Programs and Tours at Info Island

On Saturday night author Lopayza Moonlight talked about her work, creating fiction into virtual reality in Second Life and took the 15 attendees on a tour of her creation in Apoda.


On Wednesday night, Lorelei Junot and Eiseldora Reisman talked to SLED - the Second Life Graduate Education group, and gave them a tour of Info Island including the Main Library and the ICT library. Approximately 20 attended. Some are gearing up for fall classes and will use the library to supplement their courses.

What A Week at Info Island!

The week started well with Maxito Ricardo, Caroline Keats, and I giving a tour of the island and introduction to medical resources on the Internet to Sojourner's stroke victim group.





Tech Soup had a wonderful mixed reality event to show their new directory of non-profits in Second Life, and various speakers, including a library representative talked on their organizations to a crowd of nearly 60. The event was wonderful. Glitter and her group did a tremendous job and it was exciting to have so many people on the island.


Then, a digital tsunami as Milo put it. Most of the things on the island disappeared. Within a day, Second Life had us back up and running again. After the upgrade, disappearance again. That same night, Second Life had us up and running again. I hope we never experience that again.





Milo Czervic, one of our partners on Info Island who runs the ICT library has a beautiful brand new library designed and built by AngryBeth Shortbread.





Jenna Darrow and Max Batra have a new Mystery Manor full of posters and information on mysteries and mystery authors. What fun we will have at Halloween.





The World of E! Spiral Mandelbrot posted to the list an idea to offer something on Info Island to celebrate the World Ebook Fair. There is a new high tech display on the lawn with information on the World Ebook Fair and links to e-books, e-movies, and e-audio. We are planning programs on Info Island on ebooks in real life and ebooks in Second Life. More on that once we have complete plans.





The Early Illinois Women's Exhibit on the lawn at Info Island has moved to our nineteenth century library in Caledon. CoyoteAngel Dimsum has donated the land and the building. It is exciting to get started with this special library.

Second Life Grid Down!

With today's update, the SL grid went down - as of 4:20 PM (Pacific) Linden Labs was still trying to resolve the problem, and estimate SL back online around 7:30 PM (Pacific).

For updates on the issue, check http://secondlife.com/community/

Second Life Library Program: Making Fiction Into Virtual Reality

Join us in the open air auditorium on Info Island on Saturday July 22 at 6 pm sl time for a fascinating program with Loypayza Moonlight, creator of Lopayzanilaya, which is designed to replicate a portion of the Celestial Court from the Aizvarya novels. She has built it exactly as the books describe — and she should know; she is the author of the original books. She will talk about her work, her creation and offer a tour of her creation. Lopayzanilaya is the state of the Fox Spirit. The entire area is designed to replicate a portion of the Celestial Court from the Aizvarya novels. Moonlight's avatar is an extension of this theme. She designed it to be a "Fox Maiden" from the stories, a being that would be a caretaker for the shrine. For more information on this fascinating prpoject, check the July 11 Metavsere Messenger. What can we as librarians do to create virtual reality of literature works to engage our readers?

Tech Soup to offer mixed reality event in person and in second life

Net Tuesday Mixed Reality Event: SecondLife for Nonprofits

Tuesday, July 18, 2006 (6:00 PM - 8:00 PM)



Real World Location:

Net2 HQ
322 Ritch St. 2nd Floor
San Francisco, CA
415-633-9446
San Francisco, California



Virtual Location:
>From Second Life, click on the blue map button at the bottom of the screen. In the Find Region field, type "TechSoup.org" (without quotations) and include mature regions, click Show Location and then Teleport to go there.
Registration is free to create your avatar, but you will need to
provide your mobile phone number or credit card (which will not be
charged).

Here is the SLurl to TechSoup's virtual location:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/InfoIsland/52/171/33/

You need to be logged into SL to open this SLurl, and then once you
click, open your map and click teleport. You will be teleported to
TechSoup.

----------------------------------------------------------

Every month, Web innovators and those who promote social change
congregate in a shared effort to bring the social Web to nonprofits and
NGOs all over the world. These meetings are referred to as Net Tuesday
events.

July's Net Tuesday will feature a presentation about how nonprofits can
use Second Life, a multiplayer community on the Web. In Second Life,
users create their own characters (called avatars) and help build a
virtual 3D world that's created entirely by its inhabitants and limited
only by the imagination.

Second Life boasts a successful marketplace, social interactions, and
civic activities; it's a virtual community rather than a game, and
nonprofits can benefit from this community in a number of ways. The Net
Tuesday event, which will occur on July 18th, will be held at
TechSoup's satellite office in Second Life.

