Re: Second Life--game or virtual reality?

I use SL to attend conferences and book events, not to play games. I think
that's becoming more and more true - I'm guessing that the attendees at the
weekly Science Friday events wouldn't describe themselves as playing a game.
There are authors who hold SL events, new music releases, etc. I'm not a
cataloger (beyond making changes to LOC records to suit my school library)
but my opinion is that this is much more like our course management systems
(Blackboard, Moodle, etc) that allow real-time interactions along with
asynchronous postings.  SL can be synchronous or asynchronous depending on
the application. And yes I understand that it can also be something of a
dating space (ie the best of games) but that's not my area of expertise  

Interesting to watch how Web 2.0 features are changing our world, even in
the arena of cataloging!

Cathy
-- 
Cathy Rettberg, Head Librarian
Menlo School
Atherton, CA
http://library.menloschool.org

On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 12:16 PM, John McPike <jmcpike@...>
wrote:

> Hello Autocatters:
>
>
>
> Book in hand: The making of Second Life, OCLC #155715254
>
>
>
> In the record, Second Life is listed as the subject, with the qualifier
> "game". Consequently the DDC number assigned by LC is 794.8, computer
> games. There's also an additional subject heading, Shared virtual
> environments.
>
>
>
> I've never used Second Life myself and don't know much about it, but I
> believe that the "game" qualifier is no longer accurate. According to a
> Wikipedia article I located recently, Second Life is more of a shared
> virtual world in which users, called "Residents", can interact,
> participate in various individual and group activities, and engage in
> commerce. It would seem that Second Life has expanded beyond the
> parameters of a computer game and evolved (as it is still evolving) into
> a shared virtual experience with commercial, educational, and social
> networking applications.  For that reason, I feel that Second Life could
> be given the qualifier "shared virtual environment" instead of "game"
> and classed with that subject in 006.8.
>
>
>
> What do others think?
>
>
>
> Thanks for your input!
>
>
>
> John McPike
>
> Library Technician/Cataloger
>
> Sacramento Public Library
>
> 828 I Street
>
> Sacramento, CA 95814
>
> jmcpike@...
>
>
> ***********************************************************************
>
> E-mail AUTOCAT listowners:             autocat-request@...
> Search AUTOCAT archives:  http://listserv.syr.edu/archives/autocat.html
> Selected AUTOCAT commands: http://www.cwu.edu/~dcc/Autocat/options.html<http://www.cwu.edu/%7Edcc/Autocat/options.html>
>  By posting messages to AUTOCAT, the author does not cede copyright
>
> ***********************************************************************
>

***********************************************************************

E-mail AUTOCAT listowners:             autocat-request@...
Search AUTOCAT archives:  http://listserv.syr.edu/archives/autocat.html
Selected AUTOCAT commands: http://www.cwu.edu/~dcc/Autocat/options.html
  By posting messages to AUTOCAT, the author does not cede copyright

***********************************************************************