By Joseph JanesAmerican Libraries Columnist
By Joseph Janes
American Libraries Columnist
Associate dean, Information School, University of Washington, Seattle
intlib@ischool.washington.edu
March 2007
Info Island. Doesn’t that conjure up fascinating images? Palm trees swaying in a tropical breeze, sun dappling a cool and green lagoon, languorous string music wafting in the background, librarians in sarongs peeling fruit and answering reference questions. . . . OK, that took a sort of odd turn there.
There is a real Info Island—real in a certain sense. It’s real to a lot of people and from at least one perspective, not real at all. It’s in Second Life, the internet-based virtual-reality site, which describes itself as “a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents.” Open since 2003, it claims over 2 million inhabitants, so the developers must be onto something.
In this world, people can create avatars, through which they explore, interact, build, create, entertain, and experience. It’s worth a disclaimer here that I am not (yet) a Second Lifer; I have enough difficulty with the first one.
A lot of people are trying very hard to build libraries and library services in this new and somewhat peculiar environment, and lots of libraries and library organizations are establishing presences there, including Info Island.
But why should they bother? Wouldn’t this world do perfectly well without libraries? Perhaps, but librarians love to try new things—we have such a belief and commitment to what we do and stand for that it’s hard for us to imagine an environment that wouldn’t be better, stronger, and funner with a library.
As do so many things these days, all of this begs the question of what a library is. Long ago, the Internet Public Library created something called a “library” without a physical manifestation. Here, in a much more encompassing environment, will the metaphors of buildings and islands and avatars strengthen the idea of “library”? Weaken it? Expand it? Time will tell.
Perhaps most intriguingly, Second Life even has an economy, using the creepily named “Linden dollars” that people use to build and clothe their avatars, create objects, and outfit their buildings and islands. Here is where the rubber will meet a very demanding road—albeit a digital one—that’s familiar to every librarian: meeting the demands of a paying clientele.
In the early going, Second Life libraries are hosting exhibits and lectures, answering questions, and—wait for it—thinking about collections, including access to “real world” databases. As those of you who negotiate license agreements for a living come down off the ceiling, let’s ponder this.
Access to databases would, naturally, be beneficial to SL denizens. But surely there’s something far more worthwhile to be done. In an environment such as this, based around the notion of playing with and even creating reality, with an economy based on creativity, shouldn’t SL libraries be primarily interested in collections of SL creative objects?
Nobody may even know what that means yet, so those libraries and librarians can be right there at the very dawn of a new kind of creative process—not just passively collecting and organizing and searching but also part of the conversation about what those objects are and do and ought to be. How much better would our current systems, our internet, be if librarians had been involved in the early going, weaving what we know about info stuff into the DNA of the body creative?
The “island” metaphor is important in SL. From our perspective though, a cautionary word: Libraries have far too often been “islands” within their communities, to their peril. Better to be in the middle, reducing the chance of being voted off the island . . . but that’s another story.