Category Archives: gaming in libraries

museum GPS game

The idea of making the public library experience more game like has been stewing in my head for some time now, so it was with great interest I saw a blog post about The land of oppertunities. A Danish museum had a game created to enhance the experience of their visitors. I can see why this would work. People can develop a relationship with the space and information instead of simply walking around and looking at objects. The game forces engagement. It works via GPS enabled phones which doesn’t help us in the United States right now (though I’m sure that’ll be widespread soon enough).

I’m especially interested in the possible dichotomy of striving to break down barriers to library use (making it easy) and creating an environment in which people must become engaged (and put forth effort) to use. Could the goal of making our OPACs mindlessly easy be a bad idea after all? What if we made our goal mindfully easy OPACs that were actually interesting to use? The ideal goal, I suppose, would be one that’s easy for all to use and also contains various layers of interestingness for those who would like to delve deeper. Our current mindfully difficult OPACs incorporate risk, experimentation, and the need for persistence and collaboration, but not in an appropriate way. Make no small plans, eh?

One reason I’m keen on providing a gaming-like experience for interested library patrons is the success I’ve had with it on a small scale. Wanting the kids from the computer room to interact with the print collection (so old fashioned, I know), one day I offered some manga stickers to the first few people to a) find a book that they’ve read and liked and b) tell me about it. They actually scurried around the YA section with the enthusiasm they usually reserve for Runescape. I repeated the game a few times, and during the last few rounds a few of the boys found books and told me about them immediately. When I asked how they found their books so quickly, they replied that they figured that I would ask them the same question at some point, so they tried to remember the titles and authors of books they liked.

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Pasta&Vingear has some more comments on the museum game, and there’s a video about it, though it is Danish language.

Multnomah County Library’s Central Library is a really neat building. When I first visited I wished there was a guided tour that I (and other patrons) could take. Hanging in the library are all sorts of portraits that I don’t know anything about, neat details on the staircases and a great sculpture of a big tree in the kids section. Maybe there’s a pamphlet about the building but I didn’t seek one out.

It would be really great if MCL would record an audio tour and have it available as an MP3 on their website. With adequate promotion I’m certain they’d have people wandering around the library wearing their earbuds learning about the library building. The tour could even be a game. Clues could be left around the library, players could be given a sheet to fill out as they find the clues, and the results could be turned in to a Reference Librarian on duty. Expanding this idea, they could do an audio walking (or cycling!) tour version of their successful Branches and Byways which highlights the neighborhoods around MCL branches. I’ve heard these pages – library produced content – are the most popular pages on their site.

I don’t mean to be telling MCL what to do. I’ve just used them as an example because they’re my home library and I love the Central Library (and my branch – Belmont rules!). In other words, these ideas aren’t limited to Multnomah County, right? Many libraries have interesting features or are situated in locations around something worth talking about. The main strip of North Plains is only three blocks long, but maybe there are some good tidbits to share. If not, I bet a driving tour of the surrounding area could work. The only cost involved in producing such an audio tour is staff time.

An ambitious library committed to follow through could make a variety of tours, assemble tours from staff and people in the community and podcast the series. Not sure people would be interested? AudioSnacks is a website all about user generated audio tours. The site has a commercial model, but some of the tours are free.

The Economist had a great article last week titled Not bound by anything that attempts to answer the question, “Now that books are being digitised, how will people read?”

One of the author’s central ideas is that books are migrating online and ceasing to be books. Take for example wikipedia. He also writes,

Many fantasy fans, for example, have already put aside books and logged on to “virtual worlds” such as “World of Warcraft”, in which muscular heroes and heroines get together to slay dragons and such like. Science fiction may go the same way, and is arguably already being created by “residents” of online worlds such as Second Life.

What makes this claim somewhat more interesting in that it is tempered with the statement that

Most stories, however, will never find a better medium than the paper-bound novel. That is because readers immersed in a storyline want above all not to be interrupted, and all online media teem with distractions (even a hyperlink is an interruption).

I don’t think all fantasy readers have set down print books though I’m sure some have. However, many people are certainly getting the same (or greater) satisfaction from games in addition to reading books. With sales of the Wii, Xbox 360, PS3 approaching 8 million units (and let’s not forget the 8.5 million World of Warcraft players), it is safe to say that more people are either replacing or supplementing their reading with gaming.

The article isn’t just about gaming. There’s an interesting bit about recapturing the oral nature of poetry though podcasting, and getting haiku text messages. Both of these things, by the way, are services that any library could offer at no real cost…

No, not your hair on a Monday morning. Natural disasters! If you have some time to spare, check out Stop Disasters which is a joint project of the UN and International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.

stop disasters

Each scenario is a different location with a specific natural hazard against which you must protect a village or town. The game does a great job of educating the player about making good decisions regarding fortifying the environment without being boring or dry. Another solid explicitly educational game to add to the list I put together at my post “quick educational gaming links.” No, maybe not as addictive as line rider, but still fun.

