I missed that last month the Kansas State Library held a staff meeting in Second Life. What a great way to introduce folks to SL. KSL staff were also smart enough to create a t-shirt with their name on it and give it away for free. I haven't had time to customize my avatar in SL, so I immediately grabbed theirs when I saw it because it covers more midriff than the default clothes I had. Now I'm walking around in-world as free advertising for them. (Thanks for the heads up on this, Christie!)

A few weeks ago, with Lori Bell's help, I did a demo of Second Life for the division directors. For many of them it was their first exposure to it. They understood it enough to know something is going on there, even if we're not sure what.

Now I'm getting requests to do demos for others within ALA, which will have to wait until after the Midwinter Meeting. In February, though, I expect we'll start talking about what we can/should do in Second Life. My initial thought is to build around some of the things we do in real life, such as National Library Week, Banned Books Week, READ posters, etc. in order to learn about SL, then looking at what kinds of new things we might be able to do there.

In the meantime, over on Info Island, I still need to furnish my office and spend some time there, the ALA Washington Office is setting up shop, and ACRL will soon have its own office.

Acknowledging that we don't have many resources to devote to it but that like libraries in general, we, too, need to experiment in and understand SL, what would you like to see ALA do in Second Life?

Addendum: Jason Griffey breaks the huge news that Second Life goes GPL.

"Linden Labs, the proprietors of the MMORPG Second Life have done what many thought impossible: they’ve released the code for Second Life via GPL....

This release now allows anyone to set up a Second Life server, giving avatars options as to where to set up camp. It sets up a situation of unlimited emigration/immigration in-world, and the ability to hop from “state” to “state”. I can see a natural evolution now of different Second Life states that appeal to different user groups (instead of the current “areas” in the single state) which will allow for much more customization and play from the residents." [Pattern Recognition]