"Virtual Worlds, Real Libraries is designed to help librarians and educators recognize the potential of multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs) and consider ways to get involved as they proliferate. Lori Bell, Rhonda B. Trueman, and 24 contributors describe innovative projects in Second Life and other virtual worlds, and demonstrate how reference, teaching, collections, discussion groups, young adult programs, and other services can be successfully applied in a virtual environment."--Cover.

Virtual Worlds are 3-D constructs that exist in cyber-space. Participants operate within these constructs in the form of avatars. Although wirtual worlds appear at first to be merely games, in fact they can be used to carry out criminal conspiracies or terrorism. The book has the assistance of Akil Ar-Raqib is a researcher working in Beirut, Lebannon and Zurich, Switzerland.

Handbook of Research on Practices and Outcomes in Virtual Worlds and Environments not only presents experienced professionals with the most recent and advanced developments in the field, but it also provides clear and comprehensive information for novice readers. The handbook introduces theoretical aspects of virtual worlds, disseminates cutting-edge research, and presents first-hand practices in virtual world development and use. The balance of research, theory, and applications includes exploration of design innovations, new virtual reality technologies, virtual communities, pedagogical design, and the future of virtual worlds and environments.

As learning moves into a more innovative and technologically savvy environment, it becomes increasingly important that library education continues to adapt and understand the resources that are available. Advancing Library Education: Technological Innovation and Instructional Design aims to provide relevant theoretical frameworks, empirical research, and new understandings for those interested in Library and Information Science and the impact new techniques and technologies are having in this area. Librarians, academics, and researchers will benefit from this careful look into current advancements in their field.

Virtual Worlds will provide the knowledge, inspiration and motivation to get you started.

Virtual worlds are places where humans interact, and as such they can be environments for research and learning. However, they are complex and mutable in ways that more controlled and traditional environments are not. Although computer-mediated, virtual worlds are multifaceted social systems like the offline world, and choosing to study virtual world phenomena demands as much consideration for the participants, the environment and the researcher as offline. By exploring virtual worlds as places of research and learning, the international practitioners in this book demonstrate the power of these worlds to replicate and extend our arenas of research and learning. They focus on process and outcomes and consider questions that arise from engaging in teaching and research in these spaces, including new approaches to research ethics, internationalization, localization, and collaboration in virtual worlds. This book was originally published as a special issue of Learning, Media & Technology.

Presents a broad examination of the nature of virtual worlds and the potential they provide in managing and expressing information practices through that medium, grounding information professionals and students of new media in the fundamental elements of virtual worlds and online gaming. The book details the practical issues in finding and using information in virtual environments and presents a general theory of librarianship as it relates to virtual gaming worlds. It is encompassed by a set of best practice methods that libraries can effectively execute in their own environments, meeting the needs of this new generation of library user, and explores ways in which information literacy can be approached in virtual worlds. Final chapters examine how conventional information evaluation skills work falls short in virtual worlds online. - Maps out areas of good practice and technique for information professionals and librarians serving in virtual communities - Provides a clear foundation with appropriate theory for understanding information in virtual worlds - Treats virtual worlds as 'real environments' and observes the behaviour of actors within them