Susan Tenby, Online Community Manager of TechSoup.org, and Jeska
Dzwigalski, Community Manager at Linden Lab, (the company that created
and runs Second Life), will present a tour of this online community,
including TechSoup's satellite office. The presenters will also demo a
directory of nonprofit organizations in the Second Life world. Finally,
the event will feature a number of guest speakers from organizations
who are actively working in the Second Life community to better achieve
their organization's missions.

The event will simultaneously occur both virtually, in Second Life and
in the physical world. We will be displaying audio/video footage of
both environments to show participants in both locations what is
happening at that time.

To ensure smooth operation of the virtual event, we will restrict the
TechSoup space to those on the guest list, which operates on a
first-come-first-serve basis and will be capped at about 50
registrants.


For more newbie and How-To information, check out the Second Life wiki:
http://secondlife.com/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=How-Tos

Here is a great intro piece on how SL can be used for serious purposes:
http://futuretag.net/index.php/Slgp1
--------------

This Net Tuesday will take place on the 3rd Tuesday of the month rather
than the 2nd, on July 18th.

Library webcast; Authors Woodward and Witt Discuss Dobbit Do

Meno Rich and World Bridges did a webcast tour of the library this evening.

Authors Woodward and Witt discussed their new book "Dobbit Do" in the outdoor auditorium which about 25 people attended.

New Special Collections from Illinois State Digital Archives, OCLC provides database trials

WWII Posters



During World War II the United States government issued posters on topics such as national security, rationing and conservation, investing in war bonds, military recruitment, civil defense, and industrial production. These posters were part of an aggressive propaganda campaign designed to encourage and mobilize the home front war effort. Artists such as James Montgomery Flagg, Otto Fischer, Ben Shahn, and Norman Rockwell contributed their talents to create some of these posters.

This collection, from the Illinois State Library, contains posters issued by various United States government agencies from the beginning of the war through 1945.

Vachel Lindsay











Vachel Lindsay

The Vachel Lindsay Collection is comprised largely of materials containing the published prose and poetry of Vachel Lindsay in formats such as posters, newspaper and magazine articles, booklets, pamphlets, magazines and books. Other items include newspaper and magazine articles that contain biographical information on Lindsay and his family, critiques of his work and memorials and tributes to Lindsay. A small collection of photographs include Lindsay, his family, Elizabeth Graham, the Lindsay Verse Speaking Choir, 1940 and his tombstone. Phonograph recordings of Lindsay reading his works and his son, Nicholas Cave Lindsay, reading his father's poems make up another part of the collection.
Two scrapbook albums put together by Frances "Fannie" Hamilton, the younger sister of Vachel's mother contain materials about Lindsay from 1914 to about 1930. The albums include poems, drawings, private publications, clippings about and by Lindsay, a lock of his hair and some photographs. Bound volumes of his work include The Tramp's Excuse, The Village Magazine first edition, The Village Magazine third and fourth editions, Vision Magazine, A Letter About My Four Programmes and a notebook kept by Joy Lindsay Blair, Vachel's younger sister.

These digital images, made available by the Sangamon Valley Collection at the Lincoln Library (Springfield), are of photographs from this collection




OCLC provides trial access to databases for Second Life residents


Computer terminals with access and directions to these databases have been set up in the main library and the high rise library. Training will be planned soon.

Reference group to meet Thursday July 6

The reference group under the leadership of Michael Maitland will meet in the main library meeting room at 6 sl on Thursday July 6.

Lots of things going on at Info Island

Science fiction author Bud Sparhawk talked to an audience of about 30 at the Info Island new open air theater donated by the International Space and Flight Museum in Second Life.





Soon Club Lib will open for information seekers on the island to have fun and relax by dancing.



Last week we had several excellent Ebsco consumer health training sessions by Maxito Ricardo. Instructions are out on posters with computers that visitors can use to try the database to find consumer health information.





Crowd for Bud Sparhawk






The new library highrise has a reference area, a media viewing area, a conference room area, government documents, an academic area, and we are working on more.




Our new main library designed and built by builder Vincent Parvenu is now complete. We have a main meeting room which groups are able to use; and we are building special collections such as World War II posters, a nineteenth century author room, an anime/manga collection or more.


We have a number of presentations coming up for academic libraries. We think this may be one of the primary ways academic libraries serve patrons in the future. Please contact Lorelei Junot in world or Lori Bell at lbell927@gmail.com if you would like a tour or like to become involved.