I love that my friend, the newly minted Dr. Stephens, devoted one of his LIS class nights to gam­ing. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there to help out, but it sounds like the stu­dents did quite well on their own. I would love to see more LIS courses play­ing and explor­ing like this, help­ing the stu­dents form their own opinions.

Games…Games…Games…

“How do you make your college-age son jeal­ous? Tell him you played Gui­tar Hero… in school…for a class…while the teacher was there. Hey, I thought it was great fun at our Wednes­day game night. I’m not totally con­vinced of all the edu­ca­tional val­ues of these games, but in terms of build­ing com­mu­nity, gam­ing really show teens that libraries are will­ing to invest in their inter­ests. I love the idea that gam­ing allows teens to get to know their librar­i­ans on a more casual basis. We might not seem so ‘scary’ when they need us for infor­ma­tional pur­poses. I’m unde­cided about the con­cept of mak­ing kids check out books before they can play games. That might be a lit­tle like hav­ing to eat your lima beans before you can have your choco­late cake. In the end, does any­one learn to like lima beans?” [Sharonlis768’s Weblog]

Gam­ing

“I def­i­nitely think there’s a place for games in libraries, includ­ing board games. From my own expe­ri­ence with strat­egy games, I know that some games require a great deal of thought and atten­tion, as well as crit­i­cal think­ing and a lot of decision-making. At my old job, the pres­i­dent and I would often dis­cuss cor­po­rate strat­egy in terms of strat­egy games, since we were both avid gamers at the time. He was the ‘con­quer and pil­lage’ type while I was the ‘research and develop’ type, so we com­ple­mented each other well. The prob­lem with some strat­egy games, though, is that you can some­times learn what it takes to beat an AI with­out nec­es­sar­ily learn­ing fun­da­men­tal strat­egy. I don’t men­tion this as a crit­i­cism of the notion of gam­ing in libraries or to say that good skills can’t be learned, but I’ve always been dis­ap­pointed by games that turn out to be puz­zles. I guess that’s a bit tan­gen­tial…” [Nat’s Weblog]

The Annoy­ing Pro­duc­tive Guy At Work: Sham­ing Users One Color At A Time

“My new assis­tant is an 18-year-old ‘mil­len­nial,’ as I guess we’re call­ing them now. He’s a young com­puter Borg who could hack before he could walk. In a prob­a­bly vain attempt to keep him from quit­ting before I get in at least one decent vaca­tion, I’m con­stantly look­ing for ways to keep him engaged.

‘What IS all this crap??’ He guf­faws at the cas­cade of emails that greets us every morn­ing. ‘Do you really READ all of this??’

You don’t read it, I tell him, you PROCESS it. It’ll take months before he learns to fish the actions out from the dozens and dozens of mes­sages clog­ging his in-box all day long. But once he learns to man­age the broad­cast, he’ll also get a front-row seat for the epic drama of fear and heart­break that passes through our mail server every day. Our company’s high reliance on email cre­ates such a dense bar­rage that it cre­ates a per­fect means through which things fall through the cracks.…

In effect, I’ve started an ongo­ing email clinic. Some peo­ple respond to the com­pe­ti­tion: they want a lower num­ber than Lumpy in the next desk over. Oth­ers will just add me to their pile of unread mes­sages. But folks are also com­ing for­ward who are gen­uinely inter­ested in free­ing them­selves. I’m sure my approach won’t work on every­one. After all, no one gets up at the crack of dawn and tries to cram 60-plus hours of work into 40-hour work week, just so they can sat­isfy the arbi­trary impo­si­tions of some guy from another depart­ment that they hardly know. But I keep the offer out there, and even­tu­ally I’ll res­cue the ones worth sav­ing. To be hon­est though, I’m really just try­ing to save myself. It’s these mod­est checks in the win col­umn that help me make it through the work day.” [43 Fold­ers]

I totally get the whole “What is all this crap?” sen­ti­ment. :-p

I would have imple­mented this as a car­rot, rather than a stick, but I love that atti­tude of help­ing oth­ers who are ready to be helped. It’s where many of us have to put our ener­gies in order to be effec­tive. Who can you help?

