The Shifted Librarian shifting libraries at the speed of byte

I hope to get back to posting more about gaming in libraries soon, but until then, this is going to be a quick link round-up because there’s so much going on, it’s getting difficult for me to track it all. In fact, at work, I’m probably going to have to get a third whiteboard just to track all of the partnerships around gaming that are forming for us. I hope to write more about those as they firm up, but for now I’ll just note my gratitude to the Verizon Foundation for the large grant they’ve given ALA to explore gaming, literacy, and libraries and build a toolkit for libraries that want to implement specific outcomes for gaming services. When the press release goes up for Annual (where we’ll receive one of those giant, cartoony checks that I’m definitely getting my picture taken with), I’ll post a link to it here.
And that’s just the beginning. We have several gaming initiatives planned, and while I’ll be writing more about them soon, you can hear a preview by listening to the newly-posted episode 3 of the Games and Libraries podcast. It’s all moving very quickly, but I’ll try to post more frequently about it here.
In the meantime, here are some links to some good articles and posts about gaming.

• Leadership’s Online Labs
  “Tens of millions of people are honing their leadership skills in multiplayer online games. The tools and techniques they’re using will change how leaders function tomorrow—and could make them more effective today.” [Harvard Business Review]
   
• Game Time With Mister Raroo: ‘Games In The Modern Public Library’
  “The paper’s intended audience is individuals who know little to nothing about video games and have no idea how or why games can be an important part of any public library’s collection. The bulk of serious gamers will no doubt find information in many parts of the paper that is common knowledge to most game enthusiasts, most notably statistics about the average gamer and a discussion of the popular perception of violence in videogames.” [GameSetWatch, thanks, Alice!]
   
• Media-gam-arama
  “Fortunately, we’ve done an about face at our school in relation to games – yes, I believe we’re still having some filter problems with a few game sites, but even so, the idea of engaging students with games has been integrated throughout the school’s curriculum. While gaming, we see students engaged in cooperative learning situations, developing social skills, problem solving, decision making, and having loads of fun. Our school has had Scrabble tournaments, the 6th grade had its own March Madness extravaganza, we own Webkinz for the school – one per grade level, PE classes use Dance, Dance, Revolution, Uno, the music department uses Guitar Hero, we have had a Chess Club, and class sets of card decks can be found throughout the school. Our library student work stations have bookmarked, several game sites for student use and I’ve made it a passtime to continue searching for great student games, especially those with educational content.” [Book Bag Blog]
   
• What Games Have to Teach Us
  “Some snapshots from British schools and colleges: Joy Thompson used a business simulation game to teach maths to year 5 and 6 children with special needs. Tim Rylands used Myst with the same age group to encourage literacy, speech and writing. Martyn Thompson provided dance mat games for indoor and lunchtime PE us, and Stephen Fessey used School Tycoon, with 10 and 11 year olds, to develop their spatial thinking, fiscal skills, numeracy and social awareness.” [The Guardian]
   
• Making ILL a Game
  “We are exploring turning ILL into a game. The basic mechanic will give libraries points for sending and receiving interlibrary loans, with bonus points for prompt delivery and ontime returns. A leaderboard (competition drives a LOT more than you might want to admit!) might prompt librarians to become more involved in resource sharing.” [School Library Journal]
   
• Readers Should Get Game-literate
  “The makers of Bioshock, released last year and designed by Ken Levine, have probably come closer to real art than anyone else so far. Bioshock is a terrible name: any sensible person would expect the idiotic. Instead, they get a game based around Promethean myths and the work of Ayn Rand, set in an abandoned art-deco Atlantis. It’s outstanding, and about two-thirds of the way through makes a brilliant point about freedom of decision that could not be delivered using any other art form.” [Guardian Books Blog]

more cat pictures

Thanks, Brandee!

