Off the beaten track...

Slide 1: Off the Beaten Track… (Or: A Tale of Two Studies) John Kirriemuir (RL and Facebook) / Silversprite Helsinki (SL) / Silversprite (Flickr) www.silversprite.com

Slide 2: Two surveys • SL developments in UK Higher and Education (Universities and Colleges). Funded by Eduserv Foundation. • SL developments in Libraries. More long- term project. Partially an offshoot of education survey: – less specific: library in any sense (well known, or “Off the beaten track”) – vague aim is to find lots of libraries, get lots of responses, look for patterns UK academic libraries form a survey overlap

Slide 3: The six questions used in both surveys 1. Why are you doing this? 3. What functionality does your site on the grid have? 5. How much time has it taken to build? 7. Who authorised, and funded, it? 9. How busy has it been? 11.What impact, or consequence, has it had?

Slide 4: UK Higher and Further Education study • Aimed to find just those universities and colleges in UK academia who: – owned or were renting land or a building on the grid – …and were actively developing. • In March 2007 found 6 institutions. • Did survey again in July 2007 and found … 41+ • + = responses still coming in. • Some disbelief from academics, so the appendix lists those found so far. Report at: www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation

Slide 5: Education study: “snapshot” conclusion • Newer Universities: generally forging ahead with the happy help and finance of senior management. • Older Universities: some academics doing their own thing, a few in secret. Others under pressure from: – marketing (income from future students). – alumni (income from past students). • Not many courses being run at the moment… • …but many academics getting ready for running some on the grid in 2007-08 academic year. • Not much SL development activity in UK academic libraries, though significant awareness.

Slide 6: Waterford Institute of Technology Libraries

Slide 8: Responses to date Total: 37 in sufficient detail Academic libraries: 17 Specialist libraries: 7 Library schools: 4 Medical libraries: 3 Public libraries: 2 Software libraries: 2 Business libraries: 2

Slide 9: 1. Why are you doing this? “It counts as a library insofar as we intend to store out conference presentations there as well as on our website.” – David Kane, WIT Libraries (Irish consortium of academic libraries) “I assume that various excellent Sci-Fi films and TV programs indicated that a Sci-Fi Library would interest people. The popularity of Harry Potter novels and some Steven King novels indicate an interest in Fantasy at the adult level.” – Frances Jaekle “Second Life represents a particular opportunity to develop our web presence and make the services and information that CILIP provides available in the virtual world.” – Ian Snowley, CILIP president

Slide 10: … other reasons • Land is cheap (though staff time isn’t!). • Other similar libraries are doing it. • Trains staff in new technologies. • Continuing talk about SL – not a flash-in-the- pan – will still probably be around in a few years time. • Younger readers especially more likely to be there. • Overturns “staid service” image of libraries. • Virtual arena for multi-branch team meetings. • It’s fun… • It “looks” more useful than Facebook

Slide 11: Second Life Medical Library 2.0

Slide 12: 2. Most frequent functionality 1. Displays – all bar five respondents have displays. 3. Links to other websites e.g. RL library. 5. Visitor logging for site owners. 7. Notecards. 9. Seated meeting areas.

Slide 13: 2+ Other recurring functions • RSS feeds. • Powerpoint presentations. • Freebies. • Survey. • Video screens. • Audio channels. • Summon a person. • Book-like objects e.g. turnable pages. • SL book discussion groups.

Slide 15: 3. How much time has it taken to build? • “Hundreds [of hours], I’m sure” – JJ Drinkwater, Caledon library • “It’s mostly hobby time” – Namro Orman, Second Life Medical Library 2.0 • “My wife has some strong opinions on how long I spend in Second Life.” – Randolph Jeffrey Most respondents indicated that the majority of their development and other time in SL was personal time.

Slide 16: Library school academic has own office…

Slide 18: 4. Who authorised, and funded, it? • “Self financed, but eventually to form part of a wider accredited national academic programme.” – Barry Spencer, Shimmer Island / Bromley College • Out of own pocket. • Promotional budget. • Grant. • Donated land. • Area on University island. • Free or heavily discounted in-grid area. • Siphoned off from stationary budget. Important to realise staff time is by far the biggest funding cost, officially or otherwise.

