Second GSLIS

Originally uploaded by Musebrarian.

I’m attending the ACM Computer-Human Interaction conference this week and getting excited about what looks like a very interesting week ahead. Stay tuned for more.

Recently GSLIS acquired a plot of space in Second Life. And I’ve had one brief meeting with faculty and staff about what to do with it. In the meantime I’ve been trying to fill the space. Most of the other organizations in Cybrary City II have opted to follow the “lets make a building” model of SL development.

I’m still not convinced that in a world where I can do most anything that I want to make buildings – at least mostly square buildings with doors that won’t let me in until I open them. I’ve been thinking about where to go next with my SL research. I’m thinking about all the work I’ve done with analyzing web interfaces over the years and how our concerns about usability, accessibility, etc. translate into these kinds of spaces. (and what from the world of architecture and space planning applies here?)

For the moment I decided to break the mold in CC II. What do you really need? A somewhat defined space where people might meet. Lots of open space to sandbox stuff. Thus was born the Second GSLIS Stacks and Book Truck (or Trolley as our Brit neighbors call it). For my next trick I’ll work on my scripting abilities so we can have a GSLIS book truck drill team in SL. Or at least I want a book truck that I can drive around in SL when in Librarian avatar mode.

The other little things down in the corner are mock-ups of some drawings done by Paul Otlet, including a 3D Sphera Mundaneum. Otlet’s an interesting guy and had some visionary plans & architectural designs done by Le Corbusier. Given his interest in 3D interfaces, Second Life seems like it would be a good place for an International Otlet Museum.

Drop by for a visit next time you’re in-world. SLURL

P.S. On checking my bloglines, I noticed an announcement about the addition of “sculpted prims.” This will definitely be a boon for museum developers in SL. At the same time it adds another layer of complexity. Existing prim shapes will continue to exist. We’ve become 2d/web 2.0 literate. This puts pressure on becoming more 3d literate.

After our Second Life presentation last Thursday we were interviewed by Jonathan Finkelstein, author of Learning in Real Time and host of the Real Time Minute podcast. You can listen to the podcast here.

The Learning Times community is also having conversations about Second Life in their forums.

We interrupt your habitual blogsurfing to bring you this breaking update:

Pont Mirabeau and my alter ego Aethalides Kukulcan were interviewed this week for the Second Life News Network (SLNN) and the article is now available.

“Scholars present paper on over 150 SL Museums” by Childs Writer

Note: The third author on the paper is Dr. Michael Twidale, Associate Professor at UIUC-GSLIS.

I’ve been watching the buzz about Slideshare.net and am thinking about posting our Museums in Second Life from M&W later this week. In the meantime, I discovered this very nice set from Andy Powell in the UK. I must meet this fellow someday as our paths keep seeming to cross in interesting ways.

I like slideshare because I can do stuff list this, but I’m now realizing that I can’t swipe stuff easily for my own presentations (giving credit where credit is due of course).

I may also start adding some things via YouTube when I have a chance to play with audio/video some more.

On Tuesday my iBook started having random and unreproducable kernel panics. I’ve slowly been working down the list of possible fixes but have yet to find the magic touch that will make my Mac happy again. Its not completely sad, just a little depressed at the moment. Although I’m now only a few steps away from having to re-install OS X from scratch. eeek.

Of course this all is happening just before I head off to another round of conferences and I’m weighing the the risks of reinstalling (which still may not solve the problem) vs. having an operating, but somewhat unreliable platform. We’ve already decided to swtich it out for the M&W presentation.

At least it gave me the needed motivation to get everything backed up appropriately. Especially my mail. I am now seriously considering forwarding all my UIUC mail to Gmail for the simple reason that I’d still have access to an archive of mail in the event of a crash. Due the limitations at UIUC and the amount of e-mail traffic I see, I still am POPing mail down (and because the Mail indexing is so freak’n damn fast).

Grrr. I’ve got enough on my plate over next few weeks. Adding a limping computer to mix isn’t making me happy.

Update 1: Bit the bullet and am trying to reinstall OS X. Crashed after the first install disk finished. Not a good sign.

Update 2: I am now convinced that I am suffering from a loose Airport card. Unfortunately this is something buried deep in the guts of my machine and requires complete removal of the iBook shell to fix. No way this is getting fixed before I leave. Now wondering whether its even worth luggging it along to SF. Will now only boot in Safe Mode.

Update 3: Mac still sad. Finally got a chance to sneak away from M&W and went to the Apple store here in SF. They confirmed that I have a bad Airport, but were not going to be able to fix it before I leave. Lusted after shiny new MacBook Pros.

Update 4 Since I’ll only be on the ground (and running at that) for less than the time it would take to ship iPopeye off to Apple for fix’n I’ve taken an alternate route. After an intensive search I finally found a 3rd party USB wireless adapter that has a secretive OS driver (Belkin f5D7050 Wireless-G USB). Apparently this product has revolved through a number of chipsets, mine is a ver. 4000 and I found this discussion useful and am using these drivers. Once I get the Airport fixed this can go on the PC and eliminate the snaky wirehazard that currently is my living room.

The first issue of a new open-access journal Digital Humanities Quarterly is now online.

I’ll also be participating in the Digital Humanities Conference that is being held here in Champaign this summer.

I’m trying to think about good ways to talk about the differences I see among the different groups I’m floating between. This year alone I’ll attend VRA, DH2007, Museums & the Web, AAM, MCN. not to mention CHI and ASIS&T.

From where I stand this collection of conferences makes an immense amount of sense – but I’m not sure its obvious to everyone who attends any one of them. I was very interested to note who I knew from other places at VRA, who I’ll likely run into again. Other things have kept me from going any further with some of my social network analysis experiments to look at the ties between these different communities. What makes each of them unique? Where do the communities overlap – and is that overlap significant enough that some sort of metaConference could be organized out of it? The Digital Libraries, Archives and Museums Visual Humanities Conference! All sorts of interesting problems there, from how each group traditionally organizes the conference to what the content is. Hmmm…