The State of Libraries: ‘Fund­ing Down, but Gam­ing Up”

“Are we really doing any­thing to tie video gam­ing and lit­er­acy together? I haven’t seen it; I’ve sim­ply seen us hold­ing gam­ing ses­sions because that’s what gets teens — boys in par­tic­u­lar — excited enough to come in and par­tic­i­pate in a library-sponsored activ­ity, thus rack­ing up the num­bers we need for our monthly stats.

Librar­i­ans who are fans of gam­ing pro­grams keep say­ing that teens are lured in by gam­ing, and once they’re through the door, those teens use the library in more tra­di­tional ways. But is there any doc­u­men­ta­tion for this claim? All I keep see­ing are anec­dotes. Are teens who come in for games actu­ally check­ing things out? I’ve rarely seen it myself. I hope some­one will do a study one day soon of how well gam­ing works as a draw to get teens to check things out — espe­cially things with pages and print.” [The Mon­key Speaks]

Walter’s con­cerns are under­stand­able, but there is indeed evi­dence that kids who come to the library for gam­ing also use the book col­lec­tion more.

• See the April 2007 issue of the ILA Reporter in which Amy Alessio from the Schaum­burg Town­ship Dis­trict Library notes cir­cu­la­tion of the teen col­lec­tion has gone up 70% due to an increase in teen-oriented activ­i­ties, which includes gam­ing (p.31)
• At ALA’s 2008 Mid­win­ter Meet­ing, Julie Scordato from the Colum­bus Met­ro­pol­i­tan Library gave a pre­sen­ta­tion with some evi­dence, start­ing on slide 6.
• Read Carver’s Bay: Gam­ing the Way to Lit­er­acy on the Web­Junc­tion site
• I wrote the new issue of Library Tech­nol­ogy Reports about Gam­ing in Libraries, and I specif­i­cally included a case study about a mid­dle school in Vir­ginia that has tied gam­ing to the statewide read­ing club, which dou­bled the num­ber of par­tic­i­pants in the first year.

And yes, there is also a lot of anec­do­tal evi­dence from lead­ers such as Eli Neiburger, Aaron Schmidt, Kelly Czar­necki, and oth­ers. Eli in par­tic­u­lar has a great video he showed at the Tech­Souce Gam­ing, Learn­ing, and Libraries Sym­po­sium last year in which kids talked about how they never knew the library had so much for them until they started com­ing in for the gam­ing. There are more and more reports about this in the press every day.

Gamers Can Play It By the Books

“At the Still­wa­ter Free Library, direc­tor Sara Kipp brings in her own PlaySta­tion for mid­dle school and high school stu­dents to use on a game night. In Still­wa­ter, game night is com­bined with a book club.

‘We already offered a book club, which was luke­warm at best,’ Kipp said in an e-mail explain­ing the program.

‘So we decided to intro­duce gam­ing in the library in con­junc­tion with the book club. Some libraries sep­a­rate the two, but we cre­ated a pro­gram to meld them in an attempt to give the teens what they are look­ing for all in one shot,’ Kipp continued.

The town of Ball­ston Pub­lic Library will con­nect video gam­ing to the Olympics this sum­mer by hold­ing a Wii Olympics using a pack­age tied to the games. Rebecca Van­der­hay­den, the youth ser­vices librar­ian, said a par­tic­i­pant gets a turn play­ing a game for every 50 pages they read.” [Times Union]

In addi­tion, most librar­i­ans I’ve talked to who have offered gam­ing note that it enhances their con­nec­tion with the kids, which makes it eas­ier for these patrons to ask for help when they need it. Early research from the Pub­lic Library of Char­lotte Meck­len­burg County in North Car­olina indi­cates this holds true for adults, too.

At ALA, we’re hop­ing to mea­sure these kinds of out­comes that sur­round gam­ing in libraries. We’ve received a big grant from the Ver­i­zon Foun­da­tion to edu­cate librar­i­ans about gam­ing, pro­vide best prac­tices, offer a toolkit to help get started, and track the results nation­ally. It’s a two-year grant, so it will be a while before we have num­bers, but there’s a blog about Gam­ing News for the project, as well as an early start on a wiki for Gam­ing Resources.

I’m lucky enough to be work­ing with Dale Lip­schultz, ALA’s Lit­er­acy Offi­cer, on this project. Dale is a well-known and respected expert in the lit­er­acy com­mu­nity, and I’ve learned a lot from her on this sub­ject already. She made the fol­low­ing points about gam­ing and lit­er­acy in a recent email exchange.

1. Lit­er­acy is more than read­ing and writ­ing — that is it’s more than the acquis­tion of basic skills. Lit­er­acy requires prob­lem solv­ing skills, the abil­ity to for­mu­late and apply hypothe­ses, strat­egy devel­op­ment, etc.
2. Gam­ing — board, social, and video — is a mean­ing­ful lit­er­acy activ­ity. Kids (and adults) are invested in gam­ing. It’s fun, it’s what they do with their peers, and they like it. There­fore it has mean­ing in their lives. Gam­ing usu­ally requires some read­ing and writ­ing skills. It always involves prob­lem solv­ing and strat­egy skills. Even reluc­tant read­ers will read and prob­lem solve in order to ‘level up’ and mas­ter the game and stay com­pet­i­tive with their peers. That said, along with mas­ter­ing the game, they are improv­ing their basic skills.
3. Learn­ing to read and write is a pro­foundly social process, and lit­er­acy devel­op­ment doesn’t hap­pen in iso­la­tion. Learn­ing is most effec­tive when the novice is sup­ported by an expert (an adult or peer) who scaf­folds the activ­ity and pro­vides medi­a­tion or instruc­tion as needed. The novice is encour­aged to engage in an activ­ity slightly beyond his/her level of mas­tery and comfort.

As Dale told me last year, Tarzan never would have learned to read with­out Jane. Librar­i­ans are well-positioned to pro­vide the envi­ron­ment, exper­tise, and scaf­fold­ing nec­es­sary for lit­er­acy, and gam­ing enhances that envi­ron­ment. It also adds that social piece that makes the exper­tise more approach­able. As Eli is care­ful to note in his book, you can’t just hand kids a bib­li­og­ra­phy when they’re engaged in gam­ing, but it does pro­vide oppor­tu­ni­ties to offer books, graphic nov­els, and mag­a­zines in the type of envi­ron­ment Dale describes.