I am thrilled to say that as of this very fine day, the new Consumer Health Library is now in its new location – a permanent one: HealthInfo Island!

Just this morning a brand new (and larger) building rezzed on our island, making this the first day that the Medical Library (headed by Namro Orman) and the Consumer Health Library have shared the same plot of land. And let me tell you: this new building is much larger (kind of intimidating to decorate!) than the old one, which is now in place as our new Welcome Center. I’ll miss that cozy place. I invite all my colleagues to drop in, give decorating advice, and to consider this space your own access to consumer health and medical information.

But I have a tale to share with you. I’ll try not to be maudlin or overwrought, because I don’t need to be. The story speaks for itself.

First, you’d have to know that I have a new volunteer, Stonebruise Goodfellow. Stonebruise is a sprite, reminds me so much of the fairy books I read (anyone, do you remember the yellow fairy book, the orange fairy book, the .. all the rainbow of fairy books?), dressed as she is in a monarch butterfly costume, complete with wings. She’s also a library paraprofessional, welcome beyond words at the library. I’m looking for a few good library folks.

But that’s not all. SB’s a family friend to two brothers in their early 40s. Both have muscular dystrophy, are completely paralyzed, use their tongues to control a sort of cursor.

And they’ve been to SL. Stonebruise brought them here with the help of a net-savvy healthcare aide. Once at SL, the brothers flew. They rode a horse.

Stonebruise has a mission. She intends to help her friends to enjoy a Second Life where these things can happen every day, and to help others do the same. See, they can ride and fly – but if someone says hi, they cannot respond.

I want to help. I hope we all do. I will be working with Stonebruise to assemble a resource listing – and hope so much to do more. Surely programs like Dragonwrite can be imported to SL. Surely, there are other programs that can be used to ensure accessibility to our friends whose RL, corporeal selves are bound (as are we all)!

I know, I got a bit carried away, and had promised not to. But I believe you will understand why. And I welcome your support, your ideas, and your own warm welcome to Stonebruise and her mission.

Carolina Keats

This entry was posted on Friday, November 24th, 2006 at 11:08 pm and is filed under General, Medical Library. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.