Public education is the only solution for preserving a constitutional democracy
Have to start with our young people; knowledge is not handed down through the gene pool
We have some work to do to get them educated
Only a little more than 1/3 can even name the three branches of government, let alone tell us what they do
It’s not only through rallies or marches
Young people are beginning to get engaged in public life through the internet – email, blogging, facebook
Young people can take leadership roles in these spaces
This is a start in the political campaign world, but much more can be done
Have to get them engaged first and show them that government does have an impact on their lives and vice versa
We need to use the medium they’re comfortable with – a computer screen
Give them ownership and tools to use
Partnering with arizona state and Georgetown law school – “our courts” website is free to all users
will allow students to engage in real issues and problems and enable them to find solutions to real problems
lets them step into the shoes of a judge, etc.
encourages young people to make their voices heard in their communities
Two intentions for this project

1. Curriculum to be used in classrooms around the nation
   one consequence of No Child Left Behind is that civics education has been squeezed out because there’s not testing or funding for it
   leaves a huge gap
   can’t forget that the primary purpose of public schools in America is to produce knowledgeable citizens who have the skills and knowledge to sustain our nation and form of government
   must also stimulate real thinking and debate, as well as a commitment to civic engagement
   will exceed state standards
2. Primarily for young people to use on their own time
   kids spend more time with media than at school or with parents
   can we get them to spend just a little of that time on civic engagement
   young people are interested in fairness and justice
   Jim Gee is helping to create a truly immersive learning experience
   will have them arguing real legal issues against the computer and against each other
   we must ensure that tomorrow’s leaders are informed and engaged in rich debate that leads to wise decision-making

The more we can populate the medium available to young people with these social justice pieces, the more informed they’ll be
Q&A
Reuters: what videogames have you played before?
SDoC: I don’t play videogames – sorry
Reuters: some say games promote violence and are dangerously addictive for kids – does that worry you?
SDoC: certainly, but that’s not the kind of game we’re going to produce
NY Times: can you give examples of issues in the game and when will it be available?
SDoC: we hope by next fall to have the fundamentals on the website; resources for teachers will be up in September; Jim Gee’s work will be available by the end of September; first interactive part will be a t-shirt with a logo on it for high school students to wear – something that would raise a first amendment issue; she would love to put up something for students about the 2nd amendment (what does it mean – is it a personal right or not?); these are things students can learn to be engaged in; can provide them with precedents, the Constitution – let them make arguments for both sides
Q: Why do games & interactive technology better serve your mission?
SDoC: I’ve observed my own children and grandchildren; she’s illiterate as a computer user, but her grandchildren can do anything on there in minutes; they’ll sit in front of the screen for a long time and remain engaged; tells her that this is a good tool for this purpose; she believes that when we learn something by doing it (by having it happen to us), when you make an argument, etc. – you remember and understand it better, moreso than reading a textbook or listening to a lecture; her sense is that when we read something and learn it, there is a part of the brain that will receive it; but if we learn it by doing it, a different part of the brain will also light up (the emotional part – the “a-ha” moment); will ignite a different part of the brain; so things learned in this fashion stick with us longer; that’s what she thinks will be proven in the future
Q: what long-term outcomes do you hope to achieve with this project? Ideal place in 5 years?
SDoC: to know that classrooms all across the country are using this program and exposing children to civics education; will be easier for teachers to plug students into this curriculum – they don’t have to learn it themselves :-p
Q: what advice would you give to those who are trying this for the first time?
SDoC: there are so many subjects that people in this room are working on – all kinds of great programs; there will be as many programs as there are fertile imaginations, and we have a lot of those

