Session 6: Cultures of Online Learning

4th Global Conference

Friday 13th March – Sunday 15th March 2009

Salzburg, Austria

3-D Virtual Library Concept Revisited
Daniel Riha
Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

The widespread of internet technologies and later Web 2.0 induced a new communication paradigm for the execution of academic library services and operating of their online user communities. The information professionals intensively develop and discuss ideas what functionalities the Library 2.0 shall deliver.

One of the most promising but the least penetrated online library services on the Web includes multi-user 3-D worlds. While in the USA, after the success of Second Life Library 2.0 and other projects based on the Second Life platform, librarians share an idea that the most existing web-based library services can be implemented in Second Life and the SL library user communities flourish, from the European perspective the situation seems to be significantly more complicated.

In Europe the multi-user 3-D worlds and specifically the Second Life platform has been recognized mostly for marketing purposes without deep understanding of the actual opportunities offered by this new media.

Although the developments around SL Library 2.0 seem to be promising, the history of online library service in 3-D space reaches the era far before Second Life start-up and the lessons learned from previous pioneer projects realized in 1990´s might offer an important information resource for avoiding the future failures in implementation of such a library service.

This paper analyses the functionalities of 3-D library service and the assumptions for the establishing the long term user community from the wider historical perspective. The concept of the 3-D Virtual Library, a winning concept developed in 2002 for the Art on Construction art competition and realized in 2004 for the University of Constance Library as the first of its kind in Germany, is compared against the actual 3-D library concepts. 3-D Virtual Library is presented as a case study investigating the issues surrounding its implementation and usage and questioning the potential of the multi-user 3-D interface to bring an added value to the online library user community in the European context.

Cyberculture has evolved from its initial close relationship with cyberpunk and its implicit link to an anticipation of the future and today it refers not only to a number of current cultural productions but also to a new approach to culture in general.

This paper aims to describe the implementation of an introductory cyberculture course in the French language and literature faculty curriculum (University of Athens, 2008). The latter is primarily centred on French literature courses and it aims mostly to the formation of future teachers of French language through the development of individualized skills to be used for personal expression.

The main objective of this course was the education of today’s digital Natives and future Netizens and the development of new media skills which should be seen as social skills and which also include the traditional literacy that evolved with print.

The syllabus contained an introduction to cyberspace, virtualization and virtual communities (through Myspace), digital video and sound, digital effects, an insight into collective intelligence (through wikis), politics on the Net (by the examination of the phenomenon of hackers) and mainly the examination of digital storytelling through machinima.
Machinima, a portmanteau of machine cinema or sometimes animation, is defined as “animated filmmaking within a real-time virtual 3-D environment”. It is a new medium where filmmaking, animation, and videogames converge.

Students created collaboratively characters and stories wrote scenarios using a wiki and then produced machinima films. We will present concrete course projects.

Based on current research on new media literacies , we propose that the creation of machinima films by students-prosumers is a form of participatory culture and an excellent way to develop new media skills.