Curatorial Work and Learning in Virtual Environments: A Virtual World Project to Support the NDIIPP Community

ABSTRACT The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Virginia Tech (VPI&SU) are researching support of the digital preservation and curation community in Second Life (SL). We will explore how SL can be used, with a focus on education and dissemination. Our assessment will ascertain how serious use of immersive environments can yield benefit to scholarly communities. Our initial work is with four types of preservation/curation content. First, we hope to enlist InDP participants so their systems and results can become better known through SL. Second, we will support posters in SL as a way to share what is typically ephemeral knowledge about curation, digital libraries, and digital preservation. Third, we will help people learn about iRODS, using streaming video based on recordings made in Spring 2009. Fourth, we will develop ways to preserve what we collect and develop in SL. Beyond these content-based efforts, we will explore how preservation and curation can proceed, when split between two lives (Real Life and Second Life). Thus, we will explore activities, interactions, privacy concerns, and data transformation. It is hoped that our work will be of particular benefit to the National Digital Infor-mation Infrastructure and Preservation Program and digital cura-tion communities, and to those exploring advanced use of SL.