Tomorrow's the day for the Smithsonian Latino Virtual Museum

Back in January, I was treated to a preview of the Smithsonian Latino Virtual Museum in Second Life. Tomorrow, it opens its doors officially. The in-world ribbon-cutting ceremony and virtual building dedication happens at 1:30 p.m. with three of the Smithsonian Latino Center's Second Life islands, Smithsonian Latino Lobby, Smithsonian Latino Music, and Smithsonian Latino Expeditions, open to avatars. Normally the amount of our collections available to our visitors is constrained by physical space limitations, however this barrier is definitely being broken as many of the museums, research, and science centers find innovative ways to make so much more of our treasures accessible over the Web. The Latino Virtual Museum pulls together a number of different ideas from the Smithsonian 2.0 gathering, more access to collections and artifacts combined with online interaction for research and scholarship, exhibits, and immersive education activities.

I'm honored to pass along the Smithsonian Latino Center's invitation to join us in this adventure to explore Smithsonian world-class collections, superb scholarship, exciting programs and exhibitions through the lens of Second Life, a multi-user avatar based 3D (learning) virtual world environment.

Details are at http://latino.si.edu/education/LVM_Main.htm.

 

Comments

[rikomatic]

congrats on this new build and launch! Very exciting!

I blogged this up and shot some video of the launch here: http://www.rikomatic.com/blog/2009/03/smithsonian-launches-latino-museum-in-second-life.html

All the best, rik