Talking, Looking, Flying, Searching: A research report on information seeking in Second Life

Talking, looking, flying, searching: A research report on information seeking in Second Life Margaret Ostrander (Testy Outlander) 22 April 2008 Info Island International, Second Life LIS8010: Users in Virtual Worlds, Dr. Michael Stephens Dominican University/College of St. Catherine MLIS Program © Margaret Ostrander, 2008

Overview
Methodology
Information seeking themes
Implications for libraries
Discussion

Methodology
Ethnographic approach
Grounded theory
Interviews + observations
Data analysis

What were they seeking?
Looking for
Cities and countries that mirror RL places
People to share RL troubles
French classes at SL university
Opera music & performances
Land parcels by name
Experiencing
Interactive art exhibit
ChatBot conversation
Intercultural conversation
Stumbling upon
A music concert
Info about SL on a T.V. drama
Places through ‘picks’ in SL profiles
Info about SL as a corporate training aid

Themes
Fig 1. Categorization of 12 instances of information seeking from interview data

Sociability
“ on google you can’t interact with other people looking at what you’re looking at”
- SL resident on visiting a SL art exhibit

Visual & mobile info
“ i took a gondola ride through venice and walked around paris with a friend”
SL resident on
finding information in SL
“ it’s quite different because I feel like I’m ‘virtually’ standing,,,ha ha pardon the pun…in front of people”
SL resident on
SL versus the web

Serendipity “ [i] came to this sim through the secondlife showcase thingy. thats how i found out bout this mexican ruins place.. and stumbled into the concert” - SL resident on finding a concert in SL “ I happened onto that when I was looking at my account settings.” – SL resident on finding out about corporate training in SL

Search mechanism
“ This falls under ‘wouldn’t it be cool if…….’ It’s not unusual, when searching on a website, to find that the search function is ‘powered by Google’. SL might be served well by taking that approach. Just a thought :)”
- SL resident on SL search

Play & humor
“ ALICE is the artificial linguistic internet computer entity... It sort of tickled my fancy that I’d be able to talk to computers…The first question I asked her was ‘is there a god’…”
SL resident on a
humorous conversation with a ChatBot

Library Use
Real Life
Library Use
100%
Second Life
Library Use
0%

Library Use
“ information should be open to everyone really. see here in my country we don’t really have public libraries, so we tend to just turn to school libraries and the internet when we need something. as an adult you have to buy these books to be able to read them”
– SL resident

Info seeking factors Sociability Sociability Sociability Sociability Visual & Mobile Serendipity SL Tools Play

Questions?
Margaret Ostrander
(Testy Outlander in SL)
[email_address]

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Talking, Looking, Flying, Searching: A research report on information seeking in Second Life

by Margaret Ostrander on Apr 22, 2008

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