JPG: the context in which we work now is radically different because we live in a world of complex systems that are biting us pretty badly
eg, oil prices –> wheat prices up –> no water, no food –> failed state –> enough failed states = no global economy (from the book “Plan B” – can game everything in the book, which he highly recommends)
the amount of corn needed to fill up your tank once feeds a human being for an entire year – not efficient
this is one disaster of about 400 that are all hitting right now
in the future, all government costs will go to paying medical costs (silver lining is no money will be left for war – or social services)
largely driven by the baby boom
plus global warming
interesting problems to give someone in the form of a game
let’s builda solution where you have to solve all three things
that’s something we have to game sooner or later, have to think about these things now
EZ: if we think of the 19th century as industrial and 20th century as information, the coming century will require new media literacies
the abstraction of information
so many aspects of our lives are mediated by digital interactions now (social, financial, work, engagement with governments, etc.)
if being literate is giving and receiving information, today requires extending reading to moving images, etc.
“procedural” or “computational” literacies
another way of thinking of these things is as gaming literacies
games are systems (parts that form a whole)
what games do so wonderfully is focus on the systemic aspect of what’s happening
to make a good move in chess is not just playing out a narrative – what does it mean to act boldly in a game of chess?
it means understanding all of the relationships between the pieces and what happens when you move one
that’s precisely the sense of what Jim talked about for understanding outcomes
games are well-suited to thinking about problems in this way
the 20th century is an age of systems (a ludic century)
JPG: let’s get into what the literacy of gaming is
some people talk about games as an alternative way to deliver verbal information, which school already does
doesn’t think games are particularly good at this, though
games give you a novel experience (talked about Chibi-Robo); can make you see the world in a new way
the commercial industry has done some fantastic stuff to make the world see things in new ways, but not with socially meaningful goals
they are arch-problem-solving spaces
games are really just a continuous assessment and you’re enjoying the hell out of it (because the testing industry never got hold of it)
they give you language just-in-time and as you need it
EZ: it’s a dichotomy; when we say this is a game on a social issue, what do we mean?
what are the strategies that we take within a game context or within a larger context? which ones seem better or worse?
one strategy is this is a new way to inject information into players
agrees that games are about process, not information; playing with information, not ingesting facts
SimCity isn’t an accurate simulation, but on the other hand, the thing about simulation (a second strategy, like information) is that it’s a representation
simulation as a procedural representation of a bigger part
JPG: what makes a game like SimCity interesting is once you see this model, you can ask where is this good or bad?
just like you can with Civilization
they make you recognize the models
EZ: would like to dispel the idea that games aren’t meaningful, but they do a radical disservice to a subject because you have to distill them down to numbers
because we’re tackling real world issues and how we can represent them, we have to acknowledge the limits of games
JPG: what you have in games is also a modding relationship; you can realize it’s good for some things and bad for others but you can start building on that
playing and designing are getting to be the same thing
talked about Boom Blox
playing the game at some point to learn how to design; can redesign any level
thinks this is the wave of the future
give people the tools to design it themselves
EZ: we have the information as one approach
we have simulation
one of the ways our relationship to information is changing is that information used to be more closed, not customizable
now we have phenomena like Wikipedia, where it’s also about a community of users who are also creating that information, playing with it, changing the rules over time
BUT
maybe SimCity is also useful if we have this set of strategies
just getting people interested in a topic
it inspired a whole generation of urban planners and architects
sparking an interest in something
JPG: a model of assessing what a game does for learning
“preparation for future learning” – games are particularly good at this
don’t have to learn everything from the game (Dan Schwartz at Harvard)
in a world where facts and information go out of date, being prepared for future information is really something we should define and look at it
the most mysterious thing is that games create motivation
we can’t give people motivation; we can give them interesting tools to channel that motivation, but games have been a good source for a lifelong interest in something
don’t want to kill that with a test
EZ: there’s also the relationship between the player and the game and how the game changes their behavior
we can look at the formal system, the players playing together, there’s a history over time (friendship or enemyship), and there’s the context
we want to remember that games are never just sets of rules – there’s always a larger context
that’s so important because the emphasis isn’t on the game itself but on the larger world
the challenge in harnessing what a game can do
getting innovative about the relationship between games and the outside world
JPG: most games with legs have an expert community that builds up around them
game designers are also going to be community designers in the future
most of the stuff we’re seeing with kids today, kids want to join a community and become an expert
EZ: the games that existed for centuries before computer games were always social
only recently were games single player
not just more multiplayer, but more social
returning to the roots of games and social practices
JPG: games are a convergent media
take Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh, which are fiction, movies, cards, videogames, etc. to a kid
it’s a baby boomer to take the videogame out and view it as a separate thing
