Second Life

Libraries are constantly looking for new ways to reach the people they serve, and one platform that has been much discussed recently is the program Second Life (SL). SL is a virtual world where one can create a free account and design their own avatar to serve as a visual, virtual version of themselves.

One of the neatest things about creating your avatar is the ability you have to change its appearance. You can change things that are so subtle, such as the slant of your eyes or the fullness of your lips, that if you spent some serious time on it, you could make quite an accurate replica of yourself. You can also design and edit your clothing using items in your account's inventory.

SL participants can interact with each other, and with the world itself. You can chat with text or voice to individuals, or to the whole area your avatar is located within. Your avatar can also perform gestures to help you communicate. Shaking its head yes or no, pointing, and stretching are just a few of the gestures your avatar can make.

Your avatar can interact with the world by touching objects, sitting on them, or building in certain areas of SL. You can visit a virtual coffee shop, sit on a stool, and order a cup for your avatar. Students can meet with their instructor's avatar, who sits behind a desk ready to hear their concerns.

So what does all of this mean for libraries? How are they using SL, and are any of their patrons actually using it?

Many of them are using it as a meeting place. Let's face it, gas prices are expensive. Plus, some library populations do not have reliable access to transportation. If your library builds a virtual meeting place in SL, you can alert your patrons to meet you there at a certain date and time and hold book talks, focus groups, or other library programs.

SL can be used to host an extension of sorts to the library itself. By visiting Georgia Tech Library's SL location, you can access a reference librarian (and leave them a message if they happen to be off duty). Their area also features work stations that can be touched to open up aspects of the library's resources within a SL web browser. Advertisements for new library services and programs are also utilized in SL.

In the SL location for Austrailia Libraries, you can sit on a sofa and open up a copy of an open-source novel like Pride and Prejudice, and read it cover to cover. You can look at a slide show of noteworthy places in Austrailia, or perhaps pick up some notecards on Austrailian Farming in their outhouse, aka the Austrailian Farmer's Reading Room.

Now for drawbacks. I have visited each of these places multiple times and never seen another human being I didn't meet there on purpose. Also, it's not the most stable program in the world. Sometimes the whole program goes down for hours unannounced, or runs very slowly or locks up.

Not everyone has the robust computer hardware to run the program, and difficulties installing the software are common.

As SL evolves it could be the hottest spot around, or maybe it will grow to attract a certain techie type of person who likes to avoid social interaction?

Time will tell, but until then libraries must keep their fingers on the pulse of this trend with the ultimate goal of being where their users are, both virtually and within the real world.