Epoq 2.2 UNCP in Second Life:
Livermore Library
The virtual Livermore Library on the UNCP in SL campus
The virtual Livermore Library on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Pembroke in Second Life
The new books display and circulation desk inside the virtual Livermore Library on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Pembroke in Second Life
New books display and circulation desk
click to enlarge 		The book club reading room in the virtual Livermore Library on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Pembroke in Second Life
Book club reading room
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The classroom in the virtual Livermore Library on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Pembroke in Second Life
Classroom
click to enlarge 		The video and photography room of the virtual Livermore Library on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Pembroke in Second Life
Video and photography room
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The rare books room in the virtual Livermore Library on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Pembroke in Second Life
Rare books room
click to enlarge 		A tutorial on prims and building in the virtual Livermore Library on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Pembroke in Second Life
Tutorial on prims and building
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The Mary Livermore Library on the virtual world campus of the University of North Carolina at Pembroke offers a broad range of user services.

Residents of the virtual world have direct access from inside Second Life to real-world library tutorials, electronic resources, document delivery, course reserves, the BraveCat catalog, and guides to the Pembroke campus library. There also are video tours of the real-world library.

Individual users view their library records from the Second Life library with the same security and privacy they experience from the service on the Livermore Library website.

A librarian holds office hours twice a week at the library in Second Life and also can be reached at any time by a virtual-world-to-real-world email link. Office hours for the virtual library in Second Life are 3-5 p.m., Tuesdays and Thursdays.

A book club offers programs for students, faculty and other interested Second Life residents. Special exhibitions from the Mary Livermore Library archives in RL are being developed for the virtual library.

Literary origin. The virtual world's literary origin makes the library connection a natural fit. Second Life is a three-dimensional, virtual-reality, Internet world inspired mainly by the cyberpunk literary movement, notably Neal Stephenson's 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash.

Stephenson invented the words metaverse and avatar as he described a fictional three-dimensional virtual world created inside inter-networked computers where humans, represented on-screen by graphical images, interact with each other in a non-physically-existing space that is a metaphor of the real world. The term metaverse melds the words "meta" and "universe."

Linden Lab. Second Life was developed at the Linden Research Inc. lab in San Francisco. It was first opened to the public on the Internet in 2003 as a computer-simulated environment which users inhabit. They interact with the environment via their on-screen representatives, the avatars.

Linden Lab's goal is to create a world like the metaverse described by Stephenson -- a general-purpose user-defined virtual place in which people interact, learn, teach, research, explore, serve, build, work, shop, play, conduct business, and communicate in a variety of ways about myriad things. Nearly 1,000 colleges and universities have facilities in the virtual world today.

Today, Second Life has some 20 million residents who are about 40 percent from the U.S. and 60 percent from elsewhere around the globe.

Access is free and open to anyone anywhere using a free downloadable Second Life Viewer, which enables residents to interact with each other, providing an extraordinarily advanced level of social networking.

The Second Life simulation has real world rules such as physics, gravity, topography, locomotion, real-time actions, and lots of communication.

Information on how to get started in Second Life is here.
The Mary Livermore Library's web site is here.

The Library building is outfitted with: SLURL is short for Second Life URL, a Web address. SLURL's are direct links from the Web to locations inside Second Life. The SLURL for UNCP's Livermore Library in second Life is http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Dotoorak/225/180/401

Learn more about virtual worlds and Second Life:

The names Second Life and Linden Lab, and the hand logo and logotype, are registered trademarks of Linden Research Inc.
© 2010 Anthony Curtis