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5 February 2008
The Cybrary moves on - Talis supports more Library innovation in Second Life
Posted by Richard Wallis at February 5, 2008 12:24 PM
Building on the success of Talis Cybrary City, the region in Second Life that we sponsored, in association with Alliance Library System, last year, Talis are now sponsoring another sim: Talis Cybrary Island. For the technolgy minded, a sim is a region of land within Second Life that maps to an individual server machine.
The raison d'être behind Talis Cybrary City was to foster innovation within the library community. This it clearly did, with dozens of libraries taking advantage of the facilities to create their own Second Life library branch.
The experience gained by those libraries has enabled them to become self sufficient operating in Second Life. So we felt it was time to move on and enable others to follow that lead. We are now sponsoring, by funding the land rental, a new Second Life Island - Talis Cybrary Island. This year, again with the help of Alliance, we are in co-operation with cAlico Information Consulting who is funding the land purchase and investing time managing the sim development, buildings and their tenants.
Cybrary Island will be fully open for business later in the month, but we are already looking for libraries and associations connected with libraries and information management who would like to take advantage of a sponsored place in Second Life - those interested in experiencing and experimenting with the operation of a presence in a 3D virtual world.
Cybrary City, although open to all, did have a large majority of participants from North American libraries. We hope to gain a much larger representation from other continents among the residents of Cybrary Island. The architectural theme for the Island is taken from the City of Venice, which adds a European feel to the place, but we hope that these European style buildings will host organisations from all the other continents. Hands up any Antarctican's who want to get involved!
If you or your organisation wish to be involved, or you just want to find out more, drop Allison Brueckner or myself an email.
The picture is of the avatars of Allison and myself, meeting in Second Life to discuss the layout of Talis Cybrary Island.
