I don’t think it has to be either/or. One of the things I really enjoy about working at ALA is that it can work in parallel tracks, and Second Life is a great example of that. I think the same can be true for libraries in general.

At the beginning of your post, you stated “Putting on my asbestos gloves, I write a mildly cautionary post.” So you knew your topic might cause some debate. So take it for what it IS – a debate.

Jenny said this “I voiced my opinion and for whatever reason, you’re defensive about it.” I’d have to agree with her!

Just sayin’…

“Good public libraries should go further out of their way to take care of the most disadvantaged users than the most advantaged users.”

Very much agreed, which is why Second Life could be considered a digital divide issue for public libraries and could even bolster the argument that they need to be in-world in order to understand it and help their patrons gain entry (not that I’m making that argument).

I didn’t object to your skepticism; I just noted another side to using numbers. Had I wanted to call you out on skepticism, I would have done so. And there is absolutely *nowhere* in my comments where I even attribute that skepticism to you, so I’m unclear what you would cry foul about.

“Throwing around numbers” isn’t in-and-of-itself a negative thing, just like the fact that earlier today I was “throwing around numbers” about today’s NCAA tournament isn’t inherently negative.

You don’t want to nitpick, but I’ll substitute “often” for “all the time” and still not take it personally (debating something I wrote versus me). I’m not making this personal, and I hope you won’t either.

“Just don’t tell me that libraries need to be involved in Second Life, in 2007, because it’s “where our users are.” That’s simply not true, at least not for most real-world communities.”

That’s what I said. I’ll stand by it. Telling librarians that they need to be involved in SL because it’s where your users are is a disservice to librarians who are short of time, energy, money.

Show me where I said “Libraries should not be involved in Second Life, since the only issue is numbers.” Show me where “only use numbers” turns up except in your comment. Show me where in the post I said “These are all the factors that should be involved in considering Second Life.”

Maybe it’s worth noting that SL users in your community are typically going to be people with fairly high-end computers, broadband, and plenty of spare time: In other words, your most privileged users. Not quite the same as those who would use Braille or those who would appreciate a few books in their native tongue. Good public libraries should go further out of their way to take care of the most disadvantaged users than the most advantaged users. (I really do hope that there are 6,000-user libraries that will stock foreign-language books for a language that ten community members read–but I wouldn’t be surprised if that wasn’t always the case.)

I certainly don’t disagree that “As with most topics, extreme skepticism and extreme optimism don’t help us move forward”–but if you’re characterizing my post as “extreme skepticism,” I cry foul. You seem to be jumping in to object to any skepticism–and, oddly enough, I have never once seen you disagree with a blogger who’s being extremely optimistic about some new development.

I don’t want to nitpick. I’d rather not make it personal at all, but you make it difficult. Still, do you really hear “all the time” from librarians that they’re keeping an obscure, expensive title because one professor wants it? You hear that once a day? Once a week? You’ve been consistently fast to accuse me of strawmen when I don’t cite a specific person for a claim.

The economics of academic libraries are very different from the economics of public libraries. (The economics of ARL libraries are very different from the economics of community college libraries…) I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that a whole lot of academic libraries would have a straightforward answer these days for a $10K journal that one professor wants to keep (and nobody else apparently reads), and that the answer would be No.

Does one-sixth of one percent of the six billion people in the world use Open WorldCat? Does that mean OCLC shouldn’t put effort into it? Of course not. That’s why I question when someone *only* uses numbers as the basis for their discussion without noting any other potential criteria.

The value here is the middle ground – folks like Lori, Ilene, and Lisa, who are exploring this for the rest of us, as well as people like Jason who actually try it out and report back with specifics. As with most topics, extreme skepticism and extreme optimism don’t help us move forward.

My other caveat is the idea of waiting to devote “so much time to it before the interface is ready,” because that would have really hurt us if we’d said that about the web ten-plus years ago. In fact, some might argue that the interface for the web still isn’t ready, and I’m not even going to bring up OPACs….