Creating Museum Content and Community in Second Life

For educational and museum communities, a social Internet can allow you to stay in touch with community members and casual audiences and design and present content that’s relevant for and interesting to them in a personal way. Multi-user 3D virtual worlds allow ‘face to face’ interaction between Internet users in spaces that are representational, abstract, or completely imaginary.
Visitors are not just bringing usernames; they’re residents who can express an identity and demonstrate their interest in your museum’s ideas, creations, and challenges. That persistence of identity and level of expressiveness through character design, chat, and gesture allows both museum staff and participants to make important social connections that, for many, are not as easily made or maintained on the 2D Web.

An interesting paper from the Exploratorium by Rothfarb and Doherty on creating content and community in Second Life