On Second Life
Second Life has definitely been in the news a lot over the past couple of years. Companies are marketing virtual representations of their brands in Second Life. Rock bands are having concerts in Second Life. Educational institutions (like SJSU!) are holding classes in Second Life. This week, Congress conducted a hearing on virtual worlds inside of Second Life. Second Life has definitely gotten a lot of attention, but is use of the virtual world really as pervasive as Facebook or MySpace? The most concurrent users ever in Second Life is around 60,000, which is significant, but nothing like the over 1,000,000 concurrent users Facebook has had. 12 million people have signed up for Second Life, versus about 60 million users for Facebook and 110 million for MySpace. Also, there are significant barriers to participating in Second Life. You need a good graphics card and a computer with a fast processor. Lots of tech-savvy people who are very into Web 2.0 applications can't use Second Life because of these requirements.
I think Second Life has some really interesting implications for online education. Imagine if our Elluminate sessions were held in Second Life. Your classmates wouldn't just be names on a screen; they'd be life-like 3D avatars. I think it could lead to closer connections amongst geographically dispersed students. The primary reason I didn't want to hold classes in Second Life was related to the technical barriers. I didn't want anyone to be excluded from the class simply because they didn't have a computer that could run Second Life. But I do think 3D immersive virtual environments hold a lot of promise for online education.
I find Second Life fascinating, but I don't understand some librarians' explanations for providing reference services in Second Life. I'm very happy to see that people are experimenting with these tools and thinking about how they may be used in the future. In the future, this may be the primary way we interact with remote patrons. It's also a really interesting social experience. However, I've heard some people who provide reference in Second Life make the case that it's "going where our patrons are." Realistically that's not "where our patrons are" at this point, and that argument makes me wonder if people feel like they need to use that justification or their work in Second Life will not be seen as "work-related." While Second Life isn't a great tool for providing services to our patrons right now, it's very possible that we will be using immersive virtual worlds in the future to provide reference assistance and instruction to patrons. So I'm truly glad that lots of librarians are in-world, experimenting with it and figuring out just what's possible.