more and more, kids see it all as one package and they want to participate at every level
EZ: a challenge for people wanting to do games that break the frame of players’ relationship to the world
games that do become established are great, but it’s difficult to design that backwards
JPG: these games leave open things for fans to build back in
by the time is 6, a kid can draw a pokemon that isn’t actually there
Nintendo made it so you have to trade them and can’t just get them all at once
have to put into your game the potential for community
EZ: what is play and how does it relate to everything we’re talking about?
a danger of serious games is that they’re usually very heavy and pedantic because they want to get a message across no matter what
at the same time, understanding play and how it works
play always takes place within some larger structure
when we say there is “play” within a system, there is some free movement within it
play always plays with existing structures with narrative; personification
there’s always some structures that we play against
one of the wonderful things about games is that play doesn’t always have to be oppositional, it can also be transformational
maybe these social and culutural structures are things we can play with and against to understand them better and open up possibilities
JPG: that’s why we shouldn’t worry if simulations are accurate or not, because it’s about opening possibilities
loves the game Portal (great for preparation of learning) – learned this from the game – what it looked like and felt like (experience of what words mean before you know what they mean)
“the game is designed to change the way players approach, manipulate, and surmise the possibilities in a given environment”
you got a new tool that lets you manipulate the world in new ways, new possibilities that you never thought of before
that’s fundamentally what we’re trying to do -give people tools in games that let them surmise new possibilities
EZ: this example of Portal points out the paradoxical problem with these games
Portal succeeds because it’s an artificial world that they could manipulate and it’s not real
we have to figure out how to get all of this good stuff that’s happening in Portal and how the world works, that teaches you to solve problems
bring this to real world issues
the methods all have pitfalls, though
JPG: Portal is a good example of an innovative game
gives you experience before you have to go to a physics lecture
the tests are all in the game
Q: can you address critical thinking?
JPG: Portal is very good at giving you tacit knowledge, experiential learning
but that can’t be the whole package
but what doesn’t it do?
it doesn’t give you a language, but there are now wikis and websites that give you a technical language (the language of physics) for it, built by the community
critical also requires you to get to a level of reflection
where you get strategic and critical about it is when you compare different versions
once you have enough experience, you see Civilization as a system
you’re engineering language and knowledge
EZ: when you saw Portal is about physics, you’re stretching it
the people in this room want everyone who plays the game to get the message or change their behavior
there’s a gap between what we’ve done well….
JPG: if you look at the social systems we’re evolving, what people have discovered is that these communities are good for learning – the 80/20 rule
this is turning out to be a near law in these passionate communities
it’s not 100% – the moral of this is that no one thing is going to be successful
that means we have to find many examples so that every kid has the chance to be in that 20%
that law will be true in many of the communities we create
Q: one of the things we know about games is we have to make them fun, but then we’re using fun to accomplish something else. what about fun as a value on its own
JPG: as an old gamer, doesn’t find them fun so much as engaging
even when he’s pissed at the game, he’s engaged
there’s no learning without engagement
there’s no fun without engagement
can be frustrating but still fun and engagement
have to create stuff with that engagement
otherwise it’s school learning, which is recitation of facts
“learning requires that you stay in the box and engage over the long haul”
time on task engagement is where the commercial gaming industry has been successful
EZ: pleasure and desire aspects of games are very undertheorized
when his company made Lego games, looked at their play values (construction, imagination, open ended, etc.)
how do you embody these things in a game experience that is engaging and fun, time on task
how do you merge learning and fun
JPG: research shows you have to trigger someone’s emotions when you’re teaching them
you have to attach cognition to emotion to get deep processing (“Hush” game)
Q: ideas on situated learning
JPG: we store our experiences and mod them
the mind is a simluation engine that works best when people use their experience to solve problems
it’s constructionist because people learn best when they’re solving problems
“situated meaning” – made the stupid mistake of reading the manual the first time he played a game
thought he couldn’t understand the game from the book, but once he played it, he understood the book
now every word in the book had a meaning attached to it
can then actually use it for problem solving
constructionism, but also a damn good theory of how learning can work
it’s like being handed the biology textbook without every getting to play biology
Q: view games like movies and animation; when games are abstracted, they’re easier to understand, but there are higher expectations the more real they get; could games ever become reality?
JPG: World of Warcraft is probably close to that
there’s a limit to realism in games and we’ve reached it
japanese manga and anime is more expressive
the power isn’t in the realism but in the gameplay
EZ: GTA reflects movies, not real life
many levels of metaphor going on there so can’t talk about it as realistic
because you’re always playing in a system, you’re multiple consciousnesses at once
reality already is a game
it’s about the whole system – is a boxing match real or not real?
components of aesthetic representations
so many metaphors are already involved
GTA is a pulp/genre story
thinks the game industry is chasing cinema – “cinema envy” – trying to replicate cinema in games
that’s a mistake – want to find what’s unique about games, not replicate cinematic experiences

