ACRL-VWIG & ALA Virtual Communities in Libraries Program
January 21, 2018 12PM SLT   
  at the Community Virtual Library in World in Second Life
on Cookie Island 100/107/21

"Tour of the New Community Virtual Library" 
presented by: Valibrarian Gregg aka Valerie Hill

At the January 2018 ACRL-VWIG monthly program, Valibrarian used both voice and text chat to take the members on a tour of the new Community Virtual Library facility and grounds
located on Cookie Island.

The new CVL Library building on Cookie Island

 The library is just one of the many educational features found on Cookie Island.  It is a real working environment.  The main library serves as both an information resource and a networking hub with it's Virtual Worlds Database-Second Life and beyond.

The Reference Area

Head Reference Librarian SueMoon Magic and other librarian volunteers are available as noted on the calendar at:

https://communityvirtuallibrary.wordpress.com/

These volunteers help to make this a real learning space.

Real work stations link the library to internet resources.

 The Virtual Worlds Database-Second Life and beyond developed for the CVL Library has been shared at the Virtual World Best Practices in Education Conference, SJSU's VCARA Conference and the OpenSimulator Conference.  Work is currently being carried out to install and A.I. Bot to help answer health-related qeustions (with care taken to remind users to talk to their doctors!)

Information kiosks.

There is also a Networking Hub that take the form of treasure chests filled with contact information and information on scheduled events.  There are numerous information resources that help connect the CVL library with other virtual world communities.  Cookie Island is set up to facilitate group interactions and meetings.  The space was designed to be extremely flexible in order to accommodate almost any type of program or display.  Many groups already regularly use the resources there to present and discuss everything from cybersecurity to art projects.  The existing Digital Citizenship Museum exhibit currently there will be incorporated into a new museum planned for later in 2018.  Participants are invited and encouraged to propose small and pop-up exhibits.  Currently there are four spaces available for art exhibitions and other kinds of displays at the CVL Library Land Exhibit Spaces.  The idea is that the exhibits will change regularly.  There will be a calendar to reserve a space to highlight specific virtual world events or topics. Other resources currently available include:

An outdoor auditorium for meetings.

Library Land Pier, another area designed to facilitate small group interactions.

The Library Land Pier is a good place to visit with firends or to join one of the groups that meet regularly there.

At the Library Land Pier, you can visit with friends or join one of the many groups that meet there.  There is a trivia night gaming group.  You can also experience tai chi on the beach.
 

Informal group space, Sunset Beach.

There is a comfortable campfire area for book discussions.  Science Fiction seems to work very well for discussions in Second Life and January's selection is Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge.  The book club meets on the 4th Friday of the month at 6pm SLT.

An art study group also meets on Mondays at 6pm SLT on Sunset Beach.  This group has been meeting for about a year.  Sunset Beach is a good place to put up experimental works.  There will be a public calendar available to keep everyone posted on current and upcoming events.

 Currently there is an exhibit on Venice in the 1600s by Brant Knutzen of the University of Hong Kong.  There will be a live tour of this new simulation.  It includes a recreation of  a Renaissance library complete with the Gutenberg Press.

Gutenberg printing press exhibit at the Venice exhibition.

Another space on Cookie Island is the Virtual Poetry Garden.  Last year Valibrarian helped sponsor a poetry contest on Twitter and this contest will take place again in April 2018.  

Among the other amenities:
There is a theater where plays are produced and staged

There is also a group, Majestic Movies, active there which is working on a film project.

There's also a community pub, another good place for group meetings and celebrations.
 

Cookie Island and the facilities there have been designed to be a very comfortable, pleasing space for people to congregate, hold meetings and put up exhibits.

The CVL will be working with other groups in Second Life like the Caledon Library and there are plans to network with other virtual world grids as well.  Second Life may be home base, but librarians are encouraged to explore other grids.  Writing groups, theatre groups, and others are encouraged to work with the CVL and vice-versa.

Val pointed out that Second Life is not virtual reality and that these two things seem to be very different experiences!  Right now SL is a shared space. So far VR doesn’t include social interaction.   We will have to see how virtual reality develops.  

