Second Life seems to be very popular in library world at the moment. There are people talking about it at conferences, papers written about reaching people using Info Island and the like.
I must say that from my (relatively limited) experience, not a huge amount of people in Australia are active Second Life users. I personally don't know any. I am one of those people who signed up, created an avatar (name: Apostrophe Gustav), logged in once and couldn't see the attraction. I did have a lot of problems with lag and had to lower the graphics quality a great deal in order to move around, which took away from the experience. I was using a fairly powerful computer and a good connection, so i do wonder if many people have the same experience as me. It surprised me, as i can play WoW and have good graphic quality with no problems at all.
I liked how Murdoch Uni are teaching people to use it, rather than trying to offer services through it.
Maybe when having a powerful computer and a very high speed connection is common, things like Second Life will take off and become useful in a educational setting, however i can't see it happening in the near future.
1 comment:
Catherine Greenhill at Murdoch Uni also operates a reference desk and library through second life, as well as teaching people to use it. She has been doing this for almost 2 years now and has people manning the desk and and answering ref questions. Very interesting
Lynette
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