David Thomas, Justin Hollander
David:
Urban planning as a curriculum
city systems, regional systems
wanted to teach young architects to learn to build using games
tend to think of urban planning as a design problem – if this then that
but cities don’t work that way
conflict happens in games, similar to how conflict happens in cities
looking for ways to empower the powerless, to provide access to people who have none
social justice component
ethically and morally try as hard as you can to look to the people who don’t have power and make decisions that affect them first (that’s how they train urban planners)
“oh, you teach SimCity” but it’s the worst game ever for teaching urban planning
games are about the themes for how conflicts are resolved in the real world
“let’s use some games”
Justin:
Forest Hills Neighborhood in Boston
they built a version of FH in Second Life where they can interact and experiment
David:
urban planning is the public’s interest in private property
what’s missing in SimCity? there’s no private property – nobody complains when you tear something down
it’s a weird model for how cities are designed
“the best you get out of SimCity is Stalinism” – David Thomas
teach them that’s not how cities work, but what games can you use next?
“dice wars” – what if the shapes are neighborhoods? shifting boundaries that are contested and constantly moving
there’s something competitive about cities
TransAmerica – most negotiation in cities is like this, in the open, even though there are secret motives that you won’t know about until it’s too late; might benefit you or hurt you
play the game for a little while and then talk about it
Carcassonne – it’s like chess; everything is out and everyone can see what is happening; constant negotiation to build the map, and the map for every game is different; this is how cities work – they’re all trying to maximize the map for themselves
nobody designed the neighborhood we’re in, designed how high the buildings are, etc.
environmental maps of the conflict that occurred to create
Fluxx – get the students playing tactically because the rules are always changing; a moving target where the goals and rules keep changing and you have influence over the rules, like when groups come together in cities to wield power to rewrite rules
even rules themselves and their systems are very fluid
Justin:
people in the area couldn’t actually get in to access Second Life (challenge)
David:
do games trivialize the subject matter?
it’s hard to get a community to care about issues until you can show them the effects
needs games he can teach in 5 minutes and that can be played in a short time
is now thinking about designing a planning card game to help fill this gap, currently shoehorning content
next year, plans to implement the “value of play” workshop into the class
tries to bring planning to life for students