If you’re a librarian I bet you have a thing for words. Here’s the game for you. Verbotomy is a bit like a structured version of Wordie. However, instead of listing words that you like you’re presented with a definition and you have to create the word for it. Also included is a funny comic that is an example of the word in action. Today’s definition is:

DEFINITION: To offer non-denominational, inter-faith seasonal greetings, which are nevertheless a tad politically incorrect.

My first thoughts were tannenbomb and holigrate but you can do better.

The community of players votes on the words provided, and points are assigned.

There’s even a Verbotomy RSS page where you can grab your preferred flavor of feed so you don’t have to remember to go to the page.

Steffen P Walz, a game designer and cultural anthropologist designed a great navigation system for his website. There are four mini games, each an archetype of a game genera: Achiever, Killer, Explorer, and Socializer. When the website viewer/game player completes a small task, the content on the web page changes. There’s also a standard navigation bar.

The first librarian to implement something like this as the interface for the the YS/YA portion of their website will get the “walking paper seal of approval” and a big handshake from me. And importantly they’ll get more use of their website.

If you check out his site, Playbe’s Place, you can try the game based navigation and read his ideas about the “military entertainment complex,” pervasive computing, “suvelitainment,” and the game generation.

Have you played around with Line Rider yet? It is a brilliant little Flash game in which you draw the course for a sledding penguin. Seriously, take 5 minutes, get the hang of it, make your little guy race around. Done? Okay. Now take a look at this: Line Rider – Jagged Peak Adventure [YouTube]. Holy smokes, right? In fact, Line Rider stared a whole genre of YouTube videos. People make screencasts of their penguins in action, or they aim their digital camera and record the monitor! The videos include elaborate death scenes for the penguin, and some cute ones with cute music. In a sense, each one of these little videos tells a different story. See also Crazy for Line Rider, David Pogue’s post about the game.

User generated content can be so much more creative and entertaining than stuff put out by publishers. I know I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. Let’s have more interactivity and content creation on our library websites!

P.S. Another fun line drawing game is Paths

In Flickr I recently titled and tagged a photo of mine with the name of a movie. I clicked through to see what other photos were tagged with “videodrome” and found one that is part of a flickr group called NAME THAT FILM. Group members post screenshots of films (placing them in the group and tagging them with name that film. Other members attempt to figure out what film it’s from. Try it out!

This is fun stuff, but it is also slightly important. Flickr didn’t intend for people to play this game but it sprung up organically nevertheless. People are creative and will do neat things when they can interact with data on the web. Imagine if we could build something like this into our OPACs. Off the top of my head, what about having short passages listed (or letting people contribute them), the make the goal figuring out the book to which it belongs and posting a URL to the book’s OPAC record. Oh my! A game that would make people better at finding stuff in our collections.

I’m sure if our OPACs were social, people would come up with all sorts of games and most certainly interesting tags. Here are some tags I’d love to see:

A guy can dream, can’t he?

Yeah, this game nominally involves shooting aliens, but it is still great for typing practice! Everyone I’ve shown this too seemed to like it, so with any luck you will too. My high scores stink so I’m not telling.

As creatures approach, you need the correctly type the word underneath to, uh, neutralize them. Perfect for a few minutes of playing around and learning about games.

qwerty warriors

The LiB and I bombarded our audience for our SirsiDynix Institute program with a bunch of ideas and information. Since it was only an hour session, this left plenty of questions. We took some time to answer them, figuring they’ll be useful for more than the individuals that asked. Here they are.

How do I convince my library that it is safe to post pictures of events online (especially of teens), and to allow kids to do podcasts, etc.? My library is soooooo litigation scared.
This is the perfect opportunity to counter a why with a why not? Do the admin/board in question have any hard evidence about library getting into hot water for using pictures of their patrons? Libraries are public places and can be photographed. Indeed, private places open to the public can be photographed as well. Anyway, chances are they we’re all getting our pictures snapped more times per day than we’re aware. The worst that can happen is that someone asks for an image, podcast, print book review (whatever) be taken down. Then the library takes it down. This is unlikely to happen. I’m not saying that we should be publishing full names, ages, and Social Security Numbers, but a photo of some kids at the library? Of course! Here’s a decent article titled “New digital camera? Know how, where you can use it”

What if you have a board that definitely won’t allow im or chat? (they’ve been that way since we first received computers in 1996-patrons have complained to the board and they won’t budge!)
The board is certainly not doing their job if they haven’t even responded to *patrons* asking to use IM on the library’s computers. How long are the board member’s terms ;) Isn’t it their job to be representatives of the community? Perhaps showing them examples of what other libraries are doing with IM, without any troubles, would help your cause. They need to know that this policy is preventing the library from growing.

