COMMUNITY VIRTUAL LIBRARY AND NONPROFIT COMMONS PARTNER ON RESOURCE LIBRARY

On August 8th, 2025, representatives from Community Virtual Library and Nonprofit Commons spoke to the weekly Nonprofit Commons meeting about the Phase 1 progress on updating the Nonprofit Resource Library that the Community Virtual Library provides. The goal was to show educators and others how Community Virtual Library and Nonprofit Commons partnered and how others can work together in a talk called “Benefiting from Community Cooperation,”  also offered as part of Virtual Worlds MOOC 2025, a month-long event geared to educators and those interested in education using virtual worlds.

The Community Virtual Library has been a partner with the Nonprofit Commons for many years. The last time this library underwent a major renovation was in 2018, and when Community Virtual Library met with the Nonprofit Commons stakeholders, it became clear an update was needed. Resources for nonprofit groups have changed. They desired a more interactive environment to make use of what the virtual world environment had to offer. Most importantly, they wanted more of their own past transcripts from nearly twenty years of history to be more easily accessible. Together, Shannon Broden (avatar Kreatya Shannon) and a team from Nonprofit Commons led by Joyce Bettencourt (avatar Rhiannon Chatnoir) worked to make that happen.

At the event, Shannon and Joyce, along with moderator Dr. Valerie Hill (avatar Valibrarian Gregg), talked about the process. They then encouraged people to come look at the space for themselves, in order to ask questions and give feedback.

As a testament to updates on the fly, it was mentioned during the tour portion that the Community Virtual Library’s Marly Marlena Music Library did not have a presence in the CVL office. This had been an intentional choice in Phase 1 since the Music Library was in the midst of being relocated and the timetable for that move was not known when we started, so it was not in Phase 1 scope. Immediately after the meeting, a display for the Music Library that includes information about it was added to the office.

This is a powerful illustration of stakeholder feedback and how it could immediately be addressed, since it is a branch of the Community Virtual Library there was a clear way to incorporate it without needing additional design steps.

Future updates will be shared here on the blog as Community Virtual Library and Nonprofit Commons partner further on the Resource Library.

A recording of the event is available.