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By RIVEN HOMEWOOD
Photos by Riven Homewood
The Jack & Elaine Whitehorn Memorial Library, main branch of the Caledon Library, is centrally located in Caledon Victoria City. To visit it, one must first arrive at the Victoria City telehub. Surrounding the telehub are some of the most elegant stores in the Metaverse, selling marvelous reproductions of Victorian dresses, boots, men's clothing, furniture, and other artifacts that are useful for customizing an avatar or furnishing a residence in a world that takes its inspiration from Victorian England. Behind these tall commercial buildings are many elegant homes, including the Governor of Caledon's Mansion. The Whitehorn (as it is familiarly known) sits among these buildings, three stories high and topped with a glowing dome and the spire of a tesla groundplane prim generator.
It is the library's custom to place a direct teleport link at the telehub during scheduled events. At other times, visitors need to visually locate the library entrance. To do this, first turn your back to Victoria City's famous carts full of free items. (This is perhaps the most difficult step, because these carts have some exceptional freebies.) Next, scan the building entrances until you locate the twin cannons that mark the House of Magellan. Directly to the left of these you will see the walkway leading to the entrance of the Whitehorn Library Reading Room with it's rows of fluted white columns and distinctive cruciform golden dome. (Or, if your draw distance is set to 128m or more, just scan the skyline for a glowing dome and a tall black steelwork spire!)
Along with numerous comfortable chairs, the Reading Room houses the Colonel Exerex Somme Reference Collection, a table filled with new acquisitions, and several "Aetheric Search Gizmos." These devices (the name makes use of the Caledonian colloquialism that refers to the web as "The Aether,” and the national fondness for technological toys of all kinds) are a clever way to solve the contradictions inherent in providing a traditional Victorian library via a high-tech online world. The main one (created by Caledon Librarian Mica Braun) uses a custom Google search that limits your search to websites about the Victorian period. For example, a search for "New Year" gave me a very reasonable number of hits, nearly all of which were appropriate. It also allowed me to limit the results by the following categories: Arts & Lively Arts; Literature & Philosophy; Culture & Society; Science, Technology & Steampunk; History & Military. Under Literature & Philosophy, I found a cartoon from Punch (the Victorian humor magazine), a chapter from The Mysteries of London by G.W.M. Reynolds, an essay on Pre-Raphaelitism, and several other interesting items.
The reference collection is also Aetheric, including pre-selected lists of Victorian-related links on such topics as history, literature, philosophy and women. The books in the library's collection are primarily what the library calls "Aetheric Editions" or "Aetheric Collections" (Second Life book objects that link to full text online) with a sprinkling of ThincBooks and older note card editions. Among the works on the Recent Acquisitions table, I found The Correspondence of Mark Twain, The Indiscretion of the Duchess by Anthony Hope (better known as the author of The Prisoner of Zenda), and a collection on Victorian funeral and mourning customs.
As I glanced around, it became quite clear that the Caledon Library is a serious specialized library. Although Caledon is a role-playing world, their library is much more than a piece of role-play. This visit aroused my curiosity no end, and I felt very fortunate that I was able to meet with the library director, Mr. JJ Drinkwater, and inquire as to how Caledon came to have a professionally-run library and what part the library plays in Caledonian regional culture. I was also quite curious as to why and how he had created this library, and about the reaction of the Caledonians to its existence.
I began by asking what had made him feel that Caledon needed a library. He replied, "I feel that *every* community in Second Life needs a professionally-managed library. People use Second Life in many different ways, and a significant use is to create online communities where people lead personal second lives and also participate in the life and culture of their "virtual village." Such communities especially need libraries."
