out ok. In the video, I’m sitting down and chatting with Stephen Mandelbrot in Cybrary City. Take a peek!I have to admit – I felt kinda odd doing that! The chair had a movement sim thing attached to it (both chairs did), so we were both doing the same movements at the same time… spooky! And of course, there’s that albino elf thing I have going on, too… But at the same time – wow! I’ll also admit that the visual part of Second Life added a whole new dimension to chatting (Second Life has a chat/IM feature, which you can barely make out in the video).Now if only Second Life allowed voice chatting… THAT would be cool. And I suppose you CAN do that via Skype or some other similar tool. But an in-world type of voice chat would be even better. Why? It would make the whole experience a bit more seamless and easy-to-use, just like IM’ing in-world rather than having to use a normal IM service while being in-world. Just a thought.

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