The Library: did you find it useful?

Hi everyone,

I'm writing about SL, describing its various aspects etc., and I was wondering how useful the Library really is. I mean, obviously it's great for n00bs, but maybe some of you found it useful beyond that? It's not the most exciting of subjects, but I would be truly grateful if you could share your point of view with me. If a reply is interesting and nicely written, I would like to quote it verbatim, with full credit to the original author, naturally.

Any thoughts? And thanks so much in advance.

I find the tree collection in the library invaluable, getting the right tree any other way is just about impossible.

I use the Library quite a bit.

The trees, of course are the top item I use out of there. I'm a terraformer and landscaper and prefer the Linden trees over resident-made trees for their interaction with the wind and fewer prims. Even my waterfalls are made from Library parts.

Really though, there's lots of good stuff in the Library.

-Ghoti

Yep, there's some good stuff in the library. I've used mainly the plants and some of the textures even today.

I checked out the Library 2 last night, and it was quite interesting, is this Library different than that one? and What is the loc please.

What is the 'Library 2'?

We're refering here (at least I am ) to the folder in your Inventory named 'Library'.

-Ghoti

/slaps forehead

figures.. lol

sorry, forget everything i have posted here

The Library is great- I use it more and more the longer I play. They occasionally add new things to it (for example, there are a number of full avatars there now which are much more interesting than the default Orientation Island avies), and it's a convenient place to find textures and other items useful in quickie landscaping and other kinds of builds.

I've also made frequent use of the furniture; it's nice to be able to toss down some chairs or a bed for some roleplaying without having to go shopping while in the middle of a scene.

Some of the scripted vehicles and objects are a great starting point to learn to do things on your own. I added a dynamic camera to my planes from what I have learned from the camera controls in Kart 1.0 in the library.

On a tangent things need to NOT default to share with group when you drag them directly from the library. That is a dangerous default behavior

The Kart is great fun.

I use the textures sometimes, to fit in with other textures around the world. I'd like to see more textures included there, of more general use.

We could have a Freebies folder, people who want to distribute freebies could send them to LInden for inclusion in a Freebies folder.

I think that would be an excellent idea; it's been proposed before I believe.

I use a lot of the Linden plants for my terraforming and landscaping jobs. It's fantastic to have big, good-looking plants like the Plumeria bush and some of the trees, that fill a lot of space yet take up only one prim. My only problem with the plants is that some of the prim flowers in the library are no-transfer, which means I can't position them as part of a landscaping job and then transfer ownership of them to my customer, even at zero L$. (It's the arrangement of the landscaping work and the custom terraforming and planters that I am selling, not the freebies themselves. But they still need to own the resulting arrangement when it is done!)

I also use several of the library textures in my building work, and the scripts and stuff for waterfalls in the library have been very useful of late.

Problem is, that would be a HUGE folder.

Sometimes, despite looking all over for just the right texture, it turns out that one in the Library is preferable.

Useful ;0 Would be nice if users or groups could define their own libraries ;0

The Library popgun is fun to shoot each other with it. The popgun is good when you are learning scripting. It serves as an example of how to rez an object from another one.

The beach ball is fun to play with. It has a good script for beginning scripters also.

The basic chair is good to use as a model when you are learning to build. It has another good basic script, a sit script.

The dice and fireworks have good beginner's scripts in them.

The dominoes - who could forget the dominoes? Thousands of dominoes stacked in a delightfully tempting manner, and they set themselves back up automatically. For fun, make an object that pushes dominoes, so when you find a set of dominoes, turn on your domino pusher, plough into the dominoes and watch them fly away at high velocity.

The builder's tape measure purports to show some dimensions such as average avatar height, normal door height, and things such as that. I don't know how accurate it is.

There's some things in the Landscaping folder that a person might find useful setting up a small home. Everyone starting out needs a pink flamingo.

There's a notecard with the Community Standards in it, dated November 1, 2005. Is that current? This can used to cut and paste the appropriate section when filing abuse reports.
Probably one should cut out appropriate sections for standard offenses and make them into special purpose Abuse Report boilerplates with a spot for the offender's name. There a task for a scripter: write a script that accepts a person's name and offers a menu of offenses; it produces copyable chat for copying and pasting into an abuse report.

There's a landmark to the Welcome Area, which worked for teleporting but would not show on my map.

The gesture folders are pretty nice to have. In case anyone doesn't know it, you an activate an entire folder of gestures such as the Common Gestures by dragging the folder onto your av.

As mentioned before there are new outfits in the clothing folders. I suspect this means that some of the old ones are missing, but that might be wrong.

There's now some Linden telehubs in there, quaint reminders of the days of yore. Whatever yore is.

Some of the orientation stations are in there in case one gets nostalgic for Orientation Island and can't be bothered to go to the fairly new public Orientation Island.

The anim Smooth and Rotation Scripts are good because anyone armed with a prim, perhaps a twisted torus, an interesting texture, and these scripts is an instant artist, because anything that rotates and has an animated texture is high art.

Perhaps most important, in the household folder, there's the parrot. The parrot is perfect if if you want to make some soup or start a bonfire.

I still use some of the textures in the library till today:

The water and waterfall textures in the library are ideal for particle sprays, and can still be used very well for creating water elements. Especially when used in layered prims.

All terrain textures are great for either blending in prims with the land on the mainland, and can be used quite well as a template base layer to create other terrain textures.

The rock textures are nice, especially since they've been converted from the huge 1024x1024 size to a more manageable 256x256, or 512x512 (can't remember).
(TIP: if you still have 'old' library rocks out there, take a minute to replace or retexture them, to avoid texture lag)

So THAT's where those dang things come from! Just how nearly every state seems to have a Springfield, nearly every sim seems to have at least one domino hanging a couple meters in the air.

Thank you all so much - this is just great! I can see now how SL gained a reputation for being such a friendly world.

I would like to use some of the replies as straight quotes, crediting the authors of course. I cannot say right now which ones will make it into print - it's also up to my editor and the reviewer.

If you would NOT like to be quoted, please post here.

Once again, thank you all very much. I'm lying on the floor with all four paws in the air .