Virtual Communities Resource Center

It is unlikely that Second Life will ever serve as a replacement for Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr in terms of connecting with online users. It also seems doubtful that it will be able to keep equal footing with so many other virtual learning experiences.

In a brief anonymous survey among 17 of my peers, 5 had “only used it a few times” while 2 used it “every day.” I was mostly surprised that I had friends who did use it every day, but I wasn't surprised that the majority had never used it.

It's hard to see a future in virtual worlds where so many people are using Facebook or Twitter as their primary methods of connecting online. For comparison, Facebook has 1.2 billion registered users. In 2014, Second Life had approximately 36 million users.

Because of the trends in social networking and virtual communities being conducted on mobile devices, Second Life has a very slim chance of staying relevant. Mobile devices simply don't have the power capabilities of sustaining a huge online world like Second Life - not to mention the costs of staying online, especially for mobile customers who do not pay for unlimited data.

One final consideration is that Second Life is owned and managed by Linden Labs. Any virtual spaces that a library creates within Second Life are the property of Linden Labs, automatically removing any real “ownership” of those spaces from the hands of librarians.

Second Life is a unique experience. It's somewhat similar to an MMORPG, or Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game - but there is no set objective. If there are games, it's because other users have decided to create games, but Second Life itself isn't a game (nor does it really have a point).

I started with just doing some basic searches for education places.

First, just searching for “library.”

Then, I tried “university library.”

The immediate issue is that “library” doesn't necessarily bring you locations in Second Life which are meant to serve as virtual communities for physical libraries. For a user to find a physical library's virtual space in Second Life, they would need to know exactly what they are looking for. Browsing isn't exactly an option.

Most of what I found on Second Life seemed somewhat abandoned. San Jose State University has a location that acts as an introduction into Second Life for their SILS students - there are large diagrams across the virtual campus which explain how to set up an avatar, keyboard shortcuts, and how to search for groups. It's also very empty - there were a few “under construction” type items placed around, and the whole area was deserted. It's likely only a place that is used while a particular class is in session (assuming this element of the course is still taught).

I also looked around Stanford's virtual library, which was much more organized and seemed more geared towards actually providing Second Life users with an academic library setting in an online community.

A very well organized map is one of the first things you see when teleporting to this location, and the creators of the space have done a good job of providing immediate directions for how to get to any one of the many locations within the library's virtual world.

I chose to check out the “Virtual Archives” which also provided me with great instructions and direction when I arrived.

However, after following the direction and going through numerous collection “boxes,” I was unable to actually view anything. I am unsure if this is because there are damaged links, or if content has been removed. I could have been doing it wrong (although the directions were fairly clear cut).

One of the last things I noticed was that there were areas that were almost “vandalized” within the virtual community. Objects that had been scattered around haphazardly, boxes and doors left open. It seems that if you wanted to create this kind of interactive virtual community, you would also want to have a way to keep it static somehow. This would allow users to walk into the same scenario again and again, every time they teleported to the library's space.

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