Future posts on Second Life Medical on InfoIsland.org

This is the last post on this blogpost adress.
All future posts will be published at
http://infoisland.org/
This is the offial blog of the Alliance Library System Second Life Library 2.0 project.
And it will not only be posts about the Second Life Medical Library, but also the Consumer Health Library ánd the Project Virtual Hospital. All three are having their residence at the new HEALTHINFO ISLAND, next to InfoIsland.
The posts will be written by Guus van den Brekel aka Namro Orman, Carol Perryman aka Carolina Keats, GoodwillStacy Stindberg and Synergy Devonshire
The posts will be tagged with:
Second Life Medical Library
Consumer Health Library
Project Virtual Hospital
HealthInfo Island

Grant received for Consumer Health Library Services in Virtual World

The Alliance Library System (ALS) is pleased to announce that the National Library of Medicine/Greater Midwest Region has awarded ALS a $40,000 grant to provide consumer health information services in the virtual world of Second Life. ALS is working on the project in partnership with the University of Illinois Library of the Health Sciences-Peoria, Central Medical Library, Unversity Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) in the Netherlands,. and TAP Information Services.

“Providing Consumer Health Outreach and Library Programs to Virtual World Residents in Second Life” will allow the Alliance Second Life Library to provide training programs, outreach to virtual medical communities, important consumer health resources, and one-on-one support to Second Life residents.
Second Life (http://www.secondlife.com) is a booming virtual world with over 1 million residents.
“We are thrilled to receive this grant as it builds on efforts we have already started in Second Life to provide library services,” stated Kitty Pope, Executive Director of the Alliance Library System.
“This will allow us to provide important information in a virtual world whose citizens may not come or may not be able to reach a traditional library. For instance there is a group for stroke victims. In real life they may be physically limited. In Second Life, they can fly and be whomever or whatever they choose to be. There are no limits.”

“People are often seeking health information at stressful times in their lives, such as when they are facing diagnosis and treatment decisions,” said Jo Dorsch, Director of the UIC Library of the Health Sciences-Peoria. “By providing reliable information to people at the point-of-need we hope that consumers will make better informed decisions that will affect their health care and quality of life.”

Carol Perryman, a doctoral student in Library and Information Science with a specialty in medical librarianship at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, will serve as Project Coordinator. “ Librarians interested in exploring new ways to meet the needs of users cannot fail to be intrigued and rewarded by the potential of Second Life,” said Carol Perryman.
“On the other side of the avatar’s screen very real people have very real health information needs – and the grant project will provide real help to these consumers. I am pleased to be working with Aliance and other partners on this pioneering effort.”

Perryman will team with Guus van den Brekel, who has developed a clinical medical library in Second Life to develop services. Lori Bell from ALS, Jo Dorsch, Peg Burnette and Sandy DeGroote from UIC-LHSP, and Tom Peters from TAP information Services will participate as part of the project team. The group will work with established support groups in Second Life and reach out to new patrons who have health information needs.

• The latest report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project says that 80 percent of American Internet users, or some 113 million adults, have searched for information on at least one of seventeen health topics.
• Most Internet users start at a general search engine when researching medical advice online.
• Just 15 percent of searchers say they “always” check the source and date of the information they find online, while another 10 percent say they do so “most of the time.”
• Fully three-quarters of health information seekers say they check the source and date “only sometimes,” “hardly ever” or “never,” which translates to about 85 million Americans gathering medical advice online without consistently examining the quality indicators of the information they find.
• Most seekers are pleased about what they find online, but some are frustrated or confused.

This project has been funded in whole or in part with federal funds from the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, under Contract NO1-LM-6-3503.

Technorati Tags:Alliance Library System, Consumer Health Information, Grant, Medical Library, National Library of Medicine, Second Life Library, second life medical library

Grand Opening Second Life Medical Library and móre!

You just got to visit InfoIsland the next few day! Today starts a three day eventfull program with Grand Openings, great talks and a lot of beautiful things to see!
How about: Virtual Worlds and Education ?
Or: Virtual Worlds and Alternate Realities - Where Do Libraries Fit In?
And of course the Grand Opening of the Second Life Medical and Consumer Health Library on Saturday 14th October. Here's the agenda.

Times are in Second Life / U.S. Pacific Time (-7 or -8 GMT, depending on daylight savings)
The Opening will start at the SL Medical Library (Info Island 165, 204, 33).
Saturday 14th October

• 09:30-9:40 - Namro Orman on the project Medical Library in Sl
• 09:40-9:50 - Marymac Dougall on Breast Cancer Awareness
• 09:50-10:00 - Coreshadow Bordiga on the Project Virtual Hospital
• 10:00-10:15 - Quick Tour Medical Library building and Herb Garden
• 10:15-10:20 - Location change to the Consumer Health Library, Info Island II (227, 202, 23)
• 10:20-10:30 - Carolina Keats on the Consumer Health Library and Tour
• 10:30-10:40 - Second location change to (normally private) islands Asterix/Obelix for live sims. (Instructions will follow)
• 10:40 -11:55 - Moriz Gupta on training of health care staff within SL, the project IBAPP (Idaho Bioterrorism Awareness and Preparedness Program) and SL, and very, very special live sims!
  
• (11.55 - Very quickly BACK TO INFO ISLAND for:
• 12:00 p.m. sl - Ribbon Cutting and Special Speaker - Info island Open Air Auditorium (Info Island 143, 82, 34) - Katt Kongo, editor, Metaverse Messenger )

Carolina and I (and all others participating) would like to welcome you on this event!
Come and have a look! And if you can not make it, comment on this blog, email or IM us and we will make an appointment to do a personal Tour later.

