VWE Working Group: Phase II
October 22, 2008
Hi everyone,
As many of you know, I was a member of the Virtual Worlds Environment Working Group in the Spring, and I sought your opinions on the role of libraries in virtual environments. I am now a member of Phase II of this group and would still like to know your thoughts on our involvement in this virtual environment so that I may take your thoughts back to this group.
Some things to consider before posting:
- Do virtual worlds such as Second Life provide a new tool for users to gain access to information in new ways? More effective ways?
- In what type of activities should libraries be involved in SL? Lectures, conferences, instruction, reference, displays, virtual role playing scenarios, other?
- What are some of your concerns about virtual worlds? Privacy, accessibility, etc.
- How can we overcome these concerns?
Please post any thoughts, concerns, ideas 
~Laura
Entry Filed under: VWE Working Group. Tags: accessibility, conferences, instruction, lectures, privacy, reference, role playing, VWE Working Group.
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1.
Traveler | October 27, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Laura,
I think there is great potential for using SL. I do think that it would be much more useful if you could choose your name and not have to pick from a list. For fantasy, game playing type applications, aliases are fine but I’m not sure many people will accept it as a serious way to “do business”.
And that is too bad because it is an excellent tool for conferences, classes and a multitude of other uses.
Traveler
2.
Anonymous | October 27, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Using SL as a means to attend conferences would be fantastic. With the concerns over rising costs and lack of budget it would be a welcome change to participate in the major conferences without having to travel the there. While there still might be a cost associated with gaining access to the material, perhaps a cost to acquire an access badge, it would be significantly less than your cost of attending the whole deal.
Providing reference service in SL might be more difficult. SL would have to be installed when the patron came up with a reference question. It is just far too much trouble to download SL, connect and find the UF libraries if the patron has the ability to just IM a reference librarian
This is why the idea of having prepared use for the space would seem to work better for SL. I don’t know how many people have the program downloaded, but its not even available on the public computers in the libraries or in the computer labs on campus.
I am not too concerned with the problems of privacy in SL. I think people can be pretty anonymous. That has good and bad applications. The libraries are always about protecting individuals rights when it comes to accessing information. However, if you are using SL to teach and lecture you have to determine if such information is closed or open to everyone. If it indeed closed there might be a password or a link to send to the applicable parties to allow their access. If its open to everyone in the world you could always post the link on your website like the UC Davis group did.
SL allows users to access information in a new way, but it’s not always the best. At times when navigating around SL it seems clunky and designs are terribly basic. However, it does provide a different way to access the information. One might still get a better experience using script on a website, however, SL does allow for loads of different content.
3.
Judy Russell | October 27, 2008 at 4:41 pm
It would be very interesting to add this into our negotiations with selected vendors to see if they are willing to support users covered by our licenses who approach us through Second Life.
It could be useful if there is seemless access to our electronic resources from within Second Life. If all we do is link the user to a signon screen on our existing pages, we are not fully participating. Of course, authentication would be the major barrier.
4.
RobynAnn | August 12, 2009 at 3:08 pm
This discussion is great!
Isn’t there a virtual campus of UF already built in Secondlife? I remember attempting to meet up with Professor Fischwick 2 years ago to tour Second Life’s Gator Nation Island: http://news.ufl.edu/2007/02/07/second-life/
Many institutions and business within secondlife.com are kept within private grids (UF for eample) and are not open to the SL public. For this reason, most SL users log on to see role-playing avatars and think that SL has nothign more to offer. How far from the truth. Just a quick run through of the links on following SL Twitter accounts reveals the many progresses BUSINESSES and UNIVERSITIES are making in Secondlife:
http://twitter.com/learninginworld
One description: Learning in Second Life: where educational institutions are using Second Life as a cost-effective platform to augment an existing curriculum or explore new modes…etc..
5.
RobynAnn | August 12, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Submitted my comment prematurely… my apologies!
http://twitter.com/SecondLife
http://twitter.com/workinginworld
http://twitter.com/learninginworld
Delighted to see the developments you guys make along with all the other UF developments in the virtual arena: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081029154856.htm