In November 2007, the American Library Association took over the island that the Alliance Library System (ALS) had provided them at the start of that year. With help from San Jose State University School of Library and Information Science, a hand-picked team of graduate students met with Donavan Vicha (Web Developer and Oberon Octagon in SL) to design and build the open-air campus of ALA Island. (SJSU-SLIS paid the students for the hours spent in brainstorming and building ... no small expense!)
From the screenshot provided, the ALA logo is recreated three dimensionally and hovers above a lake in the middle of the island. There are no buildings, only platforms and kiosks for disseminating information via notecards, URLs, and videos. We have various-sized areas for handling group gatherings for presentations and expect avatars to fly or teleport to them. No bumping into walls or doors. The arched area at the top of the screenshot resembles the arches of the Jay Pritzker Pavilion of Chicago's Millenium Park, which gives a nod to the home city of ALA Headquarters.
The build was swiftly completed by the SJSU team in January 2008 and pretty much lay fallow until Christina Coleman (Kay Tairov in SL), incoming membership specialist at ALA, energized staff to mount a National Library Week (NLW) event that ran from April 13-19. We saw more than 3200 visitors during the two weeks surrounding the event (granted the figures are skewed by staff and member volunteers working the site). In that month before NLW, we put up kiosks for division, offices, and round tables of ALA, two lounge areas and the Publishing Pavillion as well as a video station on our lone geographic feature, AL Focus Mountain! As a tribute to Lori Bell at ALS, the floating gallery that will be dedicated to large photographic exhibits was named the Lorlei Junot Gallery (see below).
NLW opened with a speech by ALA President Lorienne Roy in her avatar form. And from there we provided a modest number of presentations and parties over the course of the week. Amercian Association of School Libraries (AASL) had a presentation that alerted us to the fact that our default setting for maximun number of avatars for the island was probably low at 40! With our low prim count and relative lack of animations/scripted items, we will push that number to 60 and see what happens. Another great presentation was Jenny Levine's "Gaming and Libraries."
Moving forward, we continue to have some streaming audio presentations from StoryLines America broadcasts created by the Public Programs Office. We have given AASL a parcel to develop as they have been most active on the island during NLW and since. ACRL also has a parcel and active members using the island. We felt that NLW was another proof of concept for ALA and will continue to develop the facilities. Regular meetings of the Virtual Communities and Libraries Member Initiative Group (VCL MIG) occur on the island with plans for programming at Annual next summer in Chicago.
In September, Kay and Oberon attended the Second Life Community Convention to continue networking with other residents and with Linden Lab officials. Unlike previous Internet frontiers (WWW, for instance), ALA is staking a claim in the development of what may someday supercede the two-dimensional Web.
Preparations are underway for our second Banned Books Week in Second Life, with a riverboat and cornfield, village and topiary, all celebrating challenged authors Stephen King and Laura Ingalls Wilder (hard to believe, eh?) among others.
More information about ALA Island and Second Life can be found at these links:
This page was adapted from a blog article presented here.
This blog features work by the VCL MIG.
Two wikis with SL information:
Professional Tips: Second Life
Also see the ALA Island Facebook Fan Page.