Adapt­ing Library Ser­vices to the Needs of Gamers – Chad Boeninger

started out show­ing Lego Star Wars
one of the great things about it is that it encour­ages explo­ration within the game
get used to the inter­face by prob­ing the environment

games also encour­age immer­sion, not just explo­ration
showed some video of Res­i­dent Evil 4
not just shoot­ing things, but also lots of times when you have to make deci­sions to do things (buy wepaons, make adjust­ments, etc.)
the immer­sion here is that the player has con­trol of their own experience

can also essen­tially play “Bar­bie” by cus­tomiz­ing avatars
showed video of cus­tomiz­ing his player in Mad­den, to the point where his name is on the back of his shirt

showed some video from the game Bully
showed some God of War
here’s how gam­ing encour­ages learn­ing while doing
– you basi­cally get thrown right into the game where you start mash­ing but­tons to fig­ure out what to do
the PS2 con­troller has 16 but­tons that you learn how to use within the first 20 min­utes of the game (open hatches, etc.)
you fig­ure out the sequences pretty quickly
learn through trial and error
as the game play pro­gresses, we learn new things and have to adapt new skills to get to the next level because the game gets harder

so how can we inte­grate these kinds of things into libraries?
we try to cre­ate immer­sive envi­ron­ments, encour­age learn­ing by doing, and encour­age exploration

peo­ple grew up in video games, and as a result, they maneu­ver dif­fer­ently
part of our role is to help them adapt to our stuff, while the other part is for us to adapt to them

what you never hear in the main­stream media is how frus­trat­ingly dif­fi­cult these games are
research is hard, too

(some of this from “The Kids Are Alright” — Mitchell Wade)

we need new nomen­cla­ture
infor­ma­tion lit­er­acy
ref­er­ence
reserve
cat­a­log
data­base
peri­od­i­cal
bib­li­o­graphic instruction

job secu­rity for us, but mean­ing­less to every­one else

we need con­sis­tent inter­faces
why can’t our inter­faces be as intu­itive and easy to learn in the first 5 min­utes as they are in video games?
what does our feed­back give users?
pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive?
how do we cre­ate envi­ron­ments that attract and engage these folks?

the library as immer­sive space
make learning/information com­mons more
– invit­ing
– wire­less
etc.

cus­tomiz­able interfaces

learn­ing while doing
incor­po­rate hands-on instruc­tional expe­ri­ences
must be rel­e­vant and timely
give con­text — don’t just do BI to do teach peo­ple something

need smarter cat­a­logs with point-of-need help
give them instant help
– best options right now are IM and Meebo

help them help them­selves via a site map or online FAQ

doesn’t really have a con­clu­sion but the dis­cus­sion about how to do this is important

Randy Chris­tensen

threw a bean bag into the audi­ence and asked the per­son who caught it to come up on stage
that per­son then threw the bean­bag to some­one else, who came up on stage
did this until he had 12 peo­ple up front
played “Inter­net Librar­ian Chase,” based on IL2006 infor­ma­tion
“what are the advan­tages of a fed­er­ated search“
“name one way you can make a library web­site more user-friendly?“
etc.

walked around the audi­ence ask­ing ques­tions about how they could incor­po­rate gam­ing into library services