A heads up from Jack!

“I just thought you would like this one. The next episode of Doctor Who is titled ‘Silence in the Library.’ The Doctor will be visiting an intergalactic library and the show is devoting two episodes to his visit. I can’t wait to see what the future of libraries looks like in the Doctor Who universe.
Here is a link to the Wikipedia description of the episode.”

After the questions about gaming, the thing I’m asked about the most these days is how I balance work, home, and the crazy speed of the online world. For most of my professional career, the line between work and personal has been blurred, making it difficult to tell where one starts and the other ends. That wasn’t a new phenomenon (even for me, as this was true when I worked in a bookstore and a record store), but it’s been interesting to watch that line blur for librarians – and now the general public – around the internet. I think it’s pretty rare to watch the kind of shift we’ve all gone through during the last ten years (see Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody), and I’m certainly grateful to be observing it firsthand.
So it’s natural to feel overwhelmed – everyone does at some point. Make that “many points.” I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – the key is to let go of the guilt and recognize that you can find a balance for any given moment, as long as you acknowledge that this balance will be cyclical. Sometimes you’ll have more time to devote to playing with new tools online. Sometimes you’ll need to concentrate more on things that are clearly “work.” Sometimes you’ll find a happy medium. But whatever point you’re at will change, and you need to watch for the change points and sometimes even force them (if you’re working too much or have been away from “playing” for too long).
It’s easy to forget this or get snowed under one of the cycles and lose the long view, so I thought I’d share some of the things I do in order to use technology to help maintain that balance, especially with summer coming up for those of us in the U.S. The caveat here is that I’m lucky enough to have the means to do some of these things, as well the willingness to deal with pushed information. Your mileage may vary, and I’m not suggesting that each of these methods will work for everyone, but maybe it will help you think about how you can take more control of your information flow. I’ve written and spoken quite a bit about using RSS readers to track sites and how I’ve been using Google Gears to access mine even when I’m not online. Here are a few other recent things I’ve been doing.
Facebook
I know some people have given up on Facebook, either because they don’t like it, they don’t have time for it, or they’ve moved their presence to Twitter, but I’m still enjoying the social connections facilitated by the site. I’m lucky enough to have a lot of friends on FB (ones from “real” life and ones I’ve met through the site who are just as “real”), and I truly appreciate the pace of the information flow there.
For me, the LSW Chat Room and Twitter can be overwhelming because the pace is so fast and I either can’t keep up or can’t reply fast enough. It’s great that these formats work well for others, but I’m learning that I prefer slower updates at this point in my work/personal life. More power to the people who can keep up with these sites, but I’m a casual participant at best in them, and I’m okay with that, at least for now.
Lately, I haven’t had as much time to play in Facebook with applications, Scramble, pages, etc., but I really appreciate the short updates on what my friends are doing. For many of those people, I’ve set up my preferences in Facebook Mobile to send those updates as texts to my phone because I don’t want to miss when they change their status. It’s a passive way to have information pushed at me when I don’t have time to manually check the site. I can do this because I have an unlimited texting plan, but then I also use SMS as one of my top communication tools. In fact, it’s probably second behind face-to-face contact.
So tip number one is to get an unlimited texting plan if you can afford it and have your friends’ information pushed to you through texts. At Sprint, unlimited texting is absurdly cheap, something like $20/month for everyone on the plan. Plus, then you can text Google, Amazon, and other services, as well as your friends and family. I realize not everyone can afford that, but if you can, it’s really worth it.
Twitter
I’ve already mentioned that I have trouble keeping up with Twitter, but that doesn’t mean I don’t use it or enjoy it. When I have time, I access the service using Twhirl. Even though you have to download the client, it makes it *much* easier to track conversations, reply, direct message, and do other things. It’s definitely my preferred method for real-time interaction with Twitter.
But it can be distracting, like trying to work in a room full of your friends who are having interesting conversations, so at best, I mostly just watch the conversations, the way I read blogs. Sometimes I have time to also participate, but usually when I can give some partial attention to Twitter, it’s to read and keep up with what my friends are talking about. I have very few friends on the service who only post status updates; the majority of people I know there are having conversations, so I don’t have tweets sent to my phone, as it would be too overwhelming. The one exception to this is during conferences, as those are times when Twitter has a more immediate relevance for me, because it facilitates face-to-face interaction and tells me which are the hot sessions.
Social Aggregators
I’ve been testing these new social aggregators because I really need a good one to help me track my friends on all of these various services (versus my news aggregator, which tracks my information feeds). The more services I’m on, the more I wish these aggregators would get a move on already. I’ve experimented with a few of them and have decided that none yet meets my needs. I really like SocialThing because my friends don’t have to be on the service for me to see their updates. ST imports my existing friends from a few services and displays them in a stream, combining Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter. The site is still in beta, but it doesn’t track *enough* services for it to be my only source. I can’t add a blog feed for a friend, and I can’t link directly to a Facebook friend’s wall or my inbox to reply to one person. However, on days I can’t lurk on Twhirl, catching up with a quick scan of SocialThing once or twice a day has been invaluable in keeping me in touch with what my friends are doing and saying.
So I’ve also been playing with FriendFeed, but like Goldilocks, it’s not quite right either, mainly because your friends have to already use the service in order for you to see their updates. Unlike SocialThing, FriendFeed relies on the user to enter all of her accounts into a profile that others can then subscribe to within the site. But most of my friends don’t have profiles there, so while FF supports many more social networks than ST, it’s less useful in the long run because I’m missing most of my friends’ updates.
I’ve decided I need the automatic import of SocialThing (as well as the flow of it) with the expansiveness of FriendFeed in a desktop client like Twhirl. I would prefer a tool that lets me access my socialstream on the web, via a client, or on my cell phone, letting me choose which method works best for me at any particular moment, but right now I’ll take whatever I can get. I thought Mugshot might be it, but I couldn’t get it to work properly (it wouldn’t show updates from my friends). I don’t think we’re far off from the first really useful social aggregator, but it can’t get here soon enough.
Smartphones
I want to stress again that if you can take advantage of having your updates from your friends lifestreamed to your phone via text messages, it will help you feel more connected to them and remove some of that guilt of not checking sites manually. But I want to stress just as equally that you should not let that stream take over your “real” life. I’m always shocked to hear that someone won’t buy a cell phone because they don’t want to always be answering it or that they don’t want to always be connected.
People assume that I’m always on my cell phone and at times I am. But there are just as many times I’m not, and I don’t let it dictate my behavior. If I don’t recognize the phone number of a calller or if I don’t feel like it at that particular moment, I don’t answer the phone. And just because my phone pulls in new email every hour doesn’t mean I actually check it every hour. In fact, I really only check it when I’m waiting for an elevator at work (which actually happens quite a bit), not needed for the current discussion in a meeting, standing in line at a store, riding on the bus, or some other situation of my choosing.
So yes, I get a lot of use out of my phone to help me keep up, but I’m also good about ignoring it, especially if I’m out with friends or doing other things. I do think this is a learned behavior, one that we need to teach our kids, and we need to be good role models for this. Being connected but offline requires skill, just like being online but disconnected does (if you’re doing this, you know what I mean). If technology is making you feel guilty, examine the sites you use to see if there are alternative ways to access certain pieces of them and figure out if they might work better for you. The future of the interwebs is in shifting services to where the user is instead of forcing them to come to the services. Take advantage of that and let go of the guilt that you can’t digest everything (another skill we need to learn and teach others). As I said at the Computers in Libraries conference last month, do you feel guilty that you don’t read every book that comes into your library? Disappointed maybe, but I’ll bet you don’t feel guilty.
So those are a few of my quick thoughts about all of this. I’d love to hear how you’re using some of the new sites and tools to find some balance.

