Librarians in second life

Following some initial discussions on LIS-Link, Phil Bradley proposed a meeting in Second Life so that those of us who were interested could explore its potential. Thanks to our hosts at the SL University of Hertfordshire virtual campus, it was very instructive.As I supposed, there is a huge potential for what we might loosely call ‘library outreach’ – interfacing with whole new set of users. I think there might be potential for school libraries, for example, to use it as a library portal – although three obvious hurdles spring to mind: the time it would take to set up effectively, the school firewall which would almost certainly prevent its use, and the bandwidth on some school networks.But it does show promise and is worth further investigation. Phil has posted on LIS-Link and suggested that: … there’s clearly an interest in looking at the possibilities in more depth.Consequently – for those people who are interested; where should we take it next? Regular meetings once a month? Or perhaps those librarians who are actively doing things in Second Life might like to post to the list details of any ‘open days’ they might plan? Perhaps the various SL libraries could host occassional meetings.[Added a couple of hours later!]:Of particular relevance here is a posting from Eduserv in their blog: This is a slightly premature announcement, because we are still finalising contracts and so on, but news is slowly leaking out about the projects that we have funded under this year’s grants call…:SLEUTH – Second Life Educational Undertakings in Theatre HistoryLearning from Online Worlds; Teaching in Second Life>>Technorati tags: secondlife; libraries>>IceRocket tags: secondlife; libraries (Source: info NeoGnostic)