Lit­tle Library Got Wii

“I had a fab­u­lous time in at the ‘Gam­ing in Libraries’’ ses­sion of the Mid­west Library Tech­nol­ogy Con­fer­ence, where they not only talked about games, they let us play. It’s more than a Field of Dreams approach, just toss­ing games into a room; I have worked with, read about, and heard from those clever librar­i­ans who design activ­i­ties, resources that do what librar­i­ans do so well, put infor­ma­tion in con­text for us.

This is not even meant as a post to pon­der the impli­ca­tions, more of an obser­va­tion I had a few weeks ago when I stopped by the Isabelle Hunt Memo­r­ial Pub­lic Library in Pine, Ari­zona — the clos­est town (3 miles) with a gas sta­tion (actu­ally 2) and a mar­ket (1) to where I live. The pop­u­la­tion of Pine is likely a bit over 2000, and the library is a real gem.…

And darned if on my last visit there, they had re-arranged the check­out racks of DVDs to make room for a sin­gle Wii station!

Yep, this lit­tle library has got Wii.” [Cog­Dog­Blog, Thanks, Liz D.]

Empha­sis above is mine, because I love Alan Levine’s descrip­tion. Although we’re not related, great Levine minds think alike.

What I really love about this, though, is that it shows how even small libraries can imple­ment gam­ing on some level, as opposed to other ini­tia­tives that require huge increases in staffing or bud­get lines.

Ear­lier this year I high­lighted the School Library Sys­tem of Gene­see Val­ley BOCES’ work map­ping boardgames to the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of School Librar­i­ans’ (AASL) Stan­dards for the 21st Cen­tury Learner. The BOCES guys have kept push­ing for­ward with this work, and I really appre­ci­ate how they make it avail­able for everyone.

In prepa­ra­tion for this week’s Gen­Con (a really big gam­ing con­ven­tion for the pub­lic), Brian Mayer has adapted the orig­i­nal doc­u­ment map­ping the AASL stan­dards into a one-page hand­out for the pub­lic (PDF). Take a look at his hand­i­work, as it makes a great con­ver­sa­tion starter about gam­ing in pub­lic and school libraries.

Brian also has a great post explain­ing Why Games Belong in Libraries.

“The inclu­sion of gam­ing in a library col­lec­tion is not unex­pected if you take some per­spec­tive. Libraries hit a turn­ing point when they made the deci­sion to start includ­ing pop­u­lar media in their col­lec­tions. By doing so, they shifted their col­lec­tion devel­op­ment prac­tices to be more inclu­sive of what their patrons want, embrac­ing the desires of the com­mu­nity. They also opened the door to more non-traditional resources. And by con­tin­u­ing to develop a more inclu­sion­ary col­lec­tion devel­op­ment pol­icy, libraries are lay­ing the foun­da­tion for build­ing a col­lec­tion of ideas.…

Add to this, the mat­u­ra­tion of board games over the last twenty years and you can start to see the value that games hold as com­mu­nity resources. They have grown into another avenue of cre­ative expres­sion that, like a good book or song, can cap­ture and share ideas with those who invest the time.” [Library Gamer]

I’m going to do a whole series of READ mini posters that explore *my* def­i­n­i­tion of reading.

Make your own here!

One of the fun projects I’ve got­ten to shep­herd at work is now avail­able for you to play with — the READ Mini Poster Gen­er­a­tor. It’s just like the gen­er­a­tors on fd’s Flickr Toys because it was cre­ated by John Wat­son, Mr. fd him­self. Choose from one of four tem­plates and just click the but­ton to upload a pic­ture from your hard drive. (One hint — leave some room above your head in the picture.)

Use­ful for web badges, pro­file pic­tures, and espe­cially graph­ics for events such as Banned Books Week (which is com­ing up in Sep­tem­ber). If you post yours to Flickr, be sure to add it to the READ posters pool. Here’s my first one, but I’m more inter­ested to see how cre­ative every­one else is. I have a series of posters planned.

The Game’s the Thing

“Years ago, I was asked by a non-gaming friend to explain the attrac­tion of gam­ing, specif­i­cally play­ing MMOs. ‘It just makes no sense,’ she said to me. ‘Why do you want to pre­tend to be some­one else, in a made-up place, with a bunch of other peo­ple who are pre­tend­ing to be some­one else?’

