Immersing Yourself at the Library
I have tried Second Life. I have tried Active Worlds. On the whole, I’d have to say that prefer actual life and the real world. (Not to be confused with MTV’s The Real World, which I only prefer to major dental surgery.)
I think it’s important for the library-archives-museum world to know about these worlds, and it’s probably important for some libraries/archives/museums to take an active role in participating in them, just as we should know about Facebook, twitter, the blogosphere, etc., and participate in those, when it is advantageous to our institution.
However, there’s a lack of attraction for me in these online virtual worlds partly because I have another way to immerse myself in fantasy, history, or anything else I care to, and it’s always been as close as my local library. As Lane Smith might say, It’s a book.
Oh, Rachel, I hear you say. Must you be one of those boring old librarians who talks about how great books are? I mean, how predictable. How boring. How last millennium. Wouldn’t you rather be one of those super-cool, Grand Theft Auto-playing cybrarians?
Well, actually no. I’m not against gaming in the library. (I even created a website about it for LIBR 500: Foundations of Information Technology.) I certainly support technology in, and for, the library; I’m taking this class online, after all. But I’m happy to have both a future job title and a future work place whose names are derived from the word for “book.” That’s because I love books, and I think they are the single greatest tool for immersing oneself in another world that humankind has ever known. Perhaps they will be surpassed in that capacity someday, but that day is not today.
Recently, at the public library, I overheard an extremely earnest young man say to his equally earnest young friend, very earnestly, “If I read a book, when I finish it, I suffer an emotional loss” (emphasis his). (To be fair, I was browsing the drama collection at the time, and when I was a young thespian, I’m sure I was just as painfully earnest.) Although it seemed as if the young man were trying a little too hard to prove his emotional depth, I have felt the same sentiment. It’s part of the reason series fiction is so popular; when we love a character and the world he lives in, we want to go there again and again.
Some people may have the same experience in a virtual world, which is why we librarians should know about such things. Our patrons may come to us with questions about how to create avatars, and we should be prepared to answer them, just as we are prepared to answer questions about how to raise begonias or how to diagram a sentence. Our patron’s interests don’t have to be our interests, but they are our business. As a future librarian, a big part of my job is to help you find out more about what you want to learn about, be it constructing an alter ego in Second Life, building a birdhouse, or finding the picturebook that will turn your preschooler into a lifelong reader.
Thank you, future patrons, for giving me a good reason to always be learning.