I’ll be interested to see this game from the Orange County Library System (FL) when it becomes available on May 15.

Citricon: Library Defender

Watch for more in a couple of days at http://www.ocls.info/citricon/.

I completely forgot to post here that I was doing a “Casual Conversation” interview with Tom Peters this past Friday – sorry, Tom! – but you can still go back and listen to the session online. I had a lot of fun, and I’d like to thank everyone who listened in. I really enjoyed the format, and it was like sitting on the porch chatting, mostly due to the fact that Tom is such a genial host.
If you’d like to listen to the conversation, there’s a streaming audio version, or you can download an MP3 to take with you.
You can view the full list of folks Tom will end up talking to at http://article.gmane.org/gmane.education.web4lib/11314/, and they’ll all be archived at http://www.opal-online.org/archivelis.htm. They’re an hour long and have a frequency of about once a month.
Thanks for doing this, Tom, and I don’t mean just with me. I was honored to be part of this series.

I have a lot going on at work right now, which is one reason I haven’t been posting much to my blog. I’m going to talk a little more about MPOW here, as some of my projects are kicking into gear and will have some visible results during the next few months. The gaming piece is getting really interesting, and I hope to have some big news to report soon.
In the meantime, though, we’ve opened the Call for Presenters for the 2008 ALA TechSource Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium which will take place on November 2-4, 2008, in the Chicago area. We’re capping the event at 350 people, and last year we sold out at 300, so sign up early when we open registration on Monday, May 12.
We’ve already got an exciting program shaping up. Our keynote speakers include:

• Marc Prensky, author of Don’t Bother Me Mom, I’m Learning
• Dr. Lawrence Kutner, author of Grand Theft Childhood
• Andrew Bub, GamerDad

We’re also going to have another open gaming night for video and board games, some hands-on workshops (and not for playing videogames), and much more. If you want to be part of the program, the deadline for submitting a proposal is June 15, 2008, so don’t tarry too long. Thank yous to ACRL, ALSC, and LITA for collaborating with TechSource on this year’s Symposium.
More on GLLS2008 as it develops, because we’re going to a new level with it this year!