Giving Libraries a Second Life in a Virtual World
Paul Henriques, currently a contractor with the U.S. Postal Service Headquarters Corporate Library, Washington, D.C., shares his takeaways from a recent DC/SLA program on Second Life. Are you curious what all the buzz about Second Life is about? Read on and see what Paul has to say...
On Wednesday, April 25th, the DC Chapter of the Special Libraries Association (SLA) hosted a panel discussion on Second Life, an online virtual world. The panel was led by Michelle Springer of the Library of Congress, Justin Thorp of CACI Intl., Mark Bard of the American Library Association's Washington Office and Kristina Lively of the National Endowment for Democracy.
Upon first glance, the biggest hurdle to understanding Second Life for me was to move beyond the 2D paradigm, as Thorp described. While this virtual world resembles the real world to a degree, you don’t have people flying in mid air, teleporting and taking on the physical appearances of animals in real life. Once you get past the interface, though, you’ll experience a virtual world where the only boundaries are your imagination.
Here are a few of the vitals, in a nutshell:
- User name and password are linked to your credit card. It is free to join Second Life and browse around. If you want to buy land, purchase goods or make donations, you use virtual currency, called Linden Dollars. The current exchange rate is about $1 US to 267 Linden dollars.
- The money used to purchase land in Second Life goes towards the maintenance of the servers at Linden Labs, creators of this online world. The Marketplace supports a vast virtual economy where you can purchase or sell goods and services you have developed in Second Life.
- You are represented by an “avatar” or virtual person in Second Life to go along with the unique name that you select upon joining.
- Second Life is not currently Section 508 compliant and interaction between users is done mainly through online chat. A voice function is being developed and should be available to all users within the year.
- To join Second Life, you must be at least 13 years of age. Those under 17 years of age are permitted to join and are prohibited from accessing areas other than the “Teen Area.”
Second Life appears to be a useful tool for visual learners, given the fully participatory nature of the program. Members are able to sit in on community meetings and discussions geared towards their interest. The Second Life Library Project, started in April 2006, consists of an island that was donated and real life librarians who volunteer their time and expertise to staff the reference desks. These virtual libraries are a great way to promote services of real life libraries and attract users that might otherwise shun going to a traditional brick and mortar library. However, funding and sustainability of these virtual libraries, just like in real life, remains an issue in Second Life.
There are still some kinks to be ironed out with Second Life, as with any new technology. First, there is no integrated browser within the Second Life client. Since there are links to websites in this virtual world, you will be directed out of the Second Life client back to your browser if you wish to view a link. Second, concrete policies and protocols are still being hammered out, as social norms in the virtual world develop. As a result, you might run into offensive or inappropriate content while wandering around the non-teen sections of Second Life. Third, 90% of IT administrators don’t allow the Second Life client to run on company and agency networks. So for Second Life to become a popular business application, major streamlining will need to be undertaken.
Perhaps one of the most innovative uses for Second Life is being exploited currently by large corporations, such as IBM. They are creating environments where current employees can virtually interact with retirees, thus facilitating the spread of tacit knowledge which is difficult to exploit in large organizations. Second Life in effect is a new vehicle for knowledge management. Fundraising is also becoming big business in this virtual world. The American Cancer Society recently raised $5,000 (real US dollars) through donations made in Second Life.
The biggest problem with Second Life for me is finding the time to take on life in a virtual world. Not being a gamer, some of the allure is lost on me, although I am intrigued by the practical business and government purposes it is bringing to the general public. In fact, the U.S. Congress and several 2008 Presidential campaigns have launched into Second Life. Once companies get beyond thinking of an online world as gaming and begin to see the practical business applications that Second Life provides, this new world will take off.
In sum, one could consider Second Life currently to be in the same stage as the World Wide Web was in the mid 1990s, as Bard explained in his portion of the presentation. Hundreds of years from now, people will look back upon this period of time much like we look back on the Industrial Revolution. We continue to be the pioneers of emerging technologies designed to help bring communities together and learn in innovative ways. It is in our best interest to personally explore these systems and programs to determine which ones will enhance our professional and personal lives.
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