Gaming and Immersive Environments Steering Committee: Track 1
Jake Carlson, fearless leader
Also: Rebecca Richardson, Adam Coddington, Tomalee Doan, Michael Witt, and Dave Eisert.
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Planning for the 2nd Second Life Sessions
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Second Life Demo-rama & Discussion on 4/16/08
Agenda:
- Introduce and demonstrate Second Life and facilitate a discussion about opportunities for libraries to facilitate learning and research in immersive environments. We will: Introduce the topic of immersive environments and provide some context for why we're investigating them
- Do a live demonstration of Second Life and explore the environment together - for example, we'll visit a virtual reference desk and ask a librarian avatar a reference question!
- Lead a discussion and share ideas and issues related to immersive environments This will be a fun and informative session open to all Libraries' faculty and staff.
Notes from discussion.
Second meeting on 4/1/08
Agenda:
For our meeting on April 1, we will review our charge in more depth in order to determine priorities and action items.
In particular, we will discuss how we might conduct environmental scans of the gaming and immersive environment at Purdue, and in the library field as a whole, to determine what we know currently and what we need/want to investigate further.
For example, for item "d" in our charge, can we identify people to consider bring to campus to speak on a gaming and immersive environment topic and then investigate what it would take to get them here? For item "f", can we identify faculty we know who are interested or involved in gaming and immersive environments and then make contact with them to learn more about their research and needs, as well as to gauge their potential interest in collaborating with the libraries?
Minutes: The committee discussed the idea of an environmental scan and came up with the following categories to gather information about: faculty, students, facilities & hardware, events, grant opportunities and programs at other libraries. Committee members agreed to add information to these categories over the next two weeks. This information will live in Track 1's wiki site and will be updated and maintained as needed. Once everyone has contributed what they know, we will spend some time determining what we still need to find out and how we might go about gathering this additional information.
Michael presented his idea that the track 1 committee submit a proposal to purchase an island in second life to the libraries administration. The idea behind this purchase would be to give library staff a place to explore and experiment with developing and delivering content in an immersive environment. Purdue University as a whole is beginning to sponsor events and make investments in exploring the potential for using immersive environments as a pedagogical tool. ITaP is looking to coordinate purchasing land in second life and has already placed an order for the Department of English. The libraries, as the second purchase, would be an early adopter in this area which would leverage us in being seen as a resource. The committee discussed the idea and offered its endorsement. Michael will write up a proposal and share it with the committee. Jake will share it with the gaming steering committee for their approval.
The committee discussed holding an information session on second life for library staff. This session would consist of an overview of second life, how to get started and basic elements of exploring second life, and a discussion on how libraries might be able to use it. Michael, Tomalee and Rebecca volunteered to plan this event.
First meeting on 3/18/08
Jake Carlson will lead the track. Members are Rebecca Richardson, Adam Coddington, Tomalee Doan, Michael Witt, and Dave Eisert. Catherine Riehle joined us. Instead of keeping minutes and agendas, we agreed to collaboratively update this wiki as a "rolling" documentation of continuing issues and work assignments. We discussed related grant proposals that recently took place, and at least one of these (Michael's Second Life proposal) will likely be submitted to this call 
from the Discovery Learning Center.
Looking at the sub-charges of the track, we went around the table and indicated our interest in participating and supporting them (we made some assumptions about Dave's interests as he was unable to join us for this meeting):
a. Expand the Libraries collection with related books and software - Tomalee
b. Collect lists of on-campus resources - Rebecca, Dave?
c. Conduct facility and hardware assessment - Adam
d. Support guest lectures and instructional initiatives - Michael, Tomalee, Rebecca
e. Explore related grant opportunities - Jake, Michael
f. Collaborate with other groups on campus exploring gaming and immersive environments - Jake, Michael, Dave?
