Librarians and Second Life

Great, just what I was seeking, more information on Second Life! I was struck by a statement just below the article title, "an opportunity to try out new approaches before you take them to the real world." I like that idea, what a great place to try a new service and see if it works. Hopefully this would be less time consuming and costly than reality. If something doesn't work, dump it and move on, or implement within the traditional library walls. It is important to deliver information in a variety of ways, and platforms. I would be interested to visit some of the organizations mentioned in the article and see how they operate, to see how their virtual world is similar or different than the real one.
I always enjoy lists, and this article gives me a list of what librarians are doing in Second Life. The list includes; library services, networking, collaboration, rethinking space, supporting other SL efforts, supporting virtual communities, learning to use virtual space for education, discussing the use of role-playing, creating new tools, prototyping and positioning for the future. They are all great uses, but my favorites are rethinking space and education.
Rethinking space is tough in reality, so Second Life would give a chance for users to participate in how and what the space should look like. I guess this would also be an extension of prototyping, try something, see if it works, if not adjust to get the best feel and then translate that into the 'actual' library space.
Education on Second Life is an interesting concept. I'm always looking for ways to sneak education into my autistic daughter's life. She is a very visual learner and loves the look and feel of video games. As with many computer applications, I'm concerned with the lack of human contact and interaction. Can you learn enough virtually to help a shy or socially ackward person in real time?
Finally, the last item I took from this article is that Second Life would 'eliminate emotional barriers that cause us to not adopt new technologies.' I find that this can be a huge barrier for some librarians. We often operate based on how it was done in the past and it is difficult to move beyond these standards, especially for those librarians who have spent 20-30 years in the same library.