Should Pennsylvania State University's library invest in Second Life?
Team Multivac strove to find the answer to this question by:
- Investigating the current libraries that exist in Second Life
- Finding what these libraries are getting out of Second Life
- Exploring external sources (sources outside of the realm of Second Life) that commented on the role of libraries in this virtual world
- Answering how much will this investment cost the library?
Current Libraries and the Return on Their Investment
In order to more accurately judge whether the Penn State University Libraries should invest in Second Life, Team Multivac decided to first explore a number of other library-related entities within Second Life, including Second Life branches of public libraries and libraries that don't even have a real-life presence, they exist solely within Second Life.
Garrett Miller chose to explore the latter. A "places" search for "Library" yielded the Information & Communications Technology Library. Their website can be found here.
The facade of the library.
The library's interior.
Some of the scripts this library offers.
The primary purpose of this location is to provide a resource for information regarding Second Life. Custom scripts are available, as well as a book entitled "The Top 20 Educational Spots in Second Life". Among these are Harvard Law School and Info Island, which is where the ICT library itself is located. Another interesting bit of information is "RL in SL", a list of real-life entities that have Second Life presences.
The library itself doesn't stand to gain much, it's a not-for-profit endeavor funded by contributions from users. While it may be limited, it certainly is an interesting place to explore.
Steven Dodge chose to investigate Cleveland Public Library's space on Second Life. On the Cleveland Public Library's homepage, the mission of the library is given:
To be the best urban library system in the country by providing access to the worldwide information that people and organizations need in a timely, convenient, and equitable manner.
In order to achieve this goal, the third largest public research library in the United States decided to open the doors of its online library on November 16, 2007. Steven recently visited the Cleveland Public Library to investigate.
There are nine places to visit at the Second Life Cleveland Public Library.
The Cleveland Public Library has the world largest chess repository. Therefore, the theme of chess is pervasive throughout the space. Steven started his journeys at the main library.
The Second Life version of the main library is very similar to the appearance of the actual building.
Outside, there is a sign that gives the history of the Cleveland Public Library on a notecard to the clicking avatar. Inside, the library shows off parts of its world renowned chess repository with signs of uploaded images of different kinds of chess boards and pieces. There are also signs that avatars can click on to receive notecards with more information about Austrian, Staunton, Export Indian, Italian Courtier, Blind man's, Medieval, Cantonese Export, Crusaders chessmen as well as chessmen dressed in simple religious attire.
The next place Steven decided to visit was the Reading Garden.
Like with the main museum, there is a sign where avatars can learn more about the Eastman Reading Garden via notecard. Inside, the reading garden was full of trees and flowers and ample places to sit. It seemed to be very relaxing and a great place to gather your thoughts.
The next place Steven visited was the amphitheater.
The amphitheater was well constructed and even included a popcorn maker that gives avatars free popcorn. However, the video that is supposed to play does not work. Steven suspects that this error is because the library just opened on Second Life and will be fixed in the future.
Steven visited the photo gallery next.
The photo gallery design into the shape of a camera was very creative. Once inside the lens, there were many signs adorned with pictures about sheet music in Ohio and specifically Cleveland. However, the signs do not provide notecards with more information about the specific sheet music. Because Steven is not an expert in the field of music, he was a little confused and more information would be helpful.
After his visit to the Photo Gallery, Steven visited the CLEVNET building.
Outside the building, there is a sign that gives the clicking avatar more information about what CLEVNET is. CLEVNET is Cleveland Public Library's online presence. The CLEVNET building resembles the normal office building. There are chairs, desks, and laptops, but that is it.
The other four places in the Cleveland Public Library's Second Life presence are all chess boards. These four playable chess boards are Mycenaean, Generic, Wonderland, and Hungarian-Russian chessboards.
Overall, Steven found Cleveland Public Library's space on Second Life to be very impressive. With nine places to visit, Steven thought that the space was vast but also complicated. Outside of the CLEVNET building, the rest of the Cleveland Public Library's space on Second Life was very interactive and informative. On the web, Cleveland Public Library has gotten the word out about their space. On the Second Life blog called InfoIsland, there was a blog post about the library's grand opening. On Cleveland Public Library's homepage, there was an announcement about their grand opening in Second Life, but no other information was provided.
