CILIP in Second Life

One of my more unusual Presidential duties came today when I entered the virtual world of Second Life to launch the CILIP Office there.

I typed the following remarks, to inaugurate the office, in my avatar form 'IanSnowley Allen' : "

"As our world changes, it is essential that Professional Organisations evolve to take advantage of the new media and new social software that is beginning shape our society. As part of that change it is vital that membership organisations, like CILIP, have a presence where our members and potential members are.

CILIP members know that effective information services need to be available where and when their users need them most, and as a result much of what we do is available over the web. Second Life represents a particular opportunity to develop our web presence and make the services and information that CILIP provides available in the virtual world.

As a result CILIP, led by two members of staff, Reinahllt Jones (Welshman Humphries) and Mark Taylor (Mark1 Voom), has developed this virtual office, to act as a focal point for CILIP’s activity in Second Life. Indeed the office has already hosted a session during our recent Conference.

Therefore I’m delighted to declare CILIP’s virtual office open, and I hope that over time it will become an important ‘meeting place’ for librarians, information professionals, and those with an interest in the services we provide."

I was pleased that CILIP member Sheila Yoshikawa showed up along with CILIP Staff Member Mark1 Voom. If you are already registered for SL just click here.

Whilst this is a small step it is an important one for the Institute, and one that I hope is the start of something much bigger for the future. I can't promise that I will visit the virtual office as much as I visit the 'real life' one, but I hope that I will see you there at some point.

Comments

[Anna Martin]

This sounds interesting, Ian. I have tried out second life, and been to some of Sheila's meetings. The groups I belonged to in second life only discussed second life itself, which is a bit of a limited subject. I was thinking maybe we should launch a second life professional development group for people like myself who find it hard to get to real life meetings with fellow infolit professionals. Does anyone know of such a group or would they be interested in helping found one?