2018 Academic Technology Expo

This presentation will discuss work being conducted at OU Libraries to develop strategies and best practices for supporting  3D/VR technologies in research and instruction. It focuses primarily on the data curation and preservation challenges that these new digital tools present. Starting in January 2016, OU Libraries has been deploying a network of VR workstations across the Norman campus. Since then, Emerging Technology Librarians have successfully integrated VR into courses and research applications in diverse fields such as architecture, structural biology, anthropology, and medical imaging, demonstrating the capabilities of 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 research data throughout the research lifecycle, and how to support complex configurations of hardware and software as they change over time. This presentation will draw from real-world experiences of deploying 3D/VR in research and teaching to suggest some strategies and future directions for 3D/VR implementation.