See also: Five Tips for Imple­ment­ing Social Soft­ware in Your Library from Rob Coers, via Michael Stephens. I love Rob’s slide (and atti­tude), and I love Michael’s addi­tion of “focus on the pos­i­tive.” Life is too short to spend it being neg­a­tive, folks. Again, I ask, who can you help?

Soon I will be head­ing to beau­ti­ful Mon­terey for this year’s Inter­net Librar­ian con­fer­ence. This year I’m doing a pre­con­fer­ence on gam­ing with Aaron Schmidt, mod­er­at­ing the pub­lic library track with Michael Stephens, and pre­sent­ing a ses­sion on gam­ing Wednes­day morn­ing. As a good friend of mine always says, pos­si­bly the best thing about con­fer­ences is get­ting face time with friends, so I’m look­ing for­ward to see­ing every­one. If you see me there, please don’t hes­i­tate to say hi.

Alter­na­tively, you can come to the open gam­ing that Aaron Schmidt, Michael Porter, and I will be host­ing after the Sun­day pre­con­fer­ence. It’s an infor­mal ALA/Web­Junc­tion thing, cour­tesy of Infor­ma­tion Today.

Start­ing around 4:30 p.m. in the Colton I room, we’ll have Gui­tar Hero (PS2), Dance Dance Rev­o­lu­tion (PS2), and Wii Sports going for open play. This is your chance to beat your favorite blog­ger at any one of these games. Aaron won’t be able to stay long, so if he’s the one you want to take on (and you have my sym­pa­thies if you do, espe­cially in Gui­tar Hero), be sure to come early. I’m pretty sure Library­Man has been prac­tic­ing GH, too. In fact, it’s too bad Rock Band isn’t out yet. Next year.

We’ve got the room until 7:00 p.m., so I can pretty much guar­an­tee a lot of laugh­ter, fin­ger wag­ging, trash talk­ing, and gen­eral mer­ri­ment. Oh, and Flick­ring, too, since we’re also count­ing this as a Flickr and Twit­ter meetup. Might as well throw in video, too, since I believe Mr. Video is coming.

So come one, come all, but come with your game face on, even if just for the pic­tures. Brag­ging rights apply until the next open play!

I know a lot of folks (staff and mem­bers included) have been scream­ing from the rooftops for this, wait­ing impa­tiently. But today it finally hap­pened. We’re try­ing to turn the cruise ship — come join me on the ledo deck!

Senior Usabil­ity Officer

“Respon­si­bil­i­ties: The Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion (ALA), a large, information-based pro­fes­sional orga­ni­za­tion seeks a Senior Usabil­ity Offi­cer (SUO). This posi­tion in its key role will sup­port 65,000 mem­bers and non-member in the orga­ni­za­tions’ ini­tia­tive to recast its grow­ing Web­site with user-centered web design prin­ci­ples. The poten­tial can­di­date will have exten­sive first hand expe­ri­ence design­ing and run­ning usabil­ity tests, acces­si­bil­ity reviews/audits, and deter­min­ing web­site trends. In addi­tion, must have expe­ri­ence with other method­olo­gies such as expert walk­throughs, defin­ing stake­holder require­ments, task analy­sis, wire­fram­ing, pro­to­typ­ing and card sort­ing. Excel­lent com­mu­ni­ca­tion and peo­ple skills with the abil­ity to com­mu­ni­cate with non-technical indi­vid­u­als are a must in this highly vis­i­ble posi­tion. The SUO must be flex­i­ble and able to incor­po­rate user-centered design prin­ci­ples to online inter­faces while remain­ing respon­sive and open to the diverse and shift­ing needs of a com­plex orga­ni­za­tion. The abil­ity to work in a team envi­ron­ment and between two uni­verses of Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy and Librar­i­an­ship is essen­tial in order to main­tain an outcome-oriented, global vision.

