Zack Lischer-Katz
CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow in Data Curation
University of Oklahoma
This presentation discusses work being conducted at University of Oklahoma (OU) Libraries to develop strategies and best practices for supporting 3D/VR (virtual reality) technologies in research and instruction. Since January 2016, OU Libraries has deployed a network of VR workstations across campus and successfully integrated 3D/VR tools into courses and research applications in diverse fields such as architecture, structural biology, anthropology, and medical imaging. These successes demonstrate the potential for VR to enhance spatial thinking, visual literacy, and embodied information acquisition in a variety of contexts. Along with these new academic potentials of 3D/VR emerge new challenges, including how to properly document and manage 3D data throughout the research lifecycle and how to support complex configurations of hardware and software as they change over time. This presentation will draw on real-world experiences of deploying 3D/VR in research and teaching to suggest some strategies and future directions for 3D/VR implementation. It will also discuss initial findings drawn from a colloquium on the topic of 3D/VR curation held at OU Libraries in March 2018.