Alliance Second Life Library is pleased to announce the addition of a History Gallery Garden. Visitors may wander through a garden of lifesized photographs of historical photographs and listen to audio descriptions about the photos. This month, Emma Abbott, a nineteenth century opera singer from Peoria, Illinois and Dr. Melissa Germann, an early Quincy physician are featured. Each month, new topics will be featured in the garden. This month’s features are from the “Illinois Alive! Early Heroes and Heroines” website at http://www.illinoisalive.info. The Illinois Alive grant was funded with an LSTA grant from the Illinois State Library, a division of the Office of the Secretary of State.
Just think - by doing what we are doing now, we will be able to help our communities move into the virtual world!
Google moves into virtual worlds
By combining satellite maps and 3-D software, Google Earth is turning into a virtual online playground.
By Chris Taylor, Business 2.0 Magazine senior editor
May 11, 2006: 11:47 AM EDT
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SAN FRANCISCO (Business 2.0 Magazine) - It’s Google’s world. We just live in it.
Online virtual worlds are a hot topic, as gamers spend more and more time playing online and virtual real estate turns into a real market. Now Google (Research) is getting into the business — and if its plans come to fruition, the virtual world will never be the same. In fact, it may look more like the world we know than futurists ever imagined.
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Google already has Google Earth, a 3-D mockup of the planet generated from satellite photos. But Google wants you to do more than just zoom through its virtual Earth. The company wants you to add on to it, too.
At the end of April the company released, for free, a popular 3-D modeling program it bought called SketchUp. Google is encouraging developers to use SketchUp to build 3-D layers on top of Google Earth. There’s even a website Google provides called 3-D Warehouse, where you can demonstrate what you’ve built in Sketch Up.
Enter the metaverse
The notion that you can create objects and buildings and place them in a virtual world makes Google Earth sounds less like a mapping tool and more like a metaverse. What’s a metaverse? Science fiction writer Neal Stephenson introduced the term in his seminal 1992 novel, Snow Crash. The metaverse was Stephenson’s name for a virtual world where his characters play and do business. It was a black ball 1.6 times the size of Earth, with a giant street running around its equator.
In Stephenson’s novel, millions of users uploaded customized “avatars,” or virtual personalities, and strolled the street, entering shops and exclusive nightclubs, conversing and trading with the metaverse’s other denizens. It was, in effect, a 3-D version of the web.
Online worlds like Second Life and There.com – not to mention online games like World of Warcraft, Lineage, and EverQuest — are direct descendants of the metaverse vision. Entrepreneurs like Second Life creator Anshe Chung have demonstrated how to run very profitable businesses trading online real estate, avatars, and other virtual goods — businesses that have no physical presence in the real world.
But as popular as they are, virtual worlds like these are hardly mainstream. They’re a little hard to navigate, and a little too videogame-like for the average user. It’s hard to imagine your mom running around in Second Life, let alone World of Warcraft.
Googling the planet
It is, however, pretty easy to imagine your mom downloading and using Google Earth (indeed, perhaps she already is).
You can already download user-generated layers that sit on top of Google’s 3-D Earth and show you, for example, the location of celebrity houses or hiking trails or famous landmarks. One dating service has even started showing people looking for partners as a Google Earth layer.
Real estate companies have started showing off virtual versions of their buildings (for sale in the real world) on Google Earth. SketchUp allows them to build entire models of their apartments, right down to the microwave oven.
Where will it end? Google Earth general manager John Hanke has said that Google Earth was partly inspired by Snow Crash’s metaverse. At a recent Google press event, he described it as a “3-D virtual world.”
A virtual Earth
The result could be that we’ll soon populate a virtual version of planet Earth instead of the made-from-scratch metaverses like online games or Second Life. The main element Google Earth is missing today is avatars, but at least one observer believes those to be added soon.
“I would expect to see someone using Google Earth as a virtual social space by the end of the year,” says Jerry Paffendorf, research director of the Acceleration Studies Foundation, a futurist organization.
Paffendorf isn’t just sitting around waiting for the metaverse to happen, either. Last weekend he helped arrange something called the Metaverse Roadmap Summit, a gathering of programmers of virtual worlds.
The idea of the summit was to outline how we’re going to get from here to the metaverse in ten years. There were major disagreements between the attendees, most notably between those who believe the Web should stay as a 2-D environment with 3-D components, and those who want the Web to become a 3-D metaverse-like environment where your avatar can call up 2-D screens if and when they need to – say, for a word-processing program.
Those in the latter camp believe, like Paffendorf, that Google Earth is the most likely candidate to become a metaverse. Just add avatars, they say, and the possibilities are endless.
Consumers could fly into the virtual New York, go shopping in a virtual Times Square, get past the velvet rope at a virtual Studio 54 and chat with an avatar dressed as Andy Warhol. They could plan their next trip to the real New York in meticulous detail, become a detective in a Gotham noir, browse an apartment for sale, or jump into a taxi and play a driving game.
There are, in short, many more opportunities in a virtual version of the real world than in an entirely fantastical world like Second Life — or indeed Stephenson’s original vision of the metaverse.
It’s early days yet, but if Google Earth continues to develop as it has since its release a mere year ago, and if developers continue to build 3-D content and businesses continue to explore using layers, then the possibilities are as boundless as the planet.
By 2016, Google Earth should be a very crowded place indeed.
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Virtual Teen Library Services Meeting
Sunday, May 07, 2006 5:00 PM
Medical Library building, 2nd floor
AGENDA
- Purpose of meeting
- Where we are with SL teen services
- Teen/Adult grid
- Teen SL Campus in fall
- Island for library
- Updates/News
- M2-Metaverse Messenger column
- Focus of project-Teen driven
- How we can reach them in the game (M2 and in RL)
- Build partnerships with people/organizations in RL and in SL
- Private island owner to work with other educators
- People’s interests
- Communication (different google group, forum?, etc.)