Mr. Drinkwater explained to me that in Caledon many people create avatars with elaborate personae and back-stories. They may be a Duke or a Duchess, commodore of a naval fleet, owner of a theater, member of the embassy staff from a fictitious middle-European country, ruler of a pirate island, proprietor of a school that trains parlor maids, or any of a host of similar creative characters. One of the library's roles is to provide good sources of information that can be used to flesh out these roles. In its collection are primary sources about the etiquette and customs of the time, the cookery and housekeeping practices, how a garden would be laid out, what people wore, what they read, and most other aspects of Victorian culture. People don't generally use these for serious scholarly research (although they could.) Instead, they use them to add authentic details to their in world lives or provide authentic color for a role-play adventure. Mr. Drinkwater likened it to serving a patron group composed of historical novelists.
He went on to describe how he happened to create this library. "Alliance Library System originally came into Second Life, as you know, to see if people in SL wanted library services, if there was a place for library services here. I was a volunteer with The Second Life Library 2.0 (now AVL) when CoyoteAngel Dimsum contacted Lorelei Junot to inquire about creating a library for Caledon. Because Lorelei knew I was very fond of Caledon, she asked me to take on this task. I began by sending a note card to everyone in the Independent State of Caledon group and organizing an advisory board of notable Caledonians. One Caledonian, Abbey Underall, gave us resources that became the foundation of the reference collection; another resident suggested, 'Just have a building that looks like a library, I use Google for everything.' Today, the latter response makes me smile, because as months went by, Caledon grew and the library grew, in size and in importance to the community. We attracted many volunteers from Caledon who made books and such things as our steam-powered card catalogs (book givers). As Caledon grew, the library became part of its national identity, and the residents came to take great pride in *their* library."
As we moved from the Reading Room into the main part of the library, Mr. Drinkwater pointed out the current exhibit about Victorian fashion that rings the walls of the first two floors. "All of our exhibits are constructed to serve community interests, to help expand them and flesh them out. They are an interesting blend of library methodology and museum display techniques - this was first pointed out to me by one of the library's staunchest allies, Mr. Aldo Stern, a museologist in real life. Any cultural material of interest to Caledon is within the scope of our collection, exhibits, and events. Our exhibits change about every three months, and we often plan other events that are associated with them. Each month we have a Book of The Month discussion that often includes a listening party. We sponsor a monthly storytelling session at the Falling Anvil pub, which may be the oldest continuous story session in Second Life -- it has been going on regularly for three years now. We also have many other events, usually with a literary theme but not always. During the past year, some of these included a presentation by an expert on illuminated manuscripts, a discussion about the sense of self in Second Life culture led by a noted anthropologist, numerous listening parties, at least one tea, and participation in Radio Riel's Shakespeare Summer. We've also sponsored, to date, three formal balls. The fetes are important, I feel, because Caledon is essentially a festive place, and it is therefore part of our mission to help Caledon revel in its culture. "
He concluded: "Of course, this is sometimes a great deal of hard work. What has kept me going was the chance to talk about techniques with colleagues, and the pride of the community. Today the library is a fact of life in Caledon. Our residents have come to take if for granted that Caledon has a library that is tailored to its life and interests. It's rather like real life -- in real life, people don't get excited about libraries, they use them. They are an expected part of the community."
I asked if there was anything else he would like to tell the readers of RezLibris. He replied: "We always welcome volunteers, whether they have one project in mind, or want to join the library staff and help us make the place happen. Serving a community like this, one that is socially cohesive and has a real sense of itself, is a chance to practice an old-fashioned kind of librarianship in a new environment. For example, we get many reference questions but almost never get ones about using Second Life. We don't hold regular reference hours in the library, because they are not necessary. If people have a question they IM me or send a message via our aetheric question form. It's a very personal sort of library service, one that recognizes librarians as major sources of information for the community. We accommodate role-play, we love it, but our goal is to take the matter of the role-play, practice good librarianship, and accommodate that material to present good collections."
I thanked him for his time and bid him farewell. As I walked home through the streets of Victoria City, I resolved to visit some of the Caledon Library's other branches very soon, and inquire about the roles they play in their respective communities.
The Aetheric (or web) presence of the Caledon Library may be found at http://www.thelibrarymilitant.net/blog/
 Here is the slurl for the nearby telehub in Caledon Victoria City
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