Probably just had the most directly useful talk of the conference given that it was about a particularly library's implementation of themselves in Second Life.

Here are some notes from the session (very notey!):

“Get away from just recreating physical building – we wanted to do something a little more innovative”

Callimachus as a librarian in SL, who would morph regularly into different sorts of shapes/concepts whenever a student called him/her/it from wherever they were on the island

providing links directly in the environment to some search tools, but still some ambivalence as to where search fits in here, searching in here (SL) is a bit of an unknown

how do we work with publishers who put restrictive licences on work and get them to engage with the students using this content?

reuse, repurpose, students being able to say “I’ve found this really useful bit of text, video or whatever”. Thinking hard about being less transmissional and gated and more collaborative and creative.
More creative engagement with the material.


Risks encountered along the way
- initial lack of technical skills within the Library Team to implement rapid prototyping of service development
- reliance on technical implementation team and broader prioritization needs of the project
- tight deadlines and available project funds
- identification of existing suitable services for embedding with a 3D env
- working with publishers
- requirement for high spec machines to access and use SL
- balancing the need to create equitable services being delivered into parallel learning environment (VLE and SL)


Further Development
- working with publishers and suppliers to enable the creative reuse of content
- populating infrastructure
- reviewing existing licenses
- piloting the embedding of emerging HelpDesk services
- working collaboratively with students to develop more tools and services which meet their requirements
- evaluation

Q&A
“powerful ability to support social networking”
“Fun and genuine research – possibilities are endless”
Need to work closely with students
Gives library opportunity to engage in providing new types of skills and services
Fought hard not recreate library building
Need to take authentication barriers down and need to do things creatively rather than just ‘serve it up’