Self-Guided Tour
If you want to do a tour all by yourself: in the SL Medical and Consumer Health Library you can get a Tour Guide. It is a so-called Heads-Up Display and contains of a pre-defined chat-session.

You first get a copy of the Tour Guide Tool and from within your Inventory you choose WEAR. A blue button will appear in the Left-Top screen. Click on it and read the chat lines! You can that way walk the complete tour in the SLML ánd CHIL.

Stroke Support Group Second Life: Sojourner display

Education and Research BOOMING in Second Life!

I promised to let you know how the presentation of John Bradford went.
Well, follow the link and see the transcripts, the presentation ánd the demo movie!According to The SIMTEACH blog it was perhaps the largest edu event in the Metaverse ....Simteach is really a great site. The subtitle is:"Information and Community for Educators using M.U.V.E.'s(Multi-User Virtual Environments )
Reference: Schwartz, D. L., Bransford, J. D., & Sears, D. (2005). Efficiency and innovation in transfer. In J. Mestre (Ed.), Transfer of learning from a modern multidisciplinary perspective (pp. 1-51). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.

One of the Second Life Medical Library missions is to identify and list all relevant activities on the following subjects:

• Support groups (patient groups in SL) for possible outreach from the Consumer Health Library (more on this later!)
• Educational, Clinical and Research activities with relation to Health Information or any Medical subject.

Rss-feeds in Second Life Medical Library and Consumer Health Library.

At this moment we offer the following rss-feeds in the Second Life Medical Library and the Consumer Health Library:

• All Google Health News concerning Consumer Health (RSS)
  This feed is based on a News search for Consumer health OR (alternative OR complementary) but at the same time limited to the Health section!
• Reuters Health News (RSS)
• New PubMed records on Consumer Health Information: for this we limited with the subset command: jsubsetk (RSS)
• NEW! Breast Cancer RSS. A Pubmed search concentrated to focus on Breast Cancer info. (RSS)
• New exciting news from our own Blog "Second Life Medical Library" (RSS)

We can make any feed visible in your place.

As the RSS-reader in SL can only accept real RSS-format, I use www.feedburner.com to convert these feeds.

How about that for tailor-made services?

Who wants to see how it works on this blog?

Ain't Misbehavin'

Sitting here, invited by the Sojourner to join her at a folk concert, live, at MillionsofUs - the grid goes down and the guys keep playing. One of them takes off a capella, doing 'ain't misbehaving' - coming out live from my little pc speaker, just a beautiful voice. The grid goes down but folks are still hanging in there. The singer says, checking the meter, that about 15 people are still out here listening. Sitting at desks or balancing laptops in so many places, sharing the harp riffs and vocal grace in a place that's nowhere; the guys know us by our metered numbers. the audience is shown in that sad 'away' head-hung mode, but nothing's moving. Even the hung grid is alive.

One more listener joined the group - only 5 or 6 have left. We're all sitting here listening.

when worlds collide… and other (perhaps) trite thoughts

Have you ever been talking with someone whose normal speaking voice is too loud or too quiet, and had the overwhelming urge to simply adjust the volume controls? Or wished you could back up to a previous webpage – and there is no ‘back’ because, well, you’re not online, but in p2p mundane workaday time-locked rl? Oh – and then there’s the perplexity of the divide and merge of rl and (not) rl worlds and activities – how about you?

I’d like to amend my appearance, and it annoys me intensely that there’s no pie chart. No skin color change, no way to perk up aging parts or change hair color without also dyeing several towels in the process. I find that my thoughts and actions in SL (as in a previous asynchronous community, but less so) are influencing my rl thoughts and actions. “Hang on a sec,” I want to say sometimes – “I was just talking about this last night with an educator in … Indiana.” Or from India, Germany, the Netherlands. And I was. We’re all increasingly global (so ‘they’ say, despite ongoing provincialism in libraries and other settings) but doing library stuff in SL is more so – mandated to be so, whatever our intentions. It must change our perceptions and practices back in rl.

Even if there is no back button.

be well, in all your worlds.

Reuters Health News : 3 month trial access

The Second Life Medical Library now offers a three months trial access to Reuters Health News Services. Anybody with an SL account can get access! Details are available at the Reuters health display in the SL Medical Library and at the New Consumer Health Library

Reuters Health offers Health E-line, health related news for the general public interested in wellness, healthcare and the latest treatments for medical conditions. Health eLine offers accurate, readable and informative news reports every day. Reuters Health eLine is available in English, Spanish and Portuguese.


Reuters Medical News for health professionals
With content selected for relevance and newsworthiness, the daily Medical News is a convenient way for physicians, researchers and other medical professionals to stay informed of developments in their field. This service is available in English and Spanish.

Reuters Health Industry Briefing
Offering up-to-the-minute news on the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, Industry Briefing delivers a fast, accurate business information service for the healthcare community.

Come and have a look! Things are moving faster and faster. More breaking news soon about the Second Life Medical Library!

Meanwhile we need more volunteers to come and work with us! We will have a special Grand Opening of InfoIsland soon and there is still a lot to do. We need some people to give presence during the two-day event, and who want to give tours for all the visitors.
So , if you are interested and/or involved in health info or involved in some kind of a medical library (or want to be), or curious about what Second Life can offer you and you want to try it out?
Do you want to know why all kinds of Support Groups are using SL or why Medical Educators and Academic Libraries are getting in as well?
Come and talk to Carolina Keats or Namro Orman or mail us at SLMedLib@gmail.com and we will tell you how exciting this all is.