About IM, my board has banned IMing on our public access computers (concerns about predators, mostly. they see it as similar to chatrooms, which for them have negative connotations). How can i overcome this fear on their part? Any evidence, stats, or ways I can alleviate their fears about safety?
Take a look at the 2004 Pew Internet and American Life report on instant messaging: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/133/report_display.asp. As we mentioned during the presentation, these stats are old now, and the numbers now are much higher, but they show that IMing isn’t just for kids, and that’s it’s become a vital way for many people to communicate. For many, if you’re not available via IM, you don’t exist. Show them the huge list of libraries that are successfully offering reference services via IM. Tell them that many websites (like MySpace, Meebo, etc.) include a built-in IM feature that gets around any IM-ban they’ve put in place technologically, so there’s no way to really ban it. If people want to IM on your computers, they are finding a way. All the library does by banning it is make itself look technologically regressive and out of touch with what today’s users need from our computers.

Any suggestions for getting on user’s buddy list? we are an undergrad 4 year school.
The best way to get students to add your screen name to their buddy list is to provide great reference (or otherwise) service during hours convenient to them. IM enthusiasts will add their library’s screen name to their buddy lists out of convenience, just like they might bookmark their library’s website. It could be fun to hold some sort of contest, the addition of the library screen name as the entry, but there’s no good way to see who has done this

Difference betweem offering content for IPOD’s vs. the new play-a-ways?
The Playaway all-on-one audiobooks could be a decent option. However, they lack the mass appeal of the extremely popular ipod. The great thing about providing content for ipods (whether it is purchased audiobooks or library generated content) is that it uses technology that patrons are already using. It shows that the library understands the information preferences of its users, and is convenient for them to use.

When loaning ipods for borrowed books or music, do you lose some? They are expensive…
Yes, they aren’t cheap, but the TFML hasn’t lost any, and I haven’t heard of any other library with any theft issues. Libraries can set the replacement fee at a price of their choice.

How do we do IM reference when we are often not sitting down at the desk? We are often getting up and down for to help people and do projects.
Away messages can help with this. Setting an away message every time you get up will take some habituation, but it can be done. Otherwise, IM reference can always be done off desk.

Are you saying that it is alright for teens to play any type of games on the computer. I have seen some weird games being played
Heck yes! Weird is in the eye of the beholder. If it isn’t illegal (and I don’t know of any illegal games) libraries have no legitimate right to prevent people from playing it (or reading it, looking at it, etc). Anything short of this is censorship.

Do you think if you “market” these different venues (IM etc.) to teens, will it automatically crossover to adults?
I think services that are useful to teens are also useful to some adults. I also think that without appealing to teens and getting them interested in libraries, we won’t likely see them again until they have children and come back for storytime.

quick question about meebo…away message? Is there a way to set one up? I’ve just been logging off everytime I step away.
Look towards the top of your buddy list. The default is “I’m available.” Clicking there will let you change and customize your message.

What about cell phone disturbing other patrons?
Libraries already have noise/behavior policies in place. Enforce them—whether or not the user is using a cell phone, talking to a friend, or simply yelling to get attention. Address the behavior, not the technology…because the technology keeps changing and there’s no way to keep up.

When considering these changes, have you taken into consideration the security of the materials in the library?
We talked about a lot of different changes during our webcast, so we’re not sure we understand which ones you’re referring to that would in any way impact the security of library materials. We haven’t said anything about removing security strips, taking down the security gates, or leaving the doors unlocked—
which are the only things that would affect the security of library materials.

What is a blog?
Blog is short for “web log.” A blog is a website. That’s it. Most blogs are presented in a format where the newest entries are at the top, and older entries are automatically archived by date and/or subject. Blog software allows just about anyone to create a webpage—with no HTML coding skills necessary. Here is the Wikipedia entry on “blog”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

Do you have suggestions for helping school districts understand the BLOGS shouldn’t be blocked by filter…reason “personal page” – go figure!
First, I would ask WHY the institution is blocking them in the first place. If it’s simply because, as you say, it is a personal webpage, then I would counter with examples of helpful institutions and government agencies and educational groups that are blogging. The White House has blogs, for goodness sake! Schools and libraries have blogs! Authors and artists and teachers have blogs! I would also be curious as to how they are blocking blogs: are they blocking certain blogging websites (like Blogger, Typepad, etc.)? If that’s what they’re doing, there’s no way to catch every blog, as there are hundreds of blogging sites, and many sites have their own domain names so the filter wouldn’t catch them. Basically, their system isn’t even working.

What service provides the books via iPod? We can’t do that because of DRM that isn’t supported on iPods.
Unfortunately, there is no audio content service that sells in a platform environment (like Overdrive or NetLibrary’s Recorded Books) to libraries that also works with iPods/Macs. What libraries are doing is purchasing eBooks, as consumers, through either iTunes or