What: Gaming (& Gadgets!) Night
Where: CIL 2008, Jefferson Room
When: Sunday, April 6th, 5:30-8:00 pm
How much: FREE
Who: You and other people interested in gaming

Aaron Schmidt and I have given a few gaming workshops at past Computers in Libraries and Internet Librarian conferences. After the sessions we’ve opened up the room to anyone interested in playing some games and/or learning about gaming. It’s proven to be a popular and really fun time, so this year Information Today has turned the post-workshop gameplay into a featured event. With refreshments even!

We’ve assembled an impressive array of games!

Systems: Nintendo Wii, Playstation 2, and Xbox 360. We’ll also have two Nintendo DS handhelds.

Games: Wii Sports, DDR, Hotel Dusk, Guitar Hero III, Professor Layton and the Curious Village, Wario Smooth Moves, whatever you bring, and Rock Band.

Since we’ll have three systems going at once, we’re opening up the option of an honest to goodness tournament with prizes. You probably want to know which game, huh? Well, it’s up to you. Sign up in the comments on Aaron’s post or at a page we’ve created on the CIL08 wiki titled CIL08 Gaming Night to play Rock Band, Guitar Hero, or DDR. We’ll play whichever game gets the most signups!

In addition, Chris Harris is bringing some modern board games for some casual play (I may bring a couple, too). Bring your own games, bring your latest shiny, new gadgets, and we’ll see you Sunday night!

Putting for Dollars: Library Raises More than $10,000 with Golf Fundraiser

“Winter winds and swirling snow failed to dampen the enthusiasm that greeted the inaugural miniature golf championship held at the Southworth Library on Dartmouth Street on Sunday afternoon.

‘We were a bit worried when we saw the snow, but we had a great turnout in spite of the weather,’ said Dolly Sharek, treasurer of the library foundation. ‘We had 274 golfers sign up, and we raised just over $10,000.’

As attendance reached its peak at around 2 p.m., all of the 100 putters borrowed for the occasion were in use on the 18-hole course that wound its way around the stacks on both floors, and a line had formed at the registration table.

Golfers of all ages were challenged by the unique aspect of the library course, which explored all corners of the building with a 10th hole that teed off on the second floor and finished on the first.

Some of those taking on the newly installed circuit were evidently more practiced than others.

The seventh hole brought library trustee Paul Pereira to his knees — and it was not to line up a putt. He was trying to retrieve his ball from beneath one of the stacks.” [SouthCoastToday.com]

Game On at the Undergraduate Library

“The upcoming November 3rd event is co-sponsored by the [UIUC] Undergraduate Library and the Sousa Archive and Center for American Music and is part of the celebration of American Music Month. The evening will focus on music in gaming and will include speakers from the Department of Music as well as industry experts from Volition, a growing gaming company in Champaign. The event will also introduce a game created by campus researchers (Musiverse).

Gaming at the library - come to play, come to learn. Game On!” [@ Your Service]

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.

There were many reasons I hosted the ALA TechSource Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium this past July, not the least of which was to share with others the breadth of gaming services libraries can offer. The fact that I got to meet some of my heroes (like Henry Jenkins and James Paul Gee), as well as meet new people doing interesting things around gaming, was rich and tasty gravy.

Two of those people were Mark Engelbrecht and Martin House from the Public Library of Charlotte Mecklenburg County, who received a $69,000 LSTA grant to study gaming for adults last year. There’s a reason we talk so much about the kids and the teenagers when it comes to gaming in libraries, but we can’t forget that there are valid gaming services for 20somethings, 30somethings, families, parents, boomers, seniors, and pretty much everyone else who enjoys games. So their session at the Symposium was high on my list to hear but as it turns out, when you host an event like this, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll actually get to see much of the presentations. So I missed almost all of their talk, and unfortunately we didn’t have video of it. There is audio, which you can grab to listen to here, and I highly recommend you do that.

But now, you can also read (and subscribe) to Martin House’s new blog Technaeum, where he will be posting excerpts of their research and data from the grant. I’m thrilled about this, because it solidifies 2007 as the first year we started getting actual numbers of any kind surrounding gaming in libraries, and just like Scott Nicholson’s data, PLCMC’s numbers are fascinating.

Gaming and Libraries: Reference Ain’t Dead

“As an indication that reference really ‘ain’t’ dead, I would like to share some research with you from an LSTA Innovations Grant. The library received $69,000 to create gaming programs for adults and study the impact of these events in terms of their library use. What we found is that the single biggest reason patrons cited for coming to the library was reference, or an informational need….

…libraries today are still faced with the age old charge, being ‘The People’s University.’ If my research is any indication of this, libraries are more needed than ever due to people’s needs to have knowledgeable professionals guide them through the world of information overload - oh and bad information too boot.

There is also a very good indication that patron who attended the gaming programs frequented the library more in subsequent months.”

Be sure to read the rest of Martin’s post and to check back or subscribe to his blog, because he will be posting about their research regularly. Thanks, Martin - this is a huge contribution to the profession.

A few things I’ve wanted to blog about in-depth but am just throwing out there for now.

• Paul over at ResearchQuest beat me to the punch to post about Carnegie Mellon University’s Library Arcade. This is a must-read, must-play combo for all library staff interested in using gaming in instruction. Heck, maybe we should have a leaderboard on this one. I love the idea of adapting an old school style game (like “Diner Dash”) but putting a library spin on it.
• When I wasn’t looking, Penn State turned its Virtual Worlds blog into a big ol’ Educational Gaming Commons, now with forums in addition to the blog.
• Chris attended the Games, Learning, and Society Conference back in July (the one that I also went to), and you can read his notes over on LibLaureate. In his reflections on James Paul Gee’s opening keynote, Chris wrote, “When do we reach a threshold and go grab a walk-through or a cheat code? Is this the importance of social networks - I’ve reached so far and now I need some help?” That’s a great question, and I think the answer is yes.
• At Learning2007 later this month, they’re going to do a Rapid Learning Game Experiment. While the exercise itself is fascinating, it’s the last sentence that intrigues me most (emphasis is mine).

  “We are going to push Gaming for Learning Development to the max in an upcoming experiment. Here are the ingredients:

  • Take several undergraduate students from Champlain College’s Electronic Gaming & Interactive Development Program in Vermont and bring them to Orlando for Learning 2007.
  • Give them an assignment to create a Learning Focused Game, defined by a group of companies at Learning 2007.
  • Over the next 58 hours, in full view of 2,000 participants - with feedback every few hours - they will build an web based immersive learning game.
  • This learning activity will then be reviewed, edited and released into Open Source for the entire global community to use.“
• The following video is just awesome in every sense of the word. I laughed, I cried, and then I laughed some more. Watch the whole thing to find out who’s behind it. Not only is it an object lesson in how social gaming can be and how libraries could implement it, but it’s also a great marketing lesson for us. I’ll definitely be showing snippets of this one in my presentations.