These past weeks, I’ve dedicated lots of energy to better understanding the educational opportunities available in Second Life. I have considered how Second Life can be used as an alternate form of education, instruction and learning for academic and school libraries. However, I have largely overlooked the value of virtual worlds as media for public libraries.
In my last post, I discussed some of the personal reasons people choose to reside in Second Life. For some, this virtual world is a venue for learning and exploring. For others, it is a place of leisure. For more still, Second Life provides a sense of community and, in some cases, personal support. It occurred to me that these are some of the same reasons people visit public libraries.
And so, I decided to learn a bit more about public libraries in Second Life. While some public libraries in Second Life were merely big rooms filled with books, other locations had much more to offer.
Many public libraries in Second Life provide access to a small range of information resources, including links to their OPACs and information about their community. See the Olathe, Kansas Public Library and the Glenview Public Library for some examples. The Bibliotheek Amsterdam is worth a visit as well.
The most disappointing part of visiting public libraries in Second Life was
the lack of people. In the “real world” public libraries are usually teeming with people. And though not all public libraries make efforts to build a sense of community, they do serve as meeting places.
Most public libraries in Second Life are doing an adequate job of meeting the information needs of their patrons. Or at least, they seem to be trying to meet the information needs of their patrons.
But people also use public libraries to connect with people. Libraries are meeting places. The role of library as place is largely overlooked by public libraries in Second Life.
Only by creating a venue for people to connect to one another can public libraries in Second Life play a role in meeting the community needs of their users. In order to better serve Second Life residents (and real world communities) virtual public libraries must become community hubs.
Then again, maybe librarians are the only people who dream of libraries crowded with people who are just hanging out and connecting with one another …
