| Chapter 6: Looking to the Future | |
| Jenny Levine | |
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| Abstract |
“…the year gaming caught the imagination of libraries…” “Top 10 Library Stories of 2007,”American Libraries, December 2007 “And what an amazing year it was,” recalls Jenny Levine in the new issue of Library Technology Reports, “Gaming and Libraries Update: Broadening the Intersections.” “In an uncharacteristically (for our profession) viral and rapid way, videogame services in libraries broke through the niche, cult-like status that had relegated them to something only geeky nerds did at home in the basement,” she adds. Game is still on… In “Gaming and Libraries Update: Broadening the Intersections” Levine adds to the growing body of content documenting gaming and libraries. In her previous “Gaming and Libraries: Intersection of Services,” (LTR 42:5) Levine identified the various gaming and videogame-related activities occurring in libraries — public, school, and college — as well as explained gaming activities outside the library domain. In this issue, Levine focuses on unique videogame services libraries are implementing. “We will hear from nine innovators in the field, each of whom spent 2007 taking gaming in libraries in new directions, providing inspiration and leadership.” Levine approaches the topic of gaming and libraries with her quiet and practical zeal and openness and wisely features the work of these innovators, who provide case history examples of these new directions at the intersection of library services and “videogames.” [Says Levine of the spelling “videogame”: “In 2007, P3: Power Play Publishing released The Videogame Style Guide and Reference Manual and noted the official spelling of video games as one word (videogames), not two. I have had trouble adapting to this convention myself, but this LTR represents my first full effort to finally integrate this new spelling into my own writing.”] Contributors to “Gaming and Libraries Update: Broadening the Intersections” include:
About the Author Jenny Levine is the Internet Development Specialist and Strategy Guide for the American Library Association's Information Technology and Publishing departments. She earned her MLIS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1992 and has been an eminent technology training evangelist for librarians during her career. In 2003, she was named one of Library Journal‘s Movers & Shakers, the publication's homage to “the people shaping the future of libraries,” published every March. “Levine has one simple goal,” notes the March 15, 2003, Library Journal profile, “to help us librarians become as technologically adept as our users are so that we can deliver services to them when and where they wish to use them and in their preferred medium and platform.” Levine is a keen advocate for gaming services and libraries, as she is a gamer and has witnessed, through personal observation and study, how gaming services can help members of several generations (particularly younger users) feel connected to the library. “Gaming,” she concludes, “provides a wealth of service intersections for libraries today and for the libraries of the future. And that future is all about opportunities and weaving together threads, both old and new.” Since writing a 2006 LTR on this topic, she has organized the 2007 ALA TechSource Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium, helped coordinate ALA's first National Gaming in Libraries Day, and is already working on the next gaming and libraries symposium. Levine also writes about gaming and libraries on a regular basis on her popular blog, The Shifted Librarian, which can be found at theshiftedlibrarian.com. She began the first librarian blog in 1995, The Librarians’ Site du Jour, which can still be accessed at http://jennyscybrary.lishost.org/sitejour.html. |
It seems obvious that games will not be leaving our library in the near future.
—Vinny D'Ambrosio, Pocahontas Middle School (VA) newspaper1
If 2007 was a giant leap forward for gaming in libraries, 2008 is poised to be the “year of the game” in our profession. With a round of new publications expected throughout the year, an international conference on the subject (“U Game U Learn”), and a bevy of initiatives from the American Library Association, gaming in all forms will take center stage.
U Game U Learn http://ugame-ulearn.com
During the spring of 2007, Scott Nicholson and a team of students from Syracuse University's Information Institute conducted a survey of 400 randomly selected institutions in order to “take the pulse of public libraries in the U.S. and understand the role gaming is playing in library services.” The team solicited responses about a broad array of services, asking libraries to consider the subject more broadly than had been measured in the past, including games of all types and formats.2
At the 2007 ALA TechSource Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium, Nicholson released the results of the team's survey, the first of its kind. Supporting the theory that gaming is not a new service for public libraries, 77 percent of the libraries surveyed self-identified as supporting gaming in one way or another. This encouraging statistic illustrates how many libraries already offer tabletop games (notably chess sets), as well as public Internet computers on which patrons can play Web-based games.
In addition, the Syracuse team found that approximately four out of ten public libraries offer some type of formal, in-house gaming program. Of the 172 institutions that run such programs, about half of them use board games, while only 13 percent use videogame consoles. Clearly there is room for growth in the area of videogame play, even as board games already enjoy an accepted and even respected role in library services.
While there are many other interesting findings in Nicholson's survey's results, gaming in libraries is an evolving proposition. It is not new or revolutionary or even at odds with existing services. Instead, it is an extension of recreational and educational programming libraries have offered for decades, if not centuries. Therefore, it is no surprise that more and more libraries are considering offering expanded or revamped services that include videogames, whether it is for traditional information literacy instruction or to meet the same recreational desires that romance, science fiction, or western novels fulfill.
For those librarians who want to further explore or investigate the possibilities for gaming in their institutions (regardless of type of library), a series of initiatives throughout 2008 will help them learn more, connect with others, research best practices, and implement services at an unprecedented level.
