LIBR 246-13 Building the Social Library Online

I think this week's assignment was probably the most frustrating one for me.  Apparently, gaming and virtual worlds are not my thing.  I started in SecondLife.  I've tried it once before, and I didn't have enough RAM to even install it.  I have the same computer as I had then, but I have installed more RAM since.  This time, I went through with the install and entered the world.  Almost as soon as I entered, however, I started getting warning messages saying that I didn't have enough memory to handle the program, and would need to delete files.  I exited t

Gaming does a lot of "people training" and they do it well.  Okay, so they use a lot of intuitive mechanics to get us to do something while giving us goals to strive for.  It's not practical to give patrons goals like "the more xp/books you earn/check out, the faster you get your new flaming sword/library card."  It would be nice if libraries would apply the intuitive mechanics more often though.  Some libraries do, but some libraries just don't.

I took Libr285 last semester and we spent a lot of time on Second Life. At first I thought, “is that all there is?” because I was not particularly interested in meeting up with people in this virtual world but after spending lots of time there, I realized that there is something for everyone.

I can see the potential of using Second Life as a resource for Libraries to provide services, but I'm not to sure how I feel about using Second Life right now. I have a failry decent computer, a macbook that is less than a year old and DSL internet, but it moved so slow! These types of resources have to be targeted to specific audiences because in my mind Second Life is a niche thing. There are interesting lectures from poets, book groups, and even international reference suport, however, if I could do those things in my "first life" - I would.

I decided to test out Axl Wise rather than Second Life because at this point in time, Second Life does not really appeal to me.  I think it is because it seems to have no purpose for me right now.  If I had something to do or accomplish, then I might be more willing to explore.  But I know myself, and I think that this is one of those applications I know I probably would not come back to for awhile.  Some of the reasons for this include the fact that it would take me a longer amount of time to figure out how second life works than I'm willing to spend figuring it out.&nb