ACRL Virtual World Interest Group 2012 Report
ALA Convention
Anaheim, CA
June 24, 2012
Past Convener, Marcia Meister
Convener, Valerie Hill
Incoming Co-Conveners, Esther Grassian & Joe Floyd
About the ACRL Virtual Worlds Interest Group:
The Virtual Worlds Interest Group provides an opportunity for academic librarians with virtual world interests and responsibilities to have a place in ACRL to network, share information, ask questions, and work on special projects and programs relevant to academic libraries. The Interest Group also works to promote the various uses of virtual worlds to potential and current academic librarians and to improve information literacy specifically in virtual worlds. The ACRL VWIG sponsors events, programs and meetings held within the virtual world of Second Life and may explore additional virtual environments.
Any member of the Association of College and Research Libraries may elect membership in the Virtual Worlds Interest Group. Every member of the interest group has the right to vote and is eligible to hold office. The officers of the ACRL VWIG are a convener, a past convener, and an incoming convener.
In Second Life: The ACRL in SL group is the Second Life group associated with the ACRL VWIG. Second Life is the most well established virtual world with a large number of active librarians and educators so it is currently the platform for the ACRL VWIG and to host virtual meetings and programs. It is not necessary to be a member of ALA, or of the ALA CVL Group or of ACRL or the ACRL VWIG to participate in Second Life ALA, ACRL, or other library-related activities.
The ALA Island in Second Life was discontinued in 2012, however, ACRLVWIG now has a site on Info Island, thanks to the generous support of the Second Life Community Virtual Library (a non profit). This is a spot for members to meet, and view notices about past meetings and upcoming events. ALA liaison Christina Coleman established a site for ALA adjoining ACRL's site so ALA and ACRL are both currently maintaining a Second Life presence. The ACRL Virtual Worlds Interest Group coordinates events with the ALA Virtual Communities and Libraries Member Interest Group and often meets jointly with that group.
Upcoming Events
Meetings for 2012-2013 are tentatively scheduled for Sundays at 11am (SLT Pacific Time) but will be flexible.
July 22, 2012 11AM Book Discussion with Aaron Barlow and Robert Leston "Beyond the Blogosphere: Information and Its Children" will be held in Second Life at the Community Virtual Library Auditorium.
Plans for continued exploration of other virtual worlds include a grid-hop to Inworldz on August 12th and a grid-hop to Jokaydia (another open-source program based virtual world based in Australia and used by numerous educators) in September, 2012.
Membership Summary (as of July 2012)
Second Life Librarians Google Group 615 members
ACRL in SL Google Group 50 members
SL Librarians (inworld group) 821 members
ACRL in SL (inworld group) 118 members
2011 - 2012 meetings and programs in SL:
The following is a brief summary of the major events and programs of the ACRL VWIG and the ACRL in SL group during 2011 and 2012. ACRL in SL group met almost every month from July 2011 through July 2012 at various sites in Second Life while the ALA Island was not available, held joint meetings with the ALA VCL Community Group during ALA Annual and Midwinter conferences, and individual members participated in ALA, ACRL or other professional organizations. During the last half of 2011 the ALA Island was under construction and not available as a venue for meetings or events. The group met in other venues and toured other Second Life libraries, campuses and islands.
June 24, 2012 Convention Meeting
An overview of accomplishments of librarians in virtual worlds was given, which included presentations at several virtual world conferences: VCARA (Virtual Center for Archives & Records Administration sponsored by San Jose State University), Texas Woman's University Creative Arts & Research Symposium in Second Life, VWBPE (Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education) Conference 2012, and FCVW (Federal Consortium of Virtual Worlds) Conference in Washington D.C.
Members, both physically present and virtually present, highlighted professional development sessions offered virtually, information literacy workshops, book discussions, storytelling events, reference services,historical sim tours, presentation of research, interactive exhibits, virtual museums, and professional networking opportunities held during the 2011-2012 year. Several exhibits were built and displayed at the Community Virtual Library during the year: Virtual Tornado Rescue (a disaster preparation roleplay exhibit), Maya Island (presented by the University of Washington), Second Life University Fair, and Summer in Berlin (an exhibit with live tours), for example.
Tour of Maya Island Exhibit and Sim
The ACRL VWIG currently meets monthly in the virtual world of Second Life, but has been exploring other virtual worlds through virtual field trips, called "grid-hopping". Because Second Life is not the only virtual world utilized by librarians
and educators, the ACRL VWIG members are exploring other worlds and options for libraries and librarians. http://www.flickr.com/photos/validator/7632924958/
ACRL Virtual World Interest Group Meeting in Second Life Spring 2012
May20, 2012 Grid-Hopping
The ACRL VWIG led a grid-hop to Reaction Grid, an open-source program based virtual world being used by educators and librarians, on May 20, 2012. Machinima (video taken within a virtual world) can be viewed at https://vimeo.com/43276128.