The American Library Association is helping to recognize the benefits of gaming in all formats by organizing a national “gaming @ your library” event on the Friday of National Library Week (April 18, 2008). Libraries of all types across the United States will have the chance on this day to offer whichever gaming services are best suited to their institutions to help educate the public about the positive aspects of gaming, as well as to provide a safe community space where patrons of all ages can come together to play together in ways not available elsewhere in their communities.
More information about gaming @ your library http://ilovelibraries.org/gaming
At the 2007 ALA TechSource Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium, Eli Neiburger announced that the Ann Arbor District Library planned to open its online tournament software to any library that wants to participate at no cost. This means that patrons at any participating library can compete against players at every other participating library, with the results displayed on a national leaderboard on the Web.
The tournament software, dubbed the “GT System,” made available by Ann Arbor DL's generosity, gives libraries the chance to take gaming to the next level, upping the recreational stakes and providing patrons with a social experience they simply can't get anywhere else. The GTS will officially launch ongoing tournament standings during the summer of 2008. To learn more or to register your library to participate, visit the GT System Wiki.
GT System Wiki http://gtsystem.org
As in 2007, ALA TechSource will again hold a Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium (GLLS). Audio recordings of the sessions from the 2007 event are available online, as well as video of some of the keynotes and slides and handouts from most of the sessions. Content from the 2008 symposium will also be archived in the same location. Registration will again be limited to 325 participants and is scheduled to open in April. To view the program, register, or access content from the 2007 event, visit the TechSource Gaming Symposium Web site.
TechSource Gaming Symposiumhttp://gaming.techsource.ala.org
Inspired to coalesce the community of ALA members coming together around gaming, Scott Nicholson started a petition to form a Games and Gaming Member Initiative Group within the Association. This group was approved by ALA's Committee on Organization (COO) at the 2008 Midwinter Meeting, and it continues to grow. Information about the group and how to participate can be found at http://gaming.ala.org. It will meet formally, in person, for the first time at the ALA Annual Conference in June.
Games and Gaming Member Initiative Group http://gaming.ala.org
Some of these events address recreational gaming, while others are designed to help librarians interested in gaming connect with one another. In order to help educate librarians about the connections between gaming and literacy, ALA's Office for Outreach & Literacy Services (OLOS) received a grant from the Verizon Foundation to provide online content and training for librarians during 2008–2009. Working with relevant groups within ALA, Literacy Officer Dale Lipschultz will coordinate an expert panel of librarians that will examine and document the relationship between videogaming, children's literacy development, and their use of the library. The project will also produce a “Gaming Literacy Readiness Inventory” (GLRI) for use in public libraries.
Despite all of the new programs and services we are seeing innovative librarians try, our profession is just beginning to explore the wealth of possibilities that gaming offers libraries. I subtitled my first LTR “Intersection of Services,” but in hindsight perhaps the term intersection should also have been plural. While we don't want to making gaming the round peg we are trying to fit in every square hole, it's clear that gaming is not a fad and that there are literacies and knowledge ecologies surrounding it, just as there are for other library services such as book discussions, craft programs, Internet usage, and adult programming.
It may be difficult, given the biases some librarians and patrons still hold in favor of the printed word and the traditional, singular view of libraries as sanctuaries only for books, but it's important to recognize that we should not judge the content habits of our patrons, whether those habits revolve around books, Web sites, movies, music, or games, lest we offer services based on outmoded reasoning. Soon we will be approaching the time when most living generations will have grown up with videogames, and the stereotype that the great Margaret Edwards held of gaming will not serve us well as a starting point for evaluation of services. It took a long time for the majority of librarians to understand and embrace the Internet, possibly to our own detriment. For too long, we debated whether uses of such resources as e-mail, instant messaging, and social networks were valid patron services in the library. We should not make the same mistake with gaming, in any form.
I have seen firsthand the power of games for literacy, socialization, learning, and mentoring time and time again. In the same way that e-mail, cell phones, instant messaging, and now text messaging snuck up on us and became ubiquitous, so has videogaming. It is everywhere if we just look around—on buses, trains, airplanes, cell phones, and just about anywhere else you go. Shouldn't we make use of any format that uses knowledge and strategic use of information as its foundation and becomes pervasive? Shouldn't we, of all professions, understand how best to harness it to teach information literacies and provide the communal, social center our patrons seem to crave? Perhaps the question is really how we can not.
Notes
| 1. | Vinny D'Ambrosio, “New Library Games,” Hawk Talk [Pocahontas Middle School, Richmond, VA] 7, no. 1 (Fall 2007): 1. |
| 2. | Scott Nicholson, “Who Else Is Playing? The Current State of Gaming in Libraries,” (presentation, ALA TechSource Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium, Chicago, IL, July 22–24, 2007); available online in PDF, audio, and video formats at http://gaming.techsource.ala.org/index.php/Who_Else_Is_Playing%3F_The_Current_State_of_Gaming_in_Libraries. |
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