Long time readers of our blog will remember that we started the Virtual Libraries Interact blog back in late 2006 as a sister site to our blog.

Unfortunately due to a number of reasons the Virtual Libraries Interact blog has been languishing for a while and no new posts have been added.

It with some regret, and a tinge of sadness, that we have decided to merge the Virtual Libraries Interact blog into the main blog. Do not worry, all of the content has been imported into the Libraries Interact blog.

The posts are still available and they have been aggregated into a new Virtual Libraries Interact category. Also preserved are Australian Libraries in SL and SL Avatar list pages.

In the new year we look forward to posting more information here about libraries and second life. Also, don’t forget that those of us using second life and other virtual worlds may be writing about their experiences on their own personal blogs.

If, unlike my avatar, yours has 8000 lindens (about US$30), you can register to take part in the Virtual Worlds: Libraries, Education and Museums conference.

“The purpose of this conference is to provide a gathering place for librarians, information professionals, educators, museologists, and others to learn about and discuss the educational, informational, and cultural opportunities of virtual worlds.” — website

The conference is in Second Life at the New Media Consortium Conference Center (NMC) on March 8 2008, and according to the website, places are filling fast. 

Preliminary Conference Schedule.

I’m giving a paper about Second Life Librarianship for the VALA conference this Tuesday. I’m showing a couple of little movies I’ve made of Info Island and the Australian Libraries Building that I’ll link to when I’ve added sound.

Here’s the details

Tuesday 5 February 2008   1120 – 1150

CONCURRENT SESSION 1: Library 2.0

Kathryn Greenhill, Murdoch University, WA

Do we remove all the walls? Second Life librarianship

Over five hundred librarians worldwide are experimenting with providing library services in the Multi User Virtual Environment (MUVE) called Second Life including a small group of Australian librarians who constructed the Australian Libraries Building. This paper describes the interface and capabilities of a MUVE, the evolution of the Australian Libraries Building and the library objects built and scripted within it. It suggests some professional advantages for librarians who experiment within Second Life and the technical and managerial considerations of setting up a library presence there. It concludes by describing how Second Life library services have evolved as librarians better understood the potential of the MUVE interface.

Our very own Kathryn Greenhill has joined with CAVAL to offer one day workshops in Sydney and Melbourne on Second Life.

“Are YOU ready to “fly, teleport and change appearance at will”? Many library users are already leading mysterious double lives, but are Online Virtual Worlds an over-hyped Web 2.0 bubble or the Next Big Thing?”

Course details are available from the CAVAL website. 

Couldn’t make it to the discussion of “The Librarians” in Second Life but wish you had?
The Transcript is here.

The entire library community knows about this bit:

The Librarians, is a new six-part comedy series from the ABC, based around the highly-strung head librarian of an outer suburban Melbourne library. This new social satire premieres on Wednesday October 31 at 9.30pm. You can also watch it online at abc.net.au/tv/librarians from 10:00pm.

But did you know that on Thursday night, you can chat about the show with other librarians on ABC Island in Second Life?

In conjunction with the ABC, Emerald Dumont – a librarian avatar from the Australian Libraries Building – will host a discussion of the show in the ABC Auditorium on ABC Island. Do we really look like that? What would you have added? What do you think will happen? Would other professions be having this discussion if the show was called “The Teachers” or “The Doctors”?

Brush off you avatar, or follow this guide to create a new one, and join in.

DATE: Thursday November 1st

TIME: 7:30pm AEDST, 5:30pm (WA Daylight savings) , 1:30am SL time (PDT)

PLACE: ABC Auditorium , ABC Island in SL

(If you are logged into Second Life, click on this SLURL to get there: http://slurl.com/secondlife/ABC%20Island/128/75/24)

Instant message Emerald Dumont if you need a Teleport to the event, or contact her close friend Kathryn Greenhill for further information ( kathryn.greenhill at gmail dot com)

The other day Peta posted an item over at librariesinteract.info about the Beyond Paper Bag project. In it she mentioned the unAPI plugin for WordPress. WordPress is the software that we use here to run the blog.

Recently WordPress version 2.3 was announced and I upgraded both librariesinteract.info and virtual.librariesinteract.info today. If you noticed something odd happening here with the blog this afternoon it was probably me doing the upgrade.

As part of the upgrade process I’ve installed and enabled the unAPI plugin. Now all of the posts here have metadata records available in the following formats: OAI-Dublin Core (oai_dc), Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS), SRW-Dublin Core (srw_dc), MARCXML, and RSS.

As with any upgrade odd things can happen as a result. If you notice something please let us know.

As reported in The Wired Campus, there is a new competitor for Second Life.

Kaneva is described as a cross between Facebook and a virtual world, or as one commenter said “Sims meets MySpace”. A review of Kaneva is available at metaversed, by Nick Wilson.

And you can check out the Kaneva promotional video on their home page.

Journal of Information Literacy, Vol 1, No 2 (2007) has just been published. Lisa Foggo has a short article published there evaluating facilities in EduNation in Second Life as an information literacy training resource.

This paper aims to identify the value of the virtual world Second Life, and the educational facilities available in EduNation within Second Life, specifically as regards their use for information literacy in Higher Education. The author identifies potential benefits and drawbacks of Second Life and EduNation, and concludes that they do have potential value.

An evaluation of the possibilities of using Second Life’s EduNation in Information Literacy training

If you really want to know about Second Life Librarianship, then this six week online course may be for you. It does run at about 1am on Saturdays, our time..but apart from that…

Virtual World Librarianship – Your Second Life

“Avatars! Linden Dollars! Librarianship!

Librarianship? What ARE they talking about?

To discover how avatars, Linden dollars, and librarianship relate to one another, come join us in a continuing education course on librarianship in the virtual world of Second Life. Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents, including real life librarians on Info Island.

The Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Alliance Library System of Illinois have partnered to offer a six week online (in Second Life) course to introduce you to libraries and information services in a virtual world. The course starts May 25 and is open to all library and information professionals.

A continuing education course presented by the Illinois Alliance Library System and GSLIS
Dates: May 25, June 1, 8, 15, July 6 and 13
Online synchronous times: Fridays, 9:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
Location: Info Island, Second Life
Cost: $200
Instructors: Kitty Pope, Lori Bell, Tom Peters, Rhonda Trueman, Barbara Galik

Week One: Introduction to Libraries in Virtual Worlds
Week Two: Second Life 101
Week Three: Collections, Resources, and Exhibits in Virtual Environment
Week Four: Reference and Information Services in Virtual Worlds
Week Five: Managing and Working in a Virtual Library or Department
Week Six: Skills Needed by 21st Century Librarians in Virtual Worlds

For additional information and to register, visit: http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/programs/cpd/Second_Life.html or contact Marianne Steadley (Steadley@uiuc.edu), Continuing Professional Development Program Director, GSLIS