Books And Libraries

So my ususal Monday trick of listening to Digital Human on BBC Radio 4 for blog inspiration failed this week because they were talking about Cyborgs, transhumanism and whether we are all subsconsciously becoming Cyborgs and try as I did, I couldn’t find an angle to get to Second Life from that material, a jolly good listen however.

So I decided, after urgings, to investigate e-books. This was a tale of woe, first of all I tried to get an e-book from Waterstones. However to read e-books on the PC I needed to download Adobe Digital Editions, this was a breeze and now I was cooking on gas, all I needed to do was remember my Adobe password and I could install my soon to be purchased e-book on different mediums, if I didn’t register, I’d only be able to read it on my PC. At this point things went tits up, I couldn’t remember my password. Aha, there’s a password reset request and sure enough, I was informed an email was on its way. Several hours later and I’m still waiting.

So instead I went to Amazon, installed their Kindle for PC reader, realised I’d forgotten my Amazon password… oh heck but this time a password reset request actually worked. The only annoying thing left was having to pay VAT on my e-book, in the UK we don’t pay VAT on physical books but an e-book is considered an electronic service, not a book, even though it is a book, I’ll save that rant for another day, although Remember Remember, the fifth of November is an ideal day for a rant about The Government! The real moral of this story is to remember your passwords.

Then I read a little and decided to quickly take a look at the Second Life storytelling scene and popped to the Seanchai Library.

The Seanchai Library has an informative website, I won’t go into how Second Life Group pages in a web based format would be handy here, other than to agree that they would. Seanchai, the website tells us, is a way of telling stores in the Celtic tradition of sitting around a hearth, or in the pub. Actually Digital Human discussed how we are going back to some old ways of storytelling a couple of weeks ago, but I covered that already!

The stories are in voice unless otherwise stated. The location isn’t wow, like some libraries outside of Second Life, but it is effective and informative with a noticeboard informing a visitor of forthcoming events:

As well as posters about upcoming events and coming this December we have Dickens!

Now as this is largely a voice storytelling location, it won’t be suitable for all, however it’s worth keeping your eye on and looks like a project that should be positively encouraged.

Seanchai Library can be found at : http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Imagination%20Island/47/211/28

Neighbouring the Seanchai public library is, The Rachelville community library, this looks largely aimed at a younger audience but has resources and Second Life’s very own version of the e-book in the shape and form of books on inworld notecards!

Reading a book on a notecard is not ideal and it would be wonderful if we had a feature rich e-book reader within Second Life from which people could share books, or even buy and sell them, but we don’t, so it’s good to see that people don’t let minor issues like that trouble them and get on with sharing resources too.

Storytelling in Second Life is alive and well, it’s good to investigate such ventures, well if you have time of course!

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