Require­ments: Master’s degree in Human-Computer Inter­ac­tion (HCI) or a related field with a min­i­mum of five years expe­ri­ence in design­ing and con­duct­ing usabil­ity tests and mak­ing rec­om­men­da­tions to effect changes. Must have knowl­edge of web site design, web-based usabil­ity stan­dards, web-based acces­si­bil­ity stan­dards and industry-acknowledged best prac­tices. This indi­vid­ual must be able to work in a fast-paced envi­ron­ment and man­age mul­ti­ple projects simul­ta­ne­ously. Salary is nego­tiable from $75,000. ALA has an excel­lent medical/dental pack­age, vaca­tion and retire­ment annu­ity. Clos­ing Date: Review of appli­ca­tions will begin Decem­ber 1, 2007 and con­tinue until the posi­tion is filled. For con­sid­er­a­tion send a let­ter of appli­ca­tion and resume to the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion, Human Resources Depart­ment, SUO/IT, 50 East Huron Street, Chicago, IL 60611; fax: 312.280‑5270, email: cvivian@ala.org.

Salary Range: Nego­tiable from $75,000
Exempt/Non-Exempt: Exempt”

From Scott Nichol­son:

“I’m a pro­fes­sor at Syra­cuse Uni­ver­sity, and we just got 5 IMLS grants for librar­i­ans inter­ested in becom­ing LIS fac­ulty mem­bers. Why is this rel­e­vant in LibGam­ing? Because if you come to Syra­cuse, you’d be wel­come to work with me on research about gam­ing in libraries! Of course, you could also work with many other folks, as we’ve got a lot of inter­est­ing things going on.”

There’s much more in the full press release — iSchool Secures Grant to Fund Five Future Library Pro­fes­sors.

In 1996, I took a job as the “tech­nol­ogy coör­di­na­tor” at the Grande Prairie Pub­lic Library in Hazel Crest, Illi­nois (one of Chicago’s south sub­urbs). It was my first real technology-related posi­tion, and Susan was the direc­tor who hired me. Although I was there for less than a year (mov­ing on to the Sub­ur­ban Library Sys­tem), we accom­plished a lot in that short time. GPPL became the first pub­lic library in Chicago’s south sub­urbs to have a web page, offer [dial-up] inter­net access for the pub­lic, and teach patrons about email (using free PrairieNet accounts). I even started a group to teach patrons about the web, and we started show­ing users how to find jobs online.

I had a vision for bring­ing inter­net access and web-based infor­ma­tion to the com­mu­nity, and Susan made it hap­pen. She was com­mit­ted to the val­ues of equity of access for every­one, so she found the money for the com­put­ers and the monthly dial-up fee because she under­stood that the emerg­ing web of infor­ma­tion would help level the play­ing field for her patrons. She never stopped fight­ing for libraries and their users, which is some­thing I’ve always admired about her. I don’t think I’d be where I am today if she hadn’t hired me for that job.

Sadly, Susan died yes­ter­day morn­ing. Megan Heli­gas has writ­ten a blog post where any­one can leave a com­ment In Mem­ory of Susan Roberts. I left sym­pa­thies there, but I wanted to link to the site for those who may not yet have heard this news, and I want to extend my deep­est sym­pa­thies to Susan’s family.

It’s taken a long time for them to release this, but OCLC has finally made their Shar­ing, Pri­vacy and Trust in Our Net­worked World report avail­able for free on the web.

“The prac­tice of using a social net­work to estab­lish and enhance rela­tion­ships based on some com­mon ground—shared inter­ests, related skills, or a com­mon geo­graphic location—is as old as human soci­eties, but social net­work­ing has flour­ished due to the ease of con­nect­ing on the Web. This OCLC mem­ber­ship report explores this web of social par­tic­i­pa­tion and coöper­a­tion on the Inter­net and how it may impact the library’s role, including:

• The use of social net­work­ing, social media, com­mer­cial and library ser­vices on the Web
• How and what users and librar­i­ans share on the Web and their atti­tudes toward related pri­vacy issues
• Opin­ions on pri­vacy online
• Libraries’ cur­rent and future roles in social networking

The report is based on a sur­vey (by Har­ris Inter­ac­tive on behalf of OCLC) of the gen­eral pub­lic from six countries—Canada, France, Ger­many, Japan, the United King­dom and the United States—and of library direc­tors from the U.S. The research pro­vides insights into the val­ues and social-networking habits of library users.”