From participating in Second Life, the Cleveland Public Library, or the People's University, takes one more step in fulfilling its objective of providing worldwide information. By having its own island, the library is gaining a reputation as one of the more innovative libraries in the nation as well as in the world. To truly capitalize its presence on Second Life, the library should in the future add more information about all kinds of subjects and become "best urban library system in the country."
D.J. Lingelbach explored a library similar to the Information & Communications Technology Library called the Free Script Library. Unlike other traditional libraries, this library did not provide a wealth of knowledge about the world, but provided users with a chance to obtain free scripts to run in Second Life. The building is quite small and has two floors. There is no way in or out of the building as it is completely enclosed. When an avatar is teleported to the Free Script Library, the first thing that an avatar will see is a giant wall of blocks saying "Free Script" with floating text to indicate what kind of script is offered.
D.J. walked around the building and explored both levels. D.J. discovered something useful: an index that displayed the different kinds of scripts that can be found in the library. The index was quite big, however, and only showed if the script was on the first floor or the second floor.
Instead of using the index, D.J. found something a little more useful. There was an object that pointed to the exact script that you are looking for. The only catch here was that the exact name of the script was required. D.J. searched for "Rotating Text" and the object pointed him exactly where he needed to go.
To take the script, one had to right click on the box and select "buy." Of course, since this is a "free" script library, the cost was L$0. Included with the script was a notecard with information about the script.
The library, in all, was very useful, and D.J. very much enjoyed it and believes that he will use it in the future. However, he did not think that the library was very lucrative for its creator. There were only a couple ways that the library was able to make any money.
One way was by selling some objects. These objects seemed to be more than simple scripts. Instead, they were already complete and ready to use.
The other way that the library could make money was through donations. Of course, being in Second Life, these donations were made in Lindens. In this respect, the library was similar to Wikipedia. The donations that are collected are to pay for the land and other costs of keeping up the project. There is a little jar where one can click to donate money. Actually, while looking at this jar, D.J. received a chat message saying that they still need to cover 85% of their anticipated costs for this month and encouraging him to donate.
Based on his findings, D.J. found that the Free Script Library to be very useful. It is very well organized and easy to use. However, the project is not very lucrative for its creator because there is not much money to be made. D.J. suggested charging a fee for downloading each script.
Corinne Bernstiel explored the State Library of Kansas on Second Life.
The first thing that Corinne noticed about this library is its crazy landscaping and one almost wonders what is in store for one’s avatar when one wanders inside.
Once inside the library however, it is reminiscent of a typical public library. There is a help desk on the first floor where an avatar can click for a link to the library’s website which has a listing of books and other useful information.
Throughout the library are posters for featured books that an avatar can click on. Once an avatar clicks on these books, a menu pops up giving him or her options, such as with this one where a avatar can go to the Wizard of Oz website and read the book online, go to a Wikipedia article on the book, or go to a biography of the article.
Corinne chose to read the book online and was pleasantly surprised to find the full version of the book conveniently linked through Second Life. She was originally doubtful of the functionality of a library on Second Life, however, once Corinne discovered this feature she was almost instantly sold on the idea.
External Sources
As a team, we were able to find two external sources from Second Life about the libraries in Second Life. One of these sources was from the blog post from the Digital Librarian entitled Our Communities, Our Virtual, Digital, and Physical Environments. In the post, jaf writes:
“My personal opinion is that libraries who have the resources to pursue futuristic research, especially with user interfaces, may find Second Life an interesting environment to explore, but I really don't see Second Life being an important environment that libraries need to partake in - at least, not at this time. Most of our users aren't in Second Life, and most aren't even interested in it.”
