At very short notice (but thanks for the tip-off) and just when I was considering going home after a busy day with few breaks, I heard about a discussion on Information Literacy in SecondLife. Following up on a conference that had taken place over in Germany.

Thought I'd drop in and was glad I did as I picked up a variety of things that I want some time now to go off an explore.

What was most surreal about this session though was not the usual weirdness of SL that you slowly get used to. Not sitting around in 'comfy' chairs, in my tails (with top hat in hand) with a couple of people I knew from Real Life, one I'd heard present in Real Life, another who I only knew from the course on Tuesday and other complete strangers. Not the way we all very carefully sat in the chairs in just the same way as we would have done in real life (at the ends of sofas), filling the space 'evenly' rather than sitting next to each other, etc. Nope, none of that.

It was the number of colleagues who dropped in to see what was going on - word seemed to spread that I was in SecondLife. I think I had six people 'lurking' over my shoulder - though not all at the same time. Some of them were interested in the content, some of them were interested in seeing 'work' in SL in action, some of them were just curious about me at 'work' in SL. And a couple just wanted to dare me to strip naked for some reason. (What is with that?)

Oddly enough I realized I was becoming quite protective of "my" avatar and given that I knew (to one degree or another) some of the people there didn't really want to act in any of the a- or anti-social ways that were being suggested.

I know there are 'griefers' in SL (people who just deliberately cause trouble) - but clearly not in the libraryland ghettos of the virtual world!