Month: October 2020

San José State University School of Information’s Virtual Center for Archives and Records Administration Is Holding a Research Symposium in Second Life on October 24th, 2020

While I have written in the past about the use of Second Life by librarians who have set up virtual public and academic libraries, it should be noted that SL has also been home to not just libraries, but also museums and archives of various kinds throughout its 17-year history.

The School of Information (iSchool) at San José State University (SJSU) in California, which offers a Master of Archives and Records Administration (MARA) degree program, runs the Virtual Center for Archives and Records Administration (VCARA) in Second Life, which describes itself as follows:

An iSchool student group, VCARA is a MARA-created space and community based in the virtual world Second Life (SL). We offer many resources both in SL and online including annual conferences, events, exhibits, trainings, and webcasts. VCARA is open to all students, alumni, educators, and other professionals interested in virtual worlds and any aspect of information science including archives, education, and libraries.

The SJSU School of Library and Information Sciences in Second Life

On October 24th, 2020, VCARA will be hosting an event titled XR: Bridging the Gap Research Symposium:

Plan now to attend the XR: Bridging the Gap Research Symposium on October 24, 2020, from 9 a.m. to noon SLT (Pacific Time).

Venue: VCARA’s XR Research Center in SL on the SJSU SLIS sim (SLURL)

The goal of this symposium is to provide a venue for members of Virtual Worlds, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Mixed Reality communities to share accomplishments and challenges and to learn from one another.

9 a.m. – 10 a.m. – Keynote Address

10 – 10:45 a.m. – Birds of a Feather 

– Accessibility
– Networking/Communities of Practice
– Content Creation/Building

11 a.m. – 12 p.m. – Lightning Poster Session followed by a trip to Mozilla Hubs (with our without your headsets)

I have accepted an invitation to be a co-host of one of the Birds of a Feather discussion sessions taking place, on the topic of Networking and Professional Development in Virtual Worlds and Virtual Reality (along with Bethany Winslow, an Instructional Designer at San José State University). The BoaF sessions will be approximately 45 minutes in a breakout room, after which we will join up again in the main room to give a 5 minute recap of the important aspects of each BoaF.

The event is free, and everyone who is interested in the topic of virtual worlds and virtual reality in archives, education, and libraries is welcome to attend! To find out how you can become involved, please contact Dr. Patricia Franks, at the SJSU iSchool.

Second Life Hallowe’en Shop and Hop: Pick Up L$1,000 in Free Store Credit at Addams and Bumblebee

Because I will be working all weekend of various work projects for my full-time paying job at my university library system, I regret that I will not have time to browse through the Second Life Hallowe’en Shop and Hop event, which runs from October 2nd to November 1st, 2020. (Sorry, guys!)

However, thanks to the fast-working Russians over at Second Life – FREE (which is a little-known-about Russian-language group on Vkontakte, the Russian version of Facebook; use the Russian-to-English translator in your Chrome browser), I have seen pictures of most of the gifts available from the participating vendors. Using this handy list of SLURLs to take you directly to the vendor booth by name, I wanted to highlight three gifts which you might be interested in, which are not necessarily Hallowe’en-themed.

Baiastice

First up is the Baiastice booth, which offers the following low-cut, slinky gold minidress, with a HUD allowing you to change the gold to any of eleven other colours. Very versatile, and wearable in all seasons, not just Hallowe’en!

Bumblebee

Bumblebee has a panel in their booth which, when clicked, gives you a L$500 gift card, which you can use to buy anything in the Bumblebee store. (You can also combine it with the free gift card available in the store, if you have not already picked that up; more details here.)

Addams

Addams is another store offering L$500 in free store credit at the Hallowe’en Shop and Hop! Just click the sign at their booth, and the credits will automatically be added to your Addams account, for use on your next shopping trip!

There are eight sims for you to scratch that shopping itch at the Shop and Hop, and each participating vendor has a gift for you in their booth! Happy freebie shopping!

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: L$750 in Free Store Credit Offers at Seniha and Scandalize (Plus Nine New Free Womenswear Fatpacks at the Scandalize Outlet Store!)

The Seniha and Scandalize stores in Second Life are each offering free store credits to their group members. The Seniha group is free to join, and the Scandalize group is also currently free to join, but only until October 4th!

Scandalize

I would encourage you to join the Scandalize group and remain in the group, because normally it costs L$100 to join the group. And (as I have often said before), Scandalize offers, without a doubt, the most generous selection of free group gifts of any store on the grid, dozens and dozens and dozens of women’s apparel and shoes to satisfy any freebie fashionista!

The bountiful group gifts wall at Scandalize

At the entrance to the store are three panels. Wear your Scandalize group tag and click on one of them:

Please be patient; the store is crowded and there is usually a significant delay (a minute or two) between when you click on the sign and when a blue window pops up in the upper right-hand corner of your screen, Click on “Select reward” and you will be awarded L$400 is store credit, which you can then apply towards anything in the Scandalize store.

The free group join period for Scandalize ends October 4th, but it’s not clear whether the free store credit will still be available after that date (the last time Scandalize did this, which I reported on here, not too long ago), the store credit was still available for a limited time, even after they had raised the Scandalize group join fee back up to L$100.

(By the way, if you haven’t done so yet, be sure to visit the Scandalize Outlet store located south of the main Scandalize store, on the same sim, where you can join the Scandals SL Frees & News group for free and pick up scores of free Scandalize outfit fatpacks! (I reported back in July that you could pick up 72 fatpacks, but they have now added an additional nine fatpacks to the outlet, for a grand total of 81 free fatpacks of Scandalize clothing! This is one of the biggest and best free giveaways on the grid, and I urge you to take advantage of it. Details here.)

Seniha

At the Seniha store is a huge sign which, when you join the Seniha Originals group and click on it, awards you L$350 in free store credit, to be used on anything in the store:

Seniha also has a free group gift wall, smaller than Scandalize’s, but still packed full of wonderful womenswear items to add to your inventory. Many of these outfits are fatpacks which include HUDs to change the colour and texture of the clothing.

Now, I would caution you that, obviously, both stores are packed at the moment, and the sims they sit on are struggling under the onslaught. You might want to time your attempts to teleport in early in the morning or very late in the evening, when the stores will presumably be less crowded.

Please be patient. Lag will be a problem, which affects everything from getting your free store credits from the panels, to purchasing and receiving items. (In once case, my avatar crashed before the transaction could complete, and I did not receive the item in my inventory when I was able to log back in! In that case, I simply used the redelivery terminal in the store to request a second copy sent to me.)

My recommendation is that you might want to pop into both stores just to pick up your free store credit, and then schedule a time after this promotion has ended, and the store is less busy. to do your browsing and shopping in peace (as far as I am aware, the store credits offered by both Scandalize and Seniha do not expire, unlike those from Blueberry, which usually expire in 2 or 3 weeks).

Happy freebie shopping!