There’s an inter­est­ing post on Future-making Seri­ous Games titled Retro Remakes Com­pe­ti­tion: Seri­ous Gam­ing For Acces­si­bil­ity that includes a call for “entrants to cre­ate acces­si­ble updated coun­ter­parts of real or imag­ined arcade games from the 1920’s to date.” This is a topic I hadn’t really con­sid­ered before, and I’ve been learn­ing more about it as I’ve been plan­ning the pro­gram for the 2008 ALA Tech­Source Gam­ing, Learn­ing, and Libraries Sym­po­sium. There’s that say­ing that you know you’re old when you insist that your generation’s music is bet­ter than that of the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion, right? Well, I apply that to videogames, too — my favorites will prob­a­bly always be the ones I grew up with (although Mario Kart Wii and Boom Blox are pretty great), so I love the idea of mak­ing retro games acces­si­ble for everyone.

All of which is also a segue to note that we have a ses­sion ded­i­cated to Inte­grat­ing Non-Visual Access Into A Library’s Gam­ing Expe­ri­ence at the Sym­po­sium, as well as some other unique con­tent I don’t think you’ll get any­where else. Here are just a few of those types of ses­sions that I’m really look­ing for­ward to attending:

• Gen­der and Gam­ing
  “Beth Gall­away shares an overview of research and sta­tis­tics on gen­der and gam­ing; Ph D can­di­date Beth King dis­cusses how World of War­craft devel­ops lit­er­acy skills and cre­ates com­mu­nity for teen boys and how The Sims devel­ops lit­er­acy skills and cre­ates com­mu­nity for teen girls; librar­ian Ali­son Angell facil­i­tates a dis­cus­sion on gen­der and gam­ing and teases out poten­tial best prac­tices for libraries seek­ing to serve each gen­der to their best ability.”
• H4cking ur Library for the Gam­ing Indus­try
  “This ses­sion will present col­lec­tion devel­op­ment and pro­mo­tional ideas for cre­at­ing a mate­ri­als col­lec­tion that sup­ports users inter­ested in the gam­ing indus­try as a rapidly grow­ing career choice, includ­ing a look at how gam­ing is cross-pollinating with sev­eral other indus­tries, includ­ing movies and music.”
• Sub­ject Access to Videogames: Beyond LCSH
  “The Library of Con­gress Sub­ject Head­ings are use­ful for non­fic­tion print mate­ri­als, but the options for sub­ject access to video games are lim­ited. Learn how to pro­vide improved access to your library’s video game col­lec­tion based on your community’s needs with locally-developed genre and sub­ject headings.”
• What Every Librar­ian Needs to Know about Videogames and the Law
  “This ses­sion will cover two top­ics that I know a lot of peo­ple in the indus­try have ques­tions about: video games in the library and machin­ima, movies made using ren­dered engines. First, the ques­tion of what to do about hav­ing a video game tour­na­ment in the library will be addressed. The dis­cus­sion will include spe­cific dis­cus­sion on the legal­ity of the tour­na­ment, the pos­si­ble penal­ties, and the reme­dies to make a tour­na­ment in the library com­pli­ant with both copy­right law and the End User License Agree­ment for the games played.

  Sec­ond, as more and more groups wish to offer machin­ima con­tests, we will dis­cuss the basics of the law as it relates to machin­ima. The ses­sion will cover both the con­cerns for the movie mak­ers and the con­test host. By the end of the ses­sion, all those in atten­dance should be armed with the knowl­edge they need to take on some of these new, inno­v­a­tive pro­grams at their own facility.”

If you have ques­tions about these kinds of top­ics, then GLLS2008 is where you want to be to get them answered. Reg­is­ter today!

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