A machinima was also recorded in another virtual world called Inworldz, where librarians from San Jose State University have created a library with 3D resources. The Inworldz Community Library can be viewed at https://vimeo.com/43742003.
March 25, 2012
The ACRL VWIG sponsored a tour in Second Life at the Virtual Montmartre tour. Machinima can be viewed at http://youtu.be/JkIiauRlcpo.
February 26, 2012
ACRL in SL met on Info Island to make plans and address leadership changes. The new convener, following Marcia Meister will be Valerie Hill. Incoming co-conveners, Esther Grassian and Joe Floyd will lead the group for 2013-2014.http://www.flickr.com/photos/validator/7632929878/
January 22 , 2012
The ACRL VWIG and ALA VCL Community Group met jointly in Dallas at ALA Midwinter and virtually in Second Life.
December 18, 2011
“Beyond Second Life: New Immersive Worlds for Educators and Librarians” The second of two programs hosted jointly by the American Library Association Group and the Association of College Research Librarians in Second Life.
At this session Joe Floyd aka Joe Cupola and Ilene Frank aka Ilene Pratt, presented a program he had presented at the ALA Annual conference in 2011 on other virtual worlds. The program provided info about several other immersive worlds being used by librarians and educators in addition to Second Life.. They shared their slide presentation:
http://www.slideshare.net/IleneF/beyond-second-lifeacrlfinal-version
Joe Floyd reported on presenting at the FACRL meeting in Daytona, Florida.
November 20, 2011, 11am SLT
University of Hawaii Island The November meeting was hosted by AdraLetov (Diane Nahl) at the University of Hawaii Island in Second Life. We had a virtual trip to Hawaii and tour of the University of Hawaii’s Second Life island and saw demonstrations of projects. Photos and machinima: Tour of University of Hawaii's Virtual Campus in Second Life (Faulkes Telescope Project) Photos on Flickr:in the old Second Life Library 2.0 group
http://www.flickr.com/photos/photolibraries/sets/72157628075497029/ or http://www.flickr.com/photos/photolibraries/
Machinima: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzUwyyI1Jtw or in HD: http://youtu.be/YzUwyyI1Jtw?hd=1
October 30, 2011
University of South Florida island The ACRL in SL group met Sunday, Oct 30, at 11am SLT to attend a presentation by Florida librarians Ilene Pratt and Joe Cupola. They hosted the group at the University of South Florida's Harambee Island. Ilene and Joe recently presented at the Florida ACRL conference and shared news and information from that conference. The group visited the library and the campus island.
http://lib.usf.edu/offtheshelf/technology-matters/acrl-programs-in-second-life/
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Harambee/130/193/24
September 25, 2011
Wine Library (Hyacinth Cortes) on Cybrary 2-We set up a regular meeting time, planned some tours and programs for coming months, and chatted about our ideas and interests. We established Sundays at 11am SLT as the meeting time.
July 20, 2011 at 6 PM SLT
Professional Publishing for Librarians - a panel discussion "Ways With Words" at the Community Virtual Library on Info Island.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Info%20Island/17/218/23
ACRL members participated in the panel: AdraLetov/Diane Nahl, Alexandria Knight/Esther, Grassian, Archivist Llewellyn/Shannon Bohle, Aurora Tutti / June Power, Bookie Balogh/Susan K. Martin, Valibrarian Gregg/Valerie Hill.
Membership Summary(as of July 2012)
Second Life Librarians Google Group 615 members
ACRL in SL Google Group 50 members
SL Librarians (inworld group) 821 members
ACRL in SL (inworld group) 118 members
Informational links:
ACRLinSL@googlegroups.com
Send email to request an invite.
This is the ALA Connect link for the ALA Virtual Communities and Libraries Member Interest Group (VCL MIG)
http://connect.ala.org/node/6632
This is the for ACRL Virtual Worlds Interest Group on ALA Connect:
http://connect.ala.org/node/78930
There is also an ACRL Virtual Worlds Interest Group on Facebook. (Alexandra Janvey has been posting events there).
http://www.facebook.com/groups/21504303227/
Virtual Presence Weblog - Weblog for the Virtual Communities and Libraries Member Initiative Group of the American Library Association
http://www.virtual.ala.org/virtualpresence/
Scholarly publications:
Webber, Sheila and Diane Nahl. (2011). Sustaining Learning for LIS through use of a Virtual World. IFLA Journal (37)(1):5-15.