For Further info Val has set up several short machinima videos on Youtube which can be viewed here: (Press Control + left mouse click to open these)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13WO5q-y0ZY&feature=youtu.be 

and here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RxU_NURVo8

(My thanks to Ilene Pratt (Ilene Frank) for text and additonal photos and to Valibrarian Gregg (Valerie Hill)  for additional photos for this post.)

ACRL-VWIG & ALA Virtual Communities in Libraries Program
November 19, 2017 12PM SLT   
 at the CVL Auditorium in Second Life

"Using Sim-on-a-Stick to create portable Virtual Libraries"

presented by: Camie Rembrandt

At this month's meeting, Camie Rembrandt,  presented on how to use sim on a stick or "SoaS" to create portable virtual worlds that can be used in stand-alone environments when people are unable to connect to Second Life or other virtual worlds or they need to work offline.  Sim-on-a-Stick is a standalone, single user Windows package of OpenSim that runs on a USB flash drive.

Camie Rembrandt

Using an OpenSim based virtual library has the advantage of being able to run off of a USB flash drive and they allow one to work in a virtual environment while being offline. Camie showed a brief video that outlined the steps and materials needed for creating a portable virtual world.  The materials, except for the flash drive, are free and readily available online.

She went over some of the considerations one must make in creating sim on a stick.  These include:

-Selecting a Viewer (client) to use

 In theory, any viewer that works with OpenSim will work with Sim-on-a-Stick  (She prefers the Kokua viewer.)

-Finding free 3D content 

While SoaS comes with a default region where one start building in a virtual environment, there are many online sites that offer free 3D content. She recommended Zadaroo.com as a good place to find IAR files, folders that contain digital content with all kinds of items - from avatars to buildings which can be uploaded into SoaS inventory as well as OAR files, which are files that contain entire, ready to use regions that can also be uploaded into SoaS.

-Public Domain ebooks

A library wouldn't be complete without at least a token collection of books.  In addition to the ability to create books in world by creating notecards and created objects and Camie recommended Project Gutenberg as a source for finding public domain books to be used in your SoaS library.

Once you have created your virtual library with SoaS you will be able to use it on other computers without having to install anything else on your hard-drive.  The real advantage of a SoaS is that they allow educators and students to use this kind of portable virtual library even in schools where there is no access to the internet.

For more information about teaching with Sim-on-a-stick visit http://teachingwithsoas.blogspot.com/

ACRL-VWIG & ALA Virtual Communities in Libraries Program
October 15, 2017 12PM SLT   
 at the CVL Auditorium in Second Life

"Genealogy in Virtual Worlds"

presented by: Kilandra Yeuxdoux 

At this month's meeting Kilandra Yeuxdoux, a librarian and genealogist did a presentation on using Virtual Worlds for genealogy research.   Kilindra pointed out that many organizations in virtual worlds currently operate by setting up website launchers.  These sites allow people to do genealogy research independently by logging into specific collections.  These sites work like more traditional genealogical sites such as Ancestry.com.  People create accounts and then login to the collection/douments available there and proceed to do their own research.  Organizations such as Just Genealogy, The Humanity Biblioteca-Afterchills were two examples of places that use this research  model. Genealogy research requires access to information/documentation that is place bound and found only at a particular library or institution which may not be easily accessible to the researcher.  This is one of the aspects of genealogy research that makes it so time consuming and labor intensive.

Kilandra Yeuxdoux

Kilandra, who's been a Second Life user since 2006, proposed that one of the best things virtual worlds offer to genealogists is the ability to meet and work with people who may live in an area you are researching or who are physically close to, or have access to collections you need for doing your research. She called this research model "Collaboration Research".  This model of doing research collaboratively came out of medical school curriculum development.

Virtual worlds, and specifically, Second Life are ideally suited to cooperative research efforts.  They allow people who are geographically dispersed to meet together in a virtual space that they have access to at any time and from any location.  Working in virtual spaces collaboratively has a couple of benefits.  For one, virtual worlds provide a space where other researchers can assist you by retrieving information/documentation from those special libraries/collections to which you might not have ready access.  Another, perhaps more important benefit it brings is that it provides skilled researchers a space where they can work together and help one another with their specific research needs.  Adding other skilled researchers to the mix greatly facilitates the often-times tedious process of doing genealogy research.

