Thursday, April 27, 2006

The Library in Second Life

I should be reading my feeds in Bloglines, -and take in what's really important-;) but first i have to adjust my meaning about the Second Life Library initiative. First I went there, had a look, talked to some people (mostly librarians) and tried to get some feeling with Sl itself. The librarians are getting organized, having meetings in SL (too late for me!), are taking care of their building (designing, decorating ...). I will follow the development closely, and maybe even consider offering my services as medical information specialist. It would be great if you could search while online in the game for any information you are after and I would advice to get for instance Google Scholar in there via some screen. Are the rooms for rent in the Library for subject librarians? This is the first time I am playing a so called massively-multiplayer online real-life game (MMORLG) and I must say, I like it and the danger is that it will take too much time ...... The library focuses it's forthcoming services at users "that normally would not use the library." The discussion already started about why you would design a "traditional" library building with shelves and such, while real libraries turn into giant computer rooms with offering at the same time all their services off-campus and online as well to their target-audience. The power of the medical library in a academic setting is the location, close to the hospital and close to the teaching facilities. The librarians are doing a great job, learning new skills, having close contact with their users. A Grand Opening will be held soon! It does not look so weird anymore ... Watch out for the orange Dutch guy and have a look at the blog: http://secondlifelibrary.blogspot.com/

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hi Guus,

Good to see u are interested in Serious Gaming as well!


Nice posts. I'll add your blog to Netvibes.