Second Life

This technology has grown in popularity for use by learning institutions, Librarians have also had a growing interest in Second Life, although in some cases; such as University Libraries there have been barriers such as permissions, authentication and limits due to the security restrictions of the institution (Swanson, 2007, p.79).

I would generally consider myself pretty good at picking up and learning new things, particularly where social networking technologies are concerned, but I must admit that Second Life had me totally stumped. I followed all the instructions and named myself ‘LibraryCat’, I looked at the help guide and visited some forums that promised help, but nothing could explain why the entire world appeared to be pink. I was attempting to interact with the Charles Sturt University ‘CSU-SIS Learning Centre’ which was developed in 2009 (Hay & McGregor, 2010, p.20). Here is a picture of what I should have been seeing…

CSU SIS Learning Centre

And here is what is looked like when I went there…

Same place… different colour scheme

I thought perhaps that particular area was experiencing difficulty, but to be sure I checked all plug-ins that could possibly affect it and even had my husband who works in IT program support to have a look at it, all to no avail. The world remained pink, even more disturbingly when I went to another area called Bear Lodge not only was everything pink, but others Avatars seemed to be in various states of undress.

Oh my…

So I tried another area, everything was still pink, but thankfully people were fully clothed. I struck up a conversation with a fellow ‘newbie’ 5 mins later he started asking inappropriate questions so I located the friends I was supposed to, added them then logged off. I have been on since after encouragement from my Uni Facebook group, but the pink remains.

Currently for my position in an Academic Library we do not foresee use of Second Life. Due to my recent research work in the field of Web 2.0 technologies they are considering implementation of other social networking technologies, but Second Life is not of interest at this point in time. So for now I will concede defeat, but only for this battle. I am determined to win the pink war that Second Life has waged.

References

Hay, L. & McGregor, J. (2010). CSU’s Second Life. Incite, 31(1/2), p. 20.

Swanson, K. (2007). Second Life: A science library presence in virtual reality. Science & Technology Libraries, 27(3), p.79-86.

Advertisement