Alice Ruleman

Avatar: Nevada Mimulus

James C. Kirkpatrick Library

University of Central Missouri

Revised 2011

I ain‟t got time for no foolishness

Second Life is a virtual world created by Linden Labs in 2003.

You can do almost everything in Second Life (SL) that you can in Real Life (RL)

http://www.quantcast.com/secondlife.com

Need to have an avatar

Start with basic

“default” avatar

Make it “you”

BI & Information Literacy

Reference Desk/Chat

Access to e-books

Access to databases

Book discussions & programs

Embedded librarians

Collaboration

Virtual libraries, real librarians

F2F

Chat

Staffed by volunteers

65-70 hours week

IM, chat or voice

Questions mostly related to SL

Differences – Patrons less patient

Want instant answers

More diverse

per Bell, Pope and Peters (2008)

2 librarians & a patron

Patrons SL Dir SL Ref RL Dir RL Ref Voice Non-

Eng

2010 2306 606 898 66 163 6 166

2009 3373 2184 1723 257 216 57 89

2008 9298 2714 2108 445 477 80 146

2007 7662 2201 2487 244 332 55 45

http://sites.google.com/site/sllvrwiki/index/desk-operation/statistics

Center for

Information

Literacy Research

Infolit iSchool

Resources for

librarians in SL

Based at the

Department of

Information Studies,

University of

Sheffield, UK.

UCM

Eng 1030

English Comp II

Short

bi-weekly

instruction

E-books

Databases

Any e-resources

Reader‟s Garden

Seanchai Library

Alexandrian Free

Library

Community Virtual

Library events

Jan-Mar 2011

About 50 events per

month

Music at the Jazz Cat

SL Instruction

Book readings

http://sites.google.com/site/sllvrwiki/index/events

Part of Information

Archipelago

Built by Alliance

Virtual Library

16th Century -

Tudor

Period costume

Globe theatre

UCM

experience

Eng 1030

English

Comp II

A & S 1244

Digital

Africana

Studies

Chipmonkey Flacks

With colleagues

across the globe

LIS orientation –

“friend” each other

From blog entry –

meet people from

National Library of

Medicine, CDC, NIH,

IBM – would this

happen in real life?

Georgia Institute of Technology

St Catherine‟s Monastery

Stanford

University College Dublin

Olathe Public Library

Bavarian State Library

Cleveland Public Library

Steelhead Public Library

Directory of Libraries in SL

Alliance Virtual Library

ALA

Center for Information Literacy Research

Nebraska Library Commission

California Library Association

Michigan Library Association

Association of Rural and Small Libraries

SLA

SJUS SLIS

LIS Student Union

Dominican University Graduate School of LIS

University of South Florida - SLIS

University of Illinois at Urbana/Champlain Graduate School of LIS

Graduate School of Information Science and Technologies – Puerto Rico

University of Washington

Exhibits

Immersive learning

environments

Performances

Entertainment

Original SL Art

RL copies

Dresden Art

Museum

Svarga

NOAA

Paris 1900

Renaissance England

Sistine Chapel

Virtual classrooms

Bryan Carter aka Bryan

Mnemonic

Virtual Harlem

Sorbonne

Conference

Distance education

More “personal”

interactions

Can do things that

you can‟t in

physical world

Surgery

ER

New skills

Can SL be better than RL for meetings?

Use both voice & chat

All have input

Not interrupting each other

Can leave the

“meeting”

In your pj‟s!

Crossing time

zones

Dockery

James C. Kirkpatrick Library

UCM‟s Island

JCK Library

Virtual classroom

Reference avatar

BI classroom

Sand pile

Streaming Audio & Video

October „08 - Kirkpatrick Performance Series

March „09 - ALA /Children‟s Literature authors

Learn technology skills Photoshop, streaming

video, audio, 3D modeling, spatial reasoning, geometry

Network

Job skills

Be ready for the upcoming generation used to virtual worlds

Is any technology here to stay?

Gophers, telnets, kermits, dial-up

What about Facebook, Twitter, Meebo?

Is that a good reason not to?

Jumping off spot

“The virtual world technology we are seeing right now is in such an early and emerging phase that it is impossible to predict what form it might take in the future.”

Chris Collins

I still remember a librarian objecting to my continuing to lead an Internet Training Group at UCLA when the web was new. She held up and pointed to a 1995 article called “Web, Shmeb” and told me that the Web couldn‟t last, as the author of that article had stated. Of course it has, and quite marvelously.

Now, if you‟re wondering why Second Life, I‟d like to say that, IMHO, it‟s not Second Life itself that‟s important, though it‟s an incredibly creative enterprise. Actually, SL‟s significance is as one of the newer forms of technology we should be exploring so that we’ll be primed and ready, if not eager, for the next form of technology, and the next one after that.

Second Life Blog (SLIS21), Dec 25 2007 http://senna.sjsu.edu/lmain/wpress/wordpress/?p=58

We aren‟t all children‟s librarians either

Consider it an experiment, research & experience

Does your campus have an island?

You want to be involved but you campus isn‟t…

Volunteer

Enter through

NMC

ISTE

More education

oriented

Visit interesting

places

Visit libraries &

library islands

Join in-world

library groups

Join SL lists

LIS

SLRL

Bell, Pope, K. & Peters, T. (2008, May). The Universal Library in a Virtual Universe Second Life and a Second Chance for Librarians? Searcher, 16(5):26-9, 60-1.

Second Life Blog (SLIS21), Dec 25 2007 http://senna.sjsu.edu/lmain/wpress/wordpress/?p=58

SLLVR Wikihttp://sites.google.com/site/sllvrwiki/index