Slide 19: CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals)

Slide 21: 5. How busy has it been? • “We haven’t counted. Perhaps we should.” • “30 visitors a week.” • “Hundreds.” • “Eight hours of workshops over two months, for around 45 University members. Plus many visitors in between.” • “Until it’s finished, non as it’s a restricted zone.” • “It’s doubling every week.” • “Some people stay a long time, read, chat. Others fly in, look for 10 seconds, teleport out. You can’t really count them equally.” Possible link between diversity of publicity and number of users.

Slide 22: 6. What impact has it had? “Raises awareness of our library.” “Students have read our displays in SL and know what kind of services they can find in the real library.” “I get to talk to colleagues I otherwise wouldn’t. This isn’t always a good thing.”

Slide 23: 6+ Librarians = campus technology leaders “University community has realised that the library has technological expertise, and are beginning to ask us about other technological matters” Murdoch University Library, Perth, Western Australia

Slide 24: 6+ Increased visitors and collaboration “We have people come to visit us in RL because they saw our SL library. We also welcome the international dimension to our work in SL and have co-operated with librarians from all over the US and Europe in SL.” Cathal McCauley (Gortadoo Ewing), University College Dublin, Ireland

Slide 25: University of Hertfordshire

Slide 26: Represent as in RL, or different? “Resemble” “Make it new” • Comforting familiarity, • Make maximum use of the especially for new SL users. facilities within SL. • Easier to model from a • Remove limitations of RL tangiable template. building e.g. small rooms, stairs that you have to walk • Libraries lend themselves to up. easy modelling from a • New technology, so why geometric perspective. stick with old ways? • Easier orientation when based on models hardwired into people’s brains. “Making it the same as in RL is • Resists a compulsion to try false, as library users don’t every new script and facility fly around my library.” in SL just for the sake of it. • (Academic) marketing “The University marketing departments prefer it. department can go ...”

Slide 27: Librarians and the academic study “The Library is aware of what I'm doing: the University Librarian was in the front row for my presentation at our Learning & Teaching Conference. Again, I think they're tacitly supportive, as per the eLearning team. All unofficial at the moment though -- just getting a feel for things.” – Peter Miller, Liverpool University “Our LRC Manager has joined our Second Life staff group. I think I’ve also got her interested by telling her about what other library things are going on in SL.” – Pauline Randall, Elmwood College

Slide 28: More … “The library is very keen to be involved (and indeed three of their librarians have avatars on our island). The librarians are using SL for their own staff development – networking with other information professionals around the world and attending meetings / workshops / seminars in- world.” – Peter Twining, Open University

Slide 29: More … “The library at Anglia Ruskin is very interested - they are one of the first departments who wanted a demonstration and explanation of SL. However, they are not sure what SL might do for them - even after looking at various libraries in-world it is not clear what benefits there are over their current provision.” – Mike Hobbs, Anglia Ruskin University

Slide 30: UMBRELLA debate: other library benefits From Mark Taylor’s CILIP blog: http://communities.cilip.org.uk/blogs/marks/ • PR value (announce to local press, trade press, customer newsletters, website). • Permanent 24/7 3D multi-user collaborative and interactive exhibition – showcase products, play corporate videos, links to website, brochure handouts. • Business meetings (national/global participants, no conference call/video conferencing costs, save travel costs, better interaction amongst participants, save record of the discussion, watch PowerPoint/video presentation together). • Staff training/seminars. • Staff collaboration.

Slide 31: More … • Recruitment. • Customer facing events – training, invitation to hear/see guest speakers, live support sessions, etc. • Links back to website for direct sales/information requests. • Email links for enquiries. • Collect database of all visitors for event announcements. • Business networking (through business park social events). • Staff morale. • Fast and low cost prototyping. • Use of Second Life forums to communicate/advertise • Cost effective form of promotion.

Slide 32: Future steps Definite: • Continue collecting responses. • Report at some point (probably September). Hopeful: • Further Education survey: focus on impacts. • Progress Library survey: focus on why libraries are setting up in SL.