MINUTES
In Attendance:
BlueWings Hayek (Kelly), teen librarian
Ray Lightworker (Matt), youth/teens and technology in RL
Klutzy Marx Teen librarian in RL
Cerulean Vesperia (Beth), Library trainer/consultant
Lorelei Junot (Lori), Alliance Library System
Eiseldora Reisman (Jami), LIS student and gamer
Jenna Darrow (Jenna), middle school/high school librarian
Brackish Ludwig (Sebastian) works w/ computers and admin
Rex Riel (Rex), Head Buyer/Technician for a small IT company, library lover, scrounger and info nut
Planetneutral Fackler (Greg), supervisor at a public library
AXEl Foley
Robin Chamberlin, (Robin) YA Librarian & Simmons online CE instructor
Before the meeting officially started, we learned that Eiseldora is training as an instructor through TeaZers, and has added the following classes to next week’s schedule: Making a HulaHoop, Virtual Reference, and Basic Decorating. Her rotating chair in the Medical LIbrary won an award at the Wednesday design contest. Congrats Eiseldora!
After a round of introductions, Blue Wings updated us on the progress of the Teen Library on the Teen Grid concept. On Adults are not allowed on the teen grid, and teens are not allowed on the adult grid. For more details, see the message from Pathfinder Linden forwarded from Planetneutral Fackler at http://virtualteenlibrary.blogspot.com/2006/04/explanation-of-sl-teen-grid.html.
We could wait for a Teen Campus (in development) to be completed this fall, or purchase an island outside the teen grid that teens could go to. The benefit is that there would be support for us to be a part of it as a teen services library.
The current procedure is adults must buy an island off the Teen Grid that teens can go to. Islands cost $1200 plus $150 a month for maintenance (20% educator discount). One option would be to share an island with other educators by renting plots, or creating a content creation space for teens. Islands can’t be split between the Teen/Adult grids at present.
Initial funding sources could include Libraries Matter / Alliance Library System for the initial purchase. Grant sources, and corporate funding could fund the $150 a month fee. Corporate sponsors to approach might include OCLC and Overdrive, or businesses within SL. Lorelei, Ray, BlueWings and Cerulean offered to work on a grant.
Joining the educators mailing list was mentioned again. The Education Community page suggests emailing pathfinder AT lindenlab DOT com to join the Educator’s listserv.
Ray suggested putting together a small group to investigate the island building options; Brackish has some experience. BlueWings Hayek expressed interest, and the issue was tabled.
News and Updates
Rex Riel and Namro installed visitor detectors in the main and medical buildings. Current traffic is around 40/day. Use the command “say list” to view visitors.
A signboard has been added in front of the current building.
A new open classroom has been added next to the SL library, and at the conclusion of the meeting, most of the group went to check out the space. It’s located at Minoa 220, 43 and includes a “Welcome to Second Life” script with notecards from classes and information on how to get started in SL. The space can be reserved through Google calendar or by contacting Rain to schedule.
Publicity
School Library Journal (BlueWings Hayek) -mention appearing in June issue
YALSA blog (Eiseldora Reisman) - Eiseldora has been doing lots of posting!
YPulse (Katt Kongo & Daughter) - interested in doing a story and getting teen perspective
M2 Teen Metaverse Messenger (BlueWings Hayek)
A discussion on how to reach out to teens in RL followed. There is already a mySpace profile set up at http://www.myspace.com/73899784. Other suggestions included setting up an OPAL room and getting Alliance Libraries involved in recruiting teens.
At present, we don’t have figures for how many teens are playing. Brackish said he thought the teen rate of joining SL is very good at this point, and Eiseldora reported that the teens she’s talked to don’t know about it, so it’s not cool yet, or past cool. The teen grid is not as developed as the Adult grid. Episode 7 of Secondcast interviewed a teen player, Mercury Metropolitan, said there are about 10,000 users, not all are active. Download this episode at:
http://www.secondcast.com/podcasts/secondcast-ep07.mp3.
The issue of cost of getting teens involved came up – Lorelei reported that it is possible for institutions to set up educational accounts with logins/passwords. A basic account is free, but not all teens have credit cards. Cell phones with text messaging capabilities are a no-credit card option.
Action Plan
Continue learning about building and scripting (Eiseldora)
Set up a separate Google Group (Ray)
Set up a Teen Forum and take advantage of the polls options
Conduct a meeting for those interested in funding options (BlueWings)
Continue with mySpace profile
Develop programming (Lorelei)
Create in-world orientation workshops for librarians this summer (Klutzy Marx
Jenna Darrow)
Promote the project in RL workshops and trainings (BlueWings, Cerulean)
Create a Teen SL library Flickr group (Eiseldora)
Publish meeting notes to:
- SL blog (Cerulean)
- Teen SL blog (Cerulean)
- YALSA Gaming Dicussion Group (Cerulean)
- YALSA blog (Eiseldora)
- YALSA listserv (BlueWings)
- LM_Net listervs (BlueWings)
- Teen SL Google Group (Ray)
Lorelei gave meeting attendees a Free Culture package, and the meeting concluded with an evaluation to determine if we covered everything we needed to, and a tour of the new open air training center.
Resources
Some resources from Planetneutral Fackler – Teen insights to adult presence on the Teen Grid
http://www.audioblogger.com/media/105581/319102.mp3
http://www.secondcast.com/modules/news/
