Archive for the 'Second Life' Category

Virtual Christmas party

Published on 23 November 2006 in Second Life Library, Second Life and party. 0 Comments

Just posted this message on WAIN, our local West Australian libraries email list, and thought I might post it here too - consider yourself invited whether or not you’re in Australia! (Ivan, are you able to drop by?)

Library supporters are welcome too - you don’t have to be a library worker! We’d love to see you!
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Virtual end of year party for Australian Libraries in Second Life.

The Australian libraries blog, librariesinteract.info, is hosting an end-of year party in Second Life on 13th December, 6pm to 8pm Western Australian time. [This is 1am San Francisco time; San Francisco time also being Second Life time.]

Second Life is a virtual world, with a population of over 1 million, in which large companies, schools and universities (IBM, Dell, Harvard) have set up shop. Reuters newsagency has its own correspondent there. According to a September 2006 Popular Science article, Second Life, through currency trading, shopping and land sales, has a GDP of $64 Million. Recently, Australian Libraries were given a free building for a year on Cybrary City, courtesy of Talis and the Alliance Library System in return for 2 hours per week work on library services for SL residents.

The party will include a tour of Info Island and Info Island II by Lori Bell from Alliance Library Systems. We will follow the yellow brick road from the Oz library to the Kansas State Library Virtual Branch next door. Then, back to our building to hang out… dance on the dance floor, snare some cyber snacks, and go easy on the virtual alcoholic beverages.

You can join in virtually from your own PC, or come and look over our shoulders in real life. If you join in virtually, it would be a good idea to check out Second Life before the event:

1. Go to the Second Life website.
2. Check the systems requirements.
3. Go to the join up page and choose one of the family names offered..and make up your first name.
4. You will be asked for your credit card details, but do not have to give them.
5. Download the Second Life client to your PC.
6. Choose how you’d like your avatar (representation in SL) to look.
7. Enter…explore.
8. Teleport to just outside our building at: 207, 68, 23. (Often passersby can help you out to do this) Alternatively, we can teleport you to our building, if you send a message.

For further details, please contact Con Wiebrands (flexnib at gmail dot com) or Kathryn Greenhill (sirexkat at gmail dot com). If you are already exploring Second Life and would like to meet up, our SL names are Paradoxa Kurrajong (Con) and Emerald Dumont (Kathryn) - feel free to IM us!

Hope to see you on Info Island!
Kathryn and Con
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I also posted an invite a few days ago, on lint. I’m quite amused at how many comments it’s generated. Obviously people are interested in SL!

I’m really looking forward to catching up with Emerald Dumont, Hypatia Arcadia, snail Voskhod, Midjen Zauberflote and Curious Forager… (what quaint names we all have - says Paradoxa Kurrajong!)

Getting around in the virtual worlds

Published on 9 November 2006 in virtual world, EQ, Second Life, MMORPG and WoW. 4 Comments

There’s a lot to learn when you first visit a virtual world (Second Life) or MMORPG world (eg. Norrath or Azeroth). Being able to move around is one of the most important factors. It’s usually done with a combination of using your keyboard, for the general direction (forwards, backwards, right, left) and the mouse (pointing for finer nuances of direction and to look around). One criticism I have of Second Life is that you don’t seem to be able to change the movements your keys are mapped to - you have to use the default keys (tell me I’m wrong!). And using the mouse for movement is something you have to toggle on and off, rather than a natural function. I suppose this is something to do with the fact that the mouse in SL is used to interact with objects.

With moving, the only way to get less clumsy is to practise, practise, practise. It can get very frustrating when your character is constantly running into walls or off cliffs because you can’t control them.

Getting around the world can be a challenge, too. Game worlds can be so big that in some cases it would take many many Real Life hours to get from one spot to another. Most game worlds now have built-in modes of transport. The original EverQuest used to be very challenging to get around as the only means of transport, besides running, was to beg or pay a character with teleporting skills to take you somewhere. Eventually they added portals anyone could use which simplified travel significantly.

In WoW and EverQuest II you can take a “bird” from place to place. Azeroth, the WoW world is traversed by numerous flight paths from location to location.

In SL each avatar can fly from place to place. Rochelle talked about flying in SL:

I hightailed it out of that area by “flying,” and found myself over a body of water, which freaked out my virtual self as much as my real self is freaked out being in an airplane over water.

I could really relate to this statement. I don’t have a fear of flying but in Real Life I can’t swim - can’t even doggy paddle - and in all game worlds I always have a fear of swimming/drowning. In-game swimming is not difficult once you get the hang of it - you just have to remember to move UP so you don’t run out of breath and drown - but I never ever relax when I have to “swim” in-game. M can tell you about my first ever character drowning in the moat in Kaladim in EverQuest, and how stressful that was for me even though it wasn’t a real drowning. I fixed that by eventually becoming a very proficient swimmer in EverQuest (where your swimming improved the more you swam). Once I learned how to swim in EQ, swimming in other game worlds came naturally (even if the mechanics might be slightly different in each world). If only RL swimming were that easy!

Speaking of fears and phobias, game developers seem to love to create giant spider monsters. All I can say is, I’m glad they don’t seem to bother with giant cockroach monsters. I don’t think I would be able to get over my cockroach phobia enough to play if there were such beasties in any game world.

Luan qi ba zao*

Published on 6 November 2006 in Second Life Library, librarianship and Second Life. 7 Comments

Rochelle at Tinfoil + Raccoon’s written about her recent visit to the Second Life world. Looks like she was there when I was!

She raises a lot of issues about the whole experience of SL for a newbie and the idea of having a library in the SL world, and the post has generated some almost heated comments.

I hadn’t thought much about it before, but there are so many parallels between visiting a virtual world for the first time and visiting a library as someone who is completely unfamiliar with the “interface” and unsure what one can expect. Rochelle: “For me, my first visit to SL was too much like a visit to a real library might be for most users–too hard to use.”

All the questions of relevance to users are replicated in SL, too, as they are in RL. I think that all libraries are currently facing the question of relevance - how do we stay relevant to our users, and more importantly, how do we stay relevant? I was thinking about this after reading Rochelle’s post, and then I read David Weinberger’s blog and his comment on librarianship as a viable profession for the future:

“…there will be a big demand for people who can help us find, understand and reuse information (or, as I like to think of it, create an infrastructure of meaning). We’re going to need lots of help thinking through systems that will enable multiple orders to emerge from the behaviors of distributed groups. Something like that.”

(I’m glad that some people have such positive views of my profession!)

After reading David Weinberger, I then pondered Meredith’s post on how difficult it is for students (and not just students, I suspect!) to verify the validity and veracity of information they find online. Yesterday I had the case of the student whose references for his/her PhD candidacy were almost 100% from Wikipedia. Obviously we’re not reaching everyone we should be reaching…

What role can RL libraries play for our users in the 21st century? I don’t think there’s any other profession that is better placed to play this information navigator/broker role but we need to make sure we’re keeping up with all the changes in the online world. And not just keeping up - how do we lead and push things in the directions we want them to go?

Hmm… I didn’t mean for this post to turn into a running commentary on What CW’s Been Reading in the Blogosphere. (Or should that be CW’s Messy Mind.)

*”in a mess”