While commercial services such as Ancestry.com already function as places researchers can go to access actual data, Kilindra suggests that Virtual worlds, specifically Second Life,  are great places for researchers to meet and share information.  She posited that this role may wind up being more important for researchers.  She encouraged researchers using Second Life and other virtual worlds to  strive to create an information commons for other researchers who are developing or bringing information to an informal conversation.

ACRL-VWIG & ALA Virtual Communities in Libraries Program
July 16, 2017 12PM SLT   
 at the CVL Auditorium in Second Life

"Museums of Archaeology"

presented by: Severus Alexander

At the July ACRL-VWIG meeting,  Severus Alexander took us on a tour of an Archaeology Library and several museums on ancient archaeology and history.  The museums included monuments from Ancient Rome and beautiful buildings from ancient history.  Presentations on archaeology are included at the museum along with a Library of Ancient Greek and Roman Literature. The museum includes a gift shop! 

The SLurl is http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Buttercup%20Isle/128/125/3001

All photos courtesy Valibrarian Gregg

ACRL-VWIG & ALA Virtual Communities Libraries Program
August 20, 2017 12PM SLT 

at the CVL Auditorium in Second Life

"Avatars and Artificial Intelligence: Future Digital Citizens"
presented by:
Starlight Darkmatter, Second Life Bar Association and  AI Robot Plutchik.

At this meeting Starlight Darkmatter from the Second Life Bar Association returned to share information about the rights and responsibilities of avatars. Participants were able to interact with AI robot, Plutchik. Plutchik is a work in progress – a bot in Second Life that can be trained to learn from an end user.  A useful response gets a swipe for “good” and a tap for “bad.”  Plutchik is named by Robert Plutchik who identifed eight primary emotions: anger, anticipation, disgust, fear, job, sadness, surprise, and trust.  With further development the Plutchik bot may be able to differentiate between emotions based on voice tone and stress.  To the extent that this happens can we say that bots have developed consciousness?  Can we teach bots to learn and apply ethical concepts? Will we learn to consider bots digital citizens?    Those of us at the meeting had an opportunity to ask Plutchik questions and get some responses.  

Photo by Dahlia Jayaram

Photos courtesy of Valibrarian Gregg

For the full transcript of the presentation click this link:
 https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2pfovczopj8ejRUc1diaFJSbG8/view?usp=sharing

ACRL-VWIG & ALA Virtual Communities Libraries Program
September 17, 2017 12PM SLT   
 at the CVL Auditorium in Second Life

"Back to School in Cybalounge: A Follow-up Tour"

presented by:

Edward Tarber

All photos courtesy of Valibrarian Gregg

The ACRL group met in Cybalounge – a 3D virtual world that runs in a browser. No downloads necessary!  The world is easy to use and could be a trouble-free introduction to virtual worlds for new users.  Even though Cybalounge is still under development, Edward Tarber showed us some tools such as an interactive white board in the library.  Click on a book to read the contents of the book.  His students are already using Cybalounge to share classwork.  The number of avatars who can use CybaLounge at any one time is limited to the memory in the browser itself.  Probably 20 -25 avatars can share the space at any one time.  There are plans to allow for avatar customization and more!

 Links to videos of the discussion/presentation can be found in Youtube at the following URLS:
(All videos courtesy of Valibrarian Gregg)



https://youtu.be/UHwLbbxScL0

https://youtu.be/z63H4yrhwNc

https://youtu.be/oUW_HyYZwt4

To enter Cybalounge, simply go to https://cyba.world/location.html?locationid=800000004&dl=true Choose your avatar and name.

Register (for free) at https://cyba.world/ to gain some functionality not open to guests.  Click “register” and select an avatar user name and scroll down to select a password, provide your email address, accept the terms of service and send in your request.  You will receive confirmation via your email address.

