Having made a start at a library in virtual CISM (screenshot below), I’ve been thinking about how we might best use it.

CISM cybrary

My first (and most obvious) thought was to populate the virtual library (let’s call it the Cybrary to avoid confusion hereafter) with the reading lists for modules, and to create links between the virtual library (a Pandorabot cybrarian, perhaps) and the university OPAC, between virtual books and their Amazon pages, and between virtual documents and electronic documents (online PDFs, for example).

Looking around SL this afternoon, I came across the Alice Free Library (below) displaying digital scans of Alice in Wonderland, a Nancy and Sluggo comic book, and fragments of three other books. What made the library interesting in spite of its meagre inventory was the interactive page-turning. I imagine that most people would prefer not to read from the screen; but where a rare original is reproduced it’s interesting to see that edition.

alice-books.png

My second destination today was BookMooch (below), an online book-exchange service with presences both on the web and in SL. The idea is simple: you give away the books you don’t want; you search for books you do want and, if you find them, have them given to you. Could be a useful medium for students to acquire and subsequently dispose of text books.

BookMooch

Finally, you may find Book Island worth a visit for its publishers, bookshops, and occasional special events.

Alice:
[slurl] http://slurl.com/secondlife/Alice/37/121/60

Book Island
[slurl] http://slurl.com/secondlife/Media%20World/170/204/36

BookMooch:
[slurl] http://slurl.com/secondlife/Kula%203/128/128/0

Penguin Books in SL
[slurl] http://slurl.com/secondlife/Hooper/128/128/0

See also:
Ronin Kurosawa, ‘Publishers Explore The Metaverse’
ยป http://www.booksquare.com/archives/2007/06/18/2432/