No motion on final project

Despite sending Mary emails nearly every day, we seem to be no closer to making a decision on where the LCLCPL will enter the virtual world. Mary and Helen seem to be focused on SL right now, despite my warnings that it will be difficult and more than the library staff can manage right now. Not to mention that if they create an island in SL, any creep can come by, and if they create the island in Teen SL, college students and adults can't visit. But no final decision has been made yet.

I've been encouraging them to perhaps start with Web 2.0, like Facebook or MySpace, and see how it goes, before jumping off the deep end into SL. Not only are the Web 2.0 technologies free, I personally am more familiar with Facebook and will be able to give a better, clearer tutorial to the YA staff on how to use it than I will for SL. Also, Bell et al this week mention that "For many librarians, it is difficult to accomplish all the Library 2.0 pieces they would like to: blogs, wikis, and other social networking technologies." I know this is true of the LCLCPL - some of the staff have already expressed concern at their lack of knowledge of Facebook or MySpace, and how that lack of knowledge would lead to ineffectual use of staff time when trying to answer a reference question. If the staff is already concerned about 2.0 technologies, I can see how the frustration levels will increase a hundredfold with 3.0 technologies, in SL.

Bell's article was incredibly helpful in breaking SL down for the beginning user, and I have already sent it to Mary. If Helen is bound and determined to have a SL presence, it might be best to see if we can join something like the Information Archipelago, where people are already used to coming for help and information. Then we would only have to be concerned about spreading the word among the LCLCPL patrons, instead of both our patrons AND other interested users in SL. If we were able to join the Info Archipelago we could also help staff the reference desk, much like Ask A Librarian, to help ease the transition into SL - being responsible for only an hour or 2 a week in SL might make the difference between failure and success for the LCLCPL's venture into Second Life.