I’ve heard OCLC staff say they don’t believe they asked the right ques­tions for some of the top­ics, which I agree with, so I think we have to take the data with the prover­bial grain of salt. You’ll be able to order a 280-page paper copy start­ing Octo­ber 28, which is how I’ll read this if I can get my hands on a copy. I couldn’t totally resist, though, so I did jump ahead to the con­clu­sion (PDF) and already I’m intrigued.

“In the 18 months since the pub­li­ca­tion of the Per­cep­tions of Libraries and Infor­ma­tion Resources report, the use of search engines and e-mail has grown by more than 20% over what were already enor­mous par­tic­i­pa­tion lev­els. User par­tic­i­pa­tion in basic Inter­net ser­vices, such as search­ing and e-mailing, is approach­ing total par­tic­i­pa­tion. More than twice as many respon­dents are using blogs now as then.…

Inter­net use has not sim­ply increased, it has infil­trated our lives, offer­ing more and more ser­vices at more and more ser­vice points. Use has grown for almost every Inter­net ser­vice we mea­sured in this survey—well, almost every service.

The per­cent­age of Inter­net users that have used a library Web site has decreased. Library Web site use declined from 30% of respon­dents in Canada, the U.K. and the U.S. in 2005 to 20% of the gen­eral pub­lic in these same coun­tries in 2007, a 33%
decrease.…

The more intrigu­ing ques­tion is—what are the ser­vices and incen­tives that online libraries could offer users to entice them to come back or to visit more often or even devote some of their own time to help cre­ate a social library site?…

If con­ve­nience does trump qual­ity, then it is the librar­i­ans’ job to make qual­ity con­ve­nient. If shar­ing will trump pri­vacy on the social Web, it is the librarians’

On the social Web, the library brand must go from insti­tu­tional to personal.…

The social Web is not being built by aug­ment­ing tra­di­tional Web sites with new tools. And a social library will not be cre­ated by imple­ment­ing a list of social soft­ware fea­tures on our cur­rent sites. The social Web is being cre­ated by open­ing the doors to the pro­duc­tion of the Web, dis­man­tling the cur­rent struc­tures and invit­ing users in to cre­ate their con­tent and estab­lish new rules.

Open the library doors, invite mass par­tic­i­pa­tion by users and relax the rules of pri­vacy. It will be messy. The rules of the new social Web are messy. The rules of the new social library will be equally messy. But mass par­tic­i­pa­tion and a lit­tle chaos often cre­ate the most excit­ing venues for col­lab­o­ra­tion, cre­ativ­ity, com­mu­nity building—and trans­for­ma­tion. It is right on mission.…

The new Web is a very dif­fer­ent thing. Libraries need to be very dif­fer­ent, too.”

Now, I give full credit to OCLC for run­ning, ana­lyz­ing, and pub­lish­ing (espe­cially freely) this report (I so wish MPOW pub­lished this kind of won­der­ful data this freely), but I have to dock them points for the way they invite feed­back on this report. On social net­work­ing. And shar­ing online. And pri­vacy concerns.

Where do the points come off? The only way to sub­mit feed­back is via a form that has your name and email address as required fields and which sends the mes­sage off into the ether instead of post­ing it online. No dis­cus­sion at all on the report’s site. Given the social efforts OCLC is mak­ing else­where (World­Cat, Web­Junc­tion, etc.), I have to believe they have some­thing in the works that just wasn’t ready yet, but this cer­tainly does fill the belly of the irony beast.

Update: And indeed, the online com­mu­nity is now live via open com­ments on what appears to be a blog. Dis­cuss away.