Second Life and Virtual 3d Reality (and the Library)

Well, I'm impressed on how popular is this second life concept. A few months ago I was watching an episode of CSI New York in which the case they were investigating was entirely based on Second Life... But I always though it was a game! And now I know I was wrong.

I didn't know so many companies were even present in Second Life to promote their services and provide some sort of customer service.

I think that what our library is doing so far is ok since a presence on Second Life has been established and we are contributing to this virtual learning world with projects like the Central Florida Memory Project. But we could do more in the future like offering our classes on Second Life, present the Meet the Author Programs but virtually and maybe we can arrange with authors that already have a resident avatar on Second Life to be on them first. It would be nice to offer a section in which they can pay their fines or buy books from our book store. Of course all of this has to be located on an Island for this Library and obviously the virtual building, that's why I say, 'in the future'. We should even have a presence on the Teen Second Life to promote more of our library services we have for teens, maybe we can even get 'virtual' Teen Volunteers to be present there as well and they can share their experiences at the library.

Definitely the Second Life concept is something that cannot be taken for granted because it hasn't stop growing and everyday even more widely know companies are there as well providing services to their customers. I think that since the library is an institution that provides information and is committed to: 'connect our changing community to the evolving world of ideas, information and technology. Through continuous innovation, the Orange County Library System will create a well informed, well connected community, making Orange County a great place to live, learn, work, and play.'-(as stated in our mission statement) we should continue looking into more ways of being present in Second Life. It's something different than what we are used to see, our community has changed by this evolving way to interact through technology, it's a place in which we can create anything without having necessarily to be limited by budgets or resources. And it can be used to keep us connected to a virtual world in which we can virtually live, learn work and play with this growing community!


Check out how libraries can be seen and toured in Second Life!



Check out Second Life Reference

Web 2.0 Continues

Wow!
Browsing through the Seomoz awards page (http://www.seomoz.org/web2.0#cat_117) was awesome. I saw so many cool websites. A fun one was www.hairmixer.com in which you can upload your picture and change your hairstyle, you can even see your face reduced 50 pounds!


But some of them that we can really use at the library are:
Vufind in which the Library's catalog can be customized with open source software. (I know in a meeting I went to they spoke about changing the catalog to something similar, but I don't know if it was using this same software.) Anyway you can quickly sort the search results using the categories on the right of the screen. You can bookmark your searches, add tags to the items and even leave comments. If you click on the "review" tab for a book, it will display the review from Amazon.com and you don't even have to leave the page. When the search results are displayed and you choose one of them, it's going to show you similar items. This will definitely help patrons personalize and keep a record of their search, it will definetly make it easier for them to find what they want and it will let them say their opinion about items, making their opinion count.
See it yourself:

VuFind: Social Features from Falvey Memorial Library on Vimeo.


Another one is www.docstoc.com which compiles a wealth of legal, educational, technical and business documents for you to download for free. You can upload your own files in a number of formats. So this can help patrons when they need help typing documents like an eviction letter, they can get the document from here free!