I don't see why Yahoo! answers would be a nightmare for librarians, perse; personally, I would put it more in the teacher's area.
Anyway. Libraries are moving up in the world, or trying to, with big projects for digitizing materials and updating catalogues. One of the things involved is the new Web 2.0 and 3.0 developments. They are asking for interactivity, for new ways of searching. Libraries (from what I've heard) are looking at things like Second Life, and Wiki, and all the comment pages on Amazon, and wanting to become like them.
Instead of a library's worst nightmare, we've stumbled on their wet dream;)
I'm currently doing a masters course in which we deal with just these kinds of problems. There are so many things going on, and so many things are hated by the publishing world. It seems like they are mostly stuck in their own traditional (and rather) rigid business models, simply going "Ooo, digital age, it's evil, go away", instead of taking the opposite stance of taking up on the new technologies and turning them into something for their own benefit. This certainly won't be the last thing we hear of such a thing...
It seems like the number of "casual" Second Life players, as you call them, is actually diminishing. I know that over here (The Netherlands) a lot of companies, city councils, libraries and the like are really interested and spend quite a lot of money on being a presence in Second Life, thus trying to promote themselves.
If there is so much money going around, on such a professional level no less, I would definitely like some security for my money (emphasis on "would", since I'm not a player myself).
Then there's also the question of the casual users. I'm not sure what the general age of people on Second Life is, but it wouldn't hurt to put some security in place if only to protect the younger players, who might not know what they're doing.
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I don't see why Yahoo! answers would be a nightmare for librarians, perse; personally, I would put it more in the teacher's area. Anyway. Libraries are moving up in the world, or trying to, with big projects for digitizing materials and updating catalogues. One of the things involved is the new Web 2.0 and 3.0 developments. They are asking for interactivity, for new ways of searching. Libraries (from what I've heard) are looking at things like Second Life, and Wiki, and all the comment pages on Amazon, and wanting to become like them. Instead of a library's worst nightmare, we've stumbled on their wet dream ;)
I'm currently doing a masters course in which we deal with just these kinds of problems. There are so many things going on, and so many things are hated by the publishing world. It seems like they are mostly stuck in their own traditional (and rather) rigid business models, simply going "Ooo, digital age, it's evil, go away", instead of taking the opposite stance of taking up on the new technologies and turning them into something for their own benefit. This certainly won't be the last thing we hear of such a thing...
It seems like the number of "casual" Second Life players, as you call them, is actually diminishing. I know that over here (The Netherlands) a lot of companies, city councils, libraries and the like are really interested and spend quite a lot of money on being a presence in Second Life, thus trying to promote themselves. If there is so much money going around, on such a professional level no less, I would definitely like some security for my money (emphasis on "would", since I'm not a player myself). Then there's also the question of the casual users. I'm not sure what the general age of people on Second Life is, but it wouldn't hurt to put some security in place if only to protect the younger players, who might not know what they're doing.