Read more:   Tarber, Edward.  (2017, February 4).  cybaLOUNGE: A Virtual World in Your Browser. https://virtualoutworlding.blogspot.com/2017/01/2017-oshg-tech-cybalounge-virtual-world.html

ACRL-VWIG & ALA Virtual Communities Libraries Program
May 21, 2017 12PM SLT 

at the CVL Auditorium in Second Life

"Vision of Virtual World Librarianship"
presented by:
Valerie Hill  (Valibrarian Gregg in Second Life),
President of the Community Virtual Library

At Mays' monthly meeting of the ACRL-VWIG, Valibrarian Gregg (Valerie Hill), presented an update on the activities of the Community Virtual Library (CVL), and shared information about some major changes that are coming to it.   The CVL has been active in Second Life and other virtual worlds for over a decade now!  During that time, it has always served as an information and networking hub for librarians and educators who were interested in the educational potential of virtual worlds.

This phrase has helped define the goal of all CVLs' activities during this time which has been, and continues to be, promoting virtual spaces for learning, resource-sharing and exploration.  This vision statement declares what the CVL intends to be; a place to share professional work, and communities as resources so that people can connect and learn in virtual environments.   Their mission statement further elaborates what they do: 

Ranganathan’s Five Laws of Library Science, which basically focus on the idea of connecting the learner to the resources they need readily translates and can be adapted to virtual world resources. Librarians in virtual worlds serve the same purpose too; helping to connect users with relevant information and resources.

Val briefly examined the principles which have guided CVLs' activities in virtual worlds for the last ten years.  These principles have been;

1.  Advocate Digital Citizenship-by understanding the changing needs of library users & learners in digital culture, the CVL strives to model digital citizenship for all age groups

2. Foster Connecting Virtual Communities-the CVL believes virtual communities are vital resources for digital citizens.  It has always focused its activities on fostering networking and forming of community partnerships as well as sharing communities of interest with visitors.

3.  Support Information Literacy- the CVL works to embed core values of librarianship in new media formats.  The emphasis has been on respect for intellectual property, fostering the information freedom rights of all users and emphasizing personal responsibility for digital citizenship.

4.  Adapt and Innovate-the CVL models adapting technology tools to meet the needs of learners through innovative formats in virtual spaces.  These tools include sharing virtual worlds, landmarks to immersive learning environments and collections of virtual learning communities as well as fostering the exploration of virtual reality.

These principles continue to guide the outstanding work of the Community Virtual Library.  

Val next announced some exciting news, the Community Virtual library is partnering with New Media Arts Online and in Virtual Worlds.  This nonprofit organization matches the purpose and philosophy of the CVL and matches its purpose and philosophy nicely.   The partnership will include moving CVLs' website to WWW.newmediaarts.org.   CVL will become a project within New Media Arts.

Val also announced the creation of a new branch of the Community Virtual Library within the virtual world Kitley.  This is step one in the effort to investigate ways to connect communities in virtual worlds beyond Second Life.

The CVL will hold workshops and events in Kitely and planning efforts are already underway for presenting a Digital Citizenship Program in the Fall of 2017 at the newly created Digital Citizenship Museum in Kitely.  The CVL will continue to host events and exhibitions in Second Life too.  The move to New Media Arts is seen as a way of connecting more virtual communities and provides "extra hands" to expand its' activities.  

The final announcement Val made was a new project which will be important to educators and librarians in virtual worlds,  the creation/development of a "Virtual World Database".  While there are numerous spreadsheets and lists of educational sims in virtual worlds, this project will provide a searchable database for finding them across virtual worlds. Creation of this database will highlight high quality content and libraries found in Second Life and other virtual worlds.  The goal is to provide a coordinated source for information about immersive environments and educational sims which demonstrate the educational/learning potential that virtual worlds encompass.  An invitation was made to those present to help create this database of virtual world communities and immersive learning spaces. The link is at:  https://goo.gl/forms/uezsNHEU8i3ivjdG3

As it has for the last ten years, the Community Virtual Library continues to strive to be inclusive and to support the work of others in virtual worlds.  It continues to shine the light on best practices in digital citizenship and learning in virtual spaces.