Landmarks of note

January 31, 2007 By Graham Sabre

Had a very informative conversation with Emerald Dumont, an Australian in-world librarian. Emerald has been involved in the establishment of an Australian Library service in SL.

Established on Cybrary City in November 2006 it is being co-ordinated by Emerald, with another 14 Australian library folk joining in.

Emerald cites networking, fun, playfulness, a rapid increase in IT skills and a chance to learn a new interface as some reasons why she is there.

“There are over 900 librarians setting up services on the 7 islands around Info Island”, she said.

“Together we are grappling with customer service issues like whether doors discourage visitors – we are experimenting with removing them totally from our buidings. We are creating links to library resources outside second life, have RSS feeds and search engines available within our libraries, are holding author talks, staffing reference desks, creating displays and offering our libraries as community meeting places. We have even had historical figures, like Henry VIII, talk about their lives”.

Emerald would like to hear from Australians in Second Life about what they want from the library. “As well as providing information, I’d like to see it used as a gathering place for Australians who didn’t want to hang out in pubs. The top floor could be used as a community meeting room, as happens in real life libraries”.

Kathryn Greenhill, the real life librarian behind Emerald Dumont, is giving a talk about library services in Second Life at the National Library as part of its “Digital Culture” series. It’s titled “Flying Librarians of Oz: What’s all the fuss about Second Life and what’s it got to do with libraries?”.

FAST FACTS

Australian Libraries Building
Flying Librarians of Oz talk: 14th February 12:30pm, National Library Lecture Theatre, Canberra
More about the Australian Libraries Building: virtual.librariesinteract.info

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Students tend to use Google or Wikipedia as their first port of call in researching for information these days. Emerald’s library service could change this as more and more library and librarian services find themselves developing an SL service.

In fact, the idea of “Ask a Librarian” could be back in vogue with quality SL libraries like Australian Libraries Building and librarians such as Emerald being available to answer your query.

Popularity: 12% [?]

ABC Island – Construction Begins

Today the ABC Island commenced construction on its newly purchased island. Some initial pictures taken during very early construction today:

An automated tour of the island is available and our forums continue to be the place to submit ideas for the island.

Check out ABC Island in-world

Popularity: 5% [?]

The Australian Film and Television School

The AFTRS have an island that provides an incredible visual experience as well as an educational opportunity for its students and the wider public.

Check it out in-world

Popularity: 5% [?]

Indulge your spaceship fetish

Check it out in-world. Just make sure you’re ready to fly as location is elevated. If you do hit the ground you’ll see a well-known spaceship.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Now THIS is a house with a difference

A US student has created a tesseract house that is ‘four-dimensional’ when walked through – impressive science to say the least – check how it works from the outside.

Thanks to Jambalaya Fonck an outside pic:

Have a look for yourself

Popularity: 2% [?]

Get a room, will you?

Starwood Hotels have their new Hotel Brand, Aloft in-world and you can do the full tour. I have to say, the rooms are quite different to the usual hotel room, though in the end all hotels have that soulless quality….