[Web4lib] The end of MySpace, SecondLife, and Twitter

[Tracey.Reed at myClearwater.com]

Thanks, Karen, for the below observation about SL (and other avatar-based "games").  One of my biggest issues with these types of things is that many people tend to spend time "bettering" their online persona instead of trying to change their "real" selves.  The NYT visual comparison of avatars to real people today was very interesting:
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/06/15/magazine/20070617_AVATAR_SLIDESHOW_1.html  (aside:  how do these people spend 70-80 hours a week in these places? I'm mystified.)

I'd like someone (or maybe I will when I get a chance) to think about correlating ties between those that spend a lot of time on SL and other avatar-based "games" with how much attention is paid to quality of life things in the physical world. Escapism is fine (we all do it to a certain extent in different ways), but I think the disconnect she talks about is growing larger, especially among people my age (I'm 36) and younger who do tend to spend more of their time online than in libraries, parks and other quality of life services our tax dollars provide. Yes, I'm using broad stereotypes of gens x and y and millenials, but there's a recent study out that kids don't go outdoors as much anymore and a movement sparked from it to encourage them to do so:  http://tinyurl.com/2txfm6 so I feel a bit comfortable using the stereotype. 

As another Florida librarian, I am chest-deep in trying to figure out how we're going to absorb the state's budget cuts as well as the one's we're facing locally. But it's an old argument:  how do we best serve our communities in times of budget crisis, when people tend to turn to libraries more?  And, yes, I know I'm slightly off list topic, so let me turn it around and pose questions to which I have no answers (and have been debated over and over again):  
Do we continue to put our money into databases and online resources and while closing the doors of our physical locations?  
Do we create virtual branches within these social networks and dedicate staff to them when those who are underserved and try to come to the physical library only to find our doors closed?  
Do I, as a public librarian, turn away a large and growing part of my public to focus an even more limited budget on those on the "have" side of the digital divide?

Sigh.  Clearly, I'm on a soapbox today.  But these are the decisions we're (ok, I'm) looking at when we talk about having presences on SL, myspace, twitter, facebook, and the yet-to-be popular and yet-to-be launched social networking places. Limited resources conflicting with the public need and want.  

-tracey
----
tracey.reed at myclearwater.com
tracey.reed at gmail.com
**usual disclaimer about how my views don't reflect those of my employer**
 

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org]On Behalf Of K.G. Schneider

I hope it is not considered too far from the purpose of this list to observe
that my personal hesitations about SL are how real people (who tend to be
unshapely and uncomely, with bulges and wrinkles all in the wrong places)
hide behind impossible standards of representation. It disturbs me that most
of the female characters have bodies that are bizarre caricatures of the
female form from a male point of view, like Barbie Dolls set in a microwave
and stretched out. I won't go into the larger metaphors, but when I think
about the values of technology to everyday lives, I also think about some of
the threats. Maybe I haven't explored it long enough (I do have an avatar
but I made her look like a rabbit, the best I could do), but SL makes me
uncomfortable. 

To tie this in to library services... ever since the 1970s, communities have
struggled with the disconnect between wanting property taxes shaved to
nothing and wanting public services. I woke up today to read that my local
county was planning to eliminate several library building plans, based on
the devastation to the tax base anticipated if the governor's "tax relief"
becomes law. I await with resignation the day when people realize that the
bucks they saved on their tax bill translates to closed doors, shuttered
services, and public works that will never come to be.  Apparently, people
are unable to practice escapism right up to the moment that they approach
the library door and ask, why isn't this place open? 

To what extent is SL a place we go to reinforce our distance from
uncomfortable analog realities?

K.G. Schneider
kgs at freerangelibrarian.com 

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