One of the sea changes I noticed at Internet Librarian was a big increase in Second Life programming. A number of presenters introduced themselves with both their real names and their Second Life identities. A number of folks in the audience were Second Lifers as well.
Lori Bell gave an overview of Second Life's Info Islands. She also laid out a few common acronyms like MUVE (Multi-User Virtual Environment) and MMPORG (Massively MultiPlayer Online Roleplaying Game). She also mentioned some alternatives to Second Life: ActiveWorlds and Entropia Universe.
Shawn McCann talked about what it is like to be the first Immersive Learning (i.e. gaming) Librarian at McMasters University. He's just started, but he's already doing reference in Second Life and starting to look for educational applications.
Jeremy Kemp talked about educational uses of Second Life and recommended these two wikis: SimTeach and Sloodle. He also showed us a PBS feature on a Second Life branch library.
Jill Hurst-Wahl recommended scanning TechCrunch and Virtual Worlds Review
to keep up to date on virtual worlds. She also proposed some basic guidelines for online communities. To learn more, check out her presentation here.
Rosemary Arneson from Carmichael Library at University of Montevallo described some of her adventures and misadventures in Second Life. In one online foray, she accidentally deleted her library building. She was bemused by the fact that all of the objects in the building remained when it happened. Her avatar, which was on the third floor at the time, precipitously plunged to ground level!
Kate Fitz talked about creating LawSpot (slides) in Second Life. You can also visit a web version of her site here.
Micki McIntyre, the HealthyNJ Librarian, shared information about Wellness and Spirituality sites on Second Life.
Michael Sauers, best known as the Travelin' Librarian, brought us back to earth with a sobering presentation called "Second Life, Second Thoughts" (slides). He points out that Second Life has substantial systems requirements. It doesn't yet work with Vista. It is down frequently. (Second Life has one point of access - no redundant servers.) He also wonders if Second Life will be used long term. There are already a lot of Second Life sites that have no visitors. Chris Anderson, known for coining the "long tail" concept has already abandoned Second Life. (Is he a bellwether?) Michael believes we should experiment for the experience, but expect to move to another virtual environment eventually...
Our closing session at Internet Librarian was Liz Lawley, but that's worth another post!
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TechCrunch and Virtual Worlds Review give you a feeling for how many virtual worlds there are. However, Tom Peters (Maxito Ricardo in SL) says he had found more than 50 virtual worlds, and there are more coming. There are even virtual worlds being built and used specifically by businesses for virtual trade shows, etc.
One thing that we need to keep in mind is that children are being exposed to virtual worlds (Whyville, etc.), so they will grow up knowing about virtual worlds and they may seem quite normal to them. In 20 years, will we be talking about people who are virtual world natives (ala "digital natives")?
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