The American Library Association (ALA) is closing down its island estate in favour of a more modest and affordable Second Life presence.
The ALA’s Second Life representative, Kay Tairov said, “ALA is only scaling down it’s presence, not abandoning SL. We’ll be setting up a smaller space once I discuss with my Members location and planning.”
“Primarily the decision was related to budget, but as is usually the case with such decisions, there are certainly more factors in play. ALA is still very much planning to be involved in SL and we by all means look forward to supporting the work our members (and the rest of the SL Library Community) are doing here.”
Libraries and librarians do a lot in Second Life, so it is unlikely that you’ll see the back of the ALA any time soon.
While you’re at it, consider finding out what you can do to support your local library, American or otherwise. Libraries have been around for a little over 3900 years, but are increasingly under threat – not by the Internet – but by falling literacy standards, declining funding, and interest groups who are opposed to the free and lawful access to books by the general public.
Support your library so that libraries can continue to support us all.
great call of action on the behalf of libraries – here in the States they are under tighter and tighter budget constraints. they serve a very important role
ALA has been incredibly awesome inSL and i hope they continue and maybe expand out to an OpenSim installation where kids could also benefit from their passion =)
“…are increasingly under threat – not by the Internet – but by falling literacy standards.”
I wouldn’t be so sure about that, Tateru. Maybe Internet isn’t “directly” to blame but they surely are biggest influence of our literacy standards, given with all those economy dramatic hills sliding and climbing to provide us such limitation choices to be made nor find of our needs.
For short… Try saying Wikipedia had made no effect “indirectly” to literacy standards.
To be or not to be… ALA need to look at 3rd or at least different options than only two.
Be else wise!
CNN has shut down their island, and I’ve not heard of any lower-level presence though the iReport groups in SL still seem to be there.
Army One-Source, which ran the US Army regions, appears to have stopped maintaining in-world staff presence. They’re an official support and info organisation for Army families and veterans, but it looks as if SL wasn’t worthwhile. Some of the regions may have switched to other purposes, but it all looks dormant.
I didn’t track the neighbouring Navy and Air Force regions, but I have a suspicion that a couple of the Huffman Prairie set have gone. The map looks different.
We´ll see a lot more non-profit depatures when the educational rebates expire finally. There isn´t much support from Linden HQ left (if any at all) and so far i miss striking collaborative ideas and actions performed by non-profits to improve their in-world presence and PR. One possible action would be to abandon sectionism and all the scattered private islands and form some kind of “edu-continent” including a self managed central info and directions hub. Maybe such a coordinated strategy would be impressive enough for Linden Lab to recognise that there is a life besides the holy Mesh and vampires.
Vivenne, I would not be too optimistic about LL’s support for education. We just don’t pay enough tier to merit the heavy support educators need. Consider what happens when a RP sim goes offline for a while. The RPers wait.
When a faculty venue goes offline and class cannot meet there, or students cannot complete an assignment in a certain sim, that customer needs instant service. That was never possible for LL.
BTW, in your list of “the holy Mesh and vampires” you forgot kajirae and virtual pets….LL knows where the $$ come from
Just another way that the American Library Association throws away member dues on pathetic attempts to try to remain relevant