At RPL’s annual Staff Development Day today (okay, yesterday since I’m posting this on Saturday), they were demoing a new Virtual Reality accessory the library recently purchased.
This was the Playstation 4 version, not the more well-known Oculus Rift headset that, in many ways, began the popularization of virtual reality devices for home users.
It felt pretty seamless for me (other than it losing track of me a couple times for some reason) but a lot of bystanders had a good laugh at another co-worker who screamed, ducked and flinched as she played the “highway luge” game where you slide down a highway as vehicles rush towards you! 😉
Anyhow, my branch now has a 3D Printer and a patron recently asked the obvious question: “Why?”
I answered that the library has always been about providing access to things that people didn’t have – in our earliest days, we provided books when they weren’t easily available but as new technologies have come along – CD’s & DVD’s, computers and the Internet, and on to video gaming systems and now cutting edge technologies like 3D Printers and VR – the library has always been one of the first places that citizens are exposed to the latest and greatest before they become more affordable or accessible for the home user.
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