I remem­ber shrug­ging and say­ing, ‘I don’t know, exactly. You read nov­els, right?’ She did, and nod­ded. ‘Well,’ I asked, ‘What’s the attrac­tion of read­ing some­thing that came from some­one else’s imag­i­na­tion, that is explic­itly untrue, and that only ends up exist­ing in your head?’

She smiled and said, ‘You got me.’

I’m not say­ing play­ing games is the same as read­ing. And I’m not say­ing that doing one in any way replaces doing the other. But there are sto­ries in games. And there is imag­i­na­tion, strat­egy, think­ing, cre­ativ­ity, fun, friend­ship and com­mu­nity. Those are all things I hope my son can find at every library he encoun­ters.” [World­Cat Blog]

Empha­sis below is mine.

Libraries’ Video Games Are Teen Magnet

“Although some par­ents dis­like the idea of video games in libraries, the Colum­bus Met­ro­pol­i­tan Library has spent $40,000 on video-game equip­ment in the first two years of a pro­gram to make teenagers feel more wel­come in libraries.

‘Gam­ing is sto­ry­telling for teenagers,’ said Julie Scordato, a teen-services spe­cial­ist for Colum­bus’ libraries. ‘You get to min­gle, play and talk, and you get to really know them. Then when you sug­gest a book, they listen.’…

…just one in 10 library patrons finds gam­ing in the library annoy­ing, accord­ing to the Library Game Lab study.…

Colum­bus Met­ro­pol­i­tan Library branches make their equip­ment avail­able only dur­ing teen meet­ings. Scordato said she wants the clubs to pro­vide a safe place for social and cul­tural lit­er­acy, not mind­less gaming.

At the North­ern Lights branch on Cleve­land Avenue, it’s quite the production.

Teens arrive early, flip­ping through books while they wait. Then the lights dim, and in a flash there are crowds around three TVs and a pro­jec­tor screen hooked up to a Nin­tendo Wii console.

‘We actu­ally like this,’ said Jeramie Sum­mer­all, 19. ‘They need to have it more to keep us out of trou­ble.’ ” [The Colum­bus Dis­patch]

Game for Gamers

“Video games in a library may seem like an oxy­moron — librar­i­ans will­ingly bring­ing the elec­tronic enemy into the ven­er­a­ble fortress of all things paper­back and hard­cover, [Car­rie] Schindele-Cupples admits.

But in fact it’s just the oppo­site, she said. Since insti­tut­ing activ­i­ties aimed at teens last year, cir­cu­la­tion in the young adult sec­tion at the Spring­field library has gone up by 18 per­cent, Schindele-Cupples said.…

‘They come to the library, get to know other teens in the com­mu­nity and real­ize that the library can be a nice des­ti­na­tion,’ she said. ‘It’s very excit­ing know­ing that teens are using the library.’…

‘Doing gam­ing events gets them in, but then I grab a hold of them and get them inter­ested in other things,’ said Traci Glass, teen ser­vices librar­ian at the Eugene Pub­lic Library.…

‘I had a teen say they’ve never been into the library before,’ Glass said. ‘It does increase lit­er­acy skills and it does bring teens into the library.’

Swing­ing away at the screen at the Spring­field Pub­lic Library, 12-year-old Hay­din Rosin said he tagged along with a friend. While his friend, Kevin Hagel, 12, ‘reads like crazy,’ Rosin said he ‘doesn’t come down often.’

Before the 3 p.m. gam­ing ses­sion Wednes­day, he checked out six books. He said he’ll likely bring them back and get more at the next game night.…

Librar­i­ans from Eugene and Spring­field say the youths are sur­prised to find illus­trated graphic nov­els, Japan­ese comics and gam­ing mag­a­zines on library shelves.…

Teens also befriend peers that they may not have oth­er­wise, librar­i­ans said.

‘You meet new friends,’ said Bre Wom­ack, 15, who had checked out a few books ear­lier in the day before com­ing back to play Dance Dance Rev­o­lu­tion and Gui­tar Hero with a friend. ‘It’s actu­ally pretty fun.’

Wom­ack, a mem­ber of the library’s Teen Advi­sory Board that helped librar­i­ans brain­storm the event, said she’s seen peo­ple sit­ting in chairs read­ing, wait­ing their turn at a game console.

‘It’s a way your two favorite things, books and video games, can join into one,’ she said.” [The Reg­is­ter Guard]