This document discusses the potential for virtual worlds like Second Life to be used for humanities, arts, and social sciences. It provides an overview of the growth of virtual worlds and demographics of Second Life users. Examples are given of various museums, galleries, and educational institutions that have established a virtual presence in Second Life to engage with these fields. The concept of "serious leisure" is introduced as relevant for how participants can engage with humanities content and projects in virtual worlds.

1. Virtual Worlds for the Humanities Arts and Social Sciences Richard Urban (aka Aethalides Kukulcan) Graduate School of Library & Information Science University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign http://isrl.uiuc.edu/~rjurban

2. Growth of Virtual Worlds: From…

3. To… International Space Flight Museum

4. Subscriptions to MMOG Courtesy mmogdata.com

5. Second Life Demographics http://secondliferesearch.blogspot.com Residents Logged-In: Last 7 Days: 458,592 Last 14 Days: 637,010 Last 30 Days: 1,031,293 Last 60 Days :1,682,527 Total Residents: 8,350,979 http://www.secondlife.com

6. So what is it? 3D Multi-user Virtual Environment (MUVE)‏ Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE)‏ Proprietary Based on open standards (OpenGL)‏ Open-source Client AJAX Life - Browser Based AJAX client https://ajaxlife.katharineberry.co.uk/client/login.kat Open-source server?

7. So what is it? Convergence Culture (Jenkins) Web 2.0 Social Computing Participatory & user generated Video Audio Immersive interfaces

8. Museums in Second Life Through early 2007 most museums are created, built, and maintained by SL Residents This is changing quickly ‘ Sploland (Exploratorium) Science Center (UK)‏ Newseum NASA CoLab Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden Design Museum London Holocaust Museum Image courtesy Taran Rampersad

9. Science

10. International Space Flight Museum

11. International Space Flight Museum

12. NASA CoLab

13. ‘ Splo (Now Open! Sploland)

14. Art

15. Second Louvre Museum

16. Bolinas Art Museum

17. Fantasy

18. Sci-Fi Museum

19. History/Archeology

20. Second Life Historical Museum

21. Xibalba: Maya Museum

22. Jewish Historical Center

23. Virtual Morocco

24. Literature

25. St. Michael - Jules Verne Museum

26. Globe Theater

27. CHASS and Second Life

28. Stanford Humanities Lab Life to the Second Power

29. New Media Consortium Aho Museum

30. NMC - Dante’s Inferno

31. UCB - Okapi Island

32. Vasser - Sistine Chapel

33. SDSU - Virtual Pow Wow

34. EduServ (UK) - Artsplace

35. EduServ (UK) - SLashup

36. EduServ (UK) - Opac

37. Sculpty Builder

38. Second Life as Serious Leisure Casual Leisure Immediate No obligations Project-Based Leisure Occasional, infrequent Short-term obligations

39. Second Life as Serious Leisure Serious Leisure Frequent Requires acquisition/development of specialized knowledge/skills Need to persevere Receive durable benefits Development of a unique ethos - a social world Participants create identity through serious leisure Long-term obligations Development of a leisure career

40. Serious Leisure and Lifelong Learning Liberal Arts Leisure (Stebbins) Genealogy Railfans History buffs Collectors Museum volunteers Re-enactors Living History Arts/Crafts Many of these serious leisure communities turned to the Internet to build social networks - through bulletin boards, websites, and now Second Life

41. Amateurs Professionals Museums

42. Citizen Science

43. CI Framework Accessible as a public good It will be sustainable It will provide interoperability It will facilitate collaboration It will support experimentation

44. CI Framework Develop public and institutional policies that foster openness and access. Promote cooperation between the public and private sectors. Develop and maintain open standards and robust tools. Create extensive and reusable digital collections.

45. Citizen Humanities? How does Second Life measure up to CI Framework? What about alternatives? How do we engage residents of virtual worlds in the co-creation of humanities content? Can this be an opportunity for education/learning about humanities methods and their purpose (e.g. The London Charter?)

46. Showtime! Let’s watch some videos while we discuss… http://youtube.com/musebrarian If you have a Second Life account you can find the museums in this presentation through my Gridmarks http://www.gridmarker.com/gridmarks/aethalides