After visiting Cybrary City in Second Life, Kathryn Greenhill, a librarian for 17 years, wrote on her blog “Librarians Matter":
In academic libraries, we will soon have huge numbers of undergraduates who are used to this type of interface from gaming. They love it and understand it. To deliver the services where they are, we should understand it - and maybe learn to love it - pink hippos and all.
Cathal McCauley from the University College Dublin's Library considers library investigation into the medium of Second Life the next step from instant messaging and blogs:
“We’ve had instant messaging and blogs for quite some time now, so we thought that this virtual world might offer another useful compliment to the provision of traditional library services. We want to investigate the possibilities it might offer.”
From the world outside of Second Life, the consensus appears as though Second Life offers some opportunities to libraries. However, while a library would be primarily exploring Second Life, a library would be able to better connect with undergraduates who are increasingly being exposed to these kinds of virtual interfaces every day.
How much will this investment cost?
According to the Second Life, there are two options available to the library if it chooses to invest in Second Life. One of these options is buying an island. To buy an island in Second Life, it would cost the library $1,675 USD. However, a fifty percent discount is offered to academic institutions, so the price tag drops to $873.50. To maintain the island, there is a fee of $295 USD per month, and for premium accounts, which are needed to purchase land in Second Life, cost $6 USD per month per account. Therefore, if the Pennsylvania State University library wanted to buy an island and maintain the island for one year with a single premium account, the cost would be $4,485.50.
The second option would be to rent land from another organization, such as Cybrary City or Penn State Isles. The cheapest route for the library to go would be renting land from Penn State Isles. Joe Paterno has said, "You can't have a great university without a great library." Therefore, we believe that Penn State Isles would gladly have the university library. We have based this decision on the recent construction of the Virtual Palmer Museum adjacent from the sandbox in Istania. If the library would have to pay for any costs in Penn State lsle, it would be for land maintenance, which varies depending how much land the library uses. For the purposes of price comparison, we thought that the library would chose to build on 8,192 square meters of land. The land maintenance fee for this amount of land is $40 per month. Therefore, with one premium account, the second option would cost the library $552 per year.
Our recommendation to the Pennsylvania State University Library is to invest in Second Life but only on a trial basis. We believe that the library should also follow the second investment option and team up with Penn State Isles. A trial basis would allow the library to:
- Test the technological capabilities of the space
- Gauge the popularity of the space without spending too much money
- Have a symbiotic relationship with Penn State Isles
Testing the Technological Capabilities
We believe that by renting a small area of land, the library will be able to explore the opportunities available to the institution on a small scale. Like the Cleveland Public Library who shows off its chess repository, the library should incorporate a few of its aspects:
- The building's facade
- Its famous utopian collection
- Its Joe Paterno exhibit
- Its stuffed Nittany Lion
- A help desk
By incorporating all of these aspects of the library, the Second Life library can explore its true potential in the virtual world.
Measuring the Audience
However, in order to see if the Second Life library has achieved its true potential, the library needs to measure its reputation amongst members of the blogosphere and avatars within Second Life. We suggest that the library should create its own website or blog and allow readers to post comments about what they like or do not like about the library. In the Second Life library, a link to this website should be provided for an avatar to visit. In addition to creating this website, we also suggest that the library create surveys for the avatars who visit to take at the space, much like the surveys at Meteora, NOAA's space on Second Life. The library should also determine what the students and faculty think by asking classes who use Second Life such as IST 110 to take surveys. By gauging the library's reputation on Second Life, the library can determine if its presence in Second Life is beneficial and worth the investment.
Penn State Isles
By partnering with Penn State Isles, the library not only gains being a part of an established community in Second Life but also a wealth of knowledge from the avatars who built the Isles. These avatars will be able to provide the library with excellent advice as how to proceed in Second Life. By being a part of the Penn State Isles, the Isles benefits from having another major attraction on its space and receiving more visitors to the space because of the library.
In our travels in Second Life, Steven came across a poster on Health Info Island:
What will the Pennsylvania State University library become in the future? We recommend that the library try Second Life on a trial basis because through experimentation in Second Life, the library will be able to better understand this question and prepare for the future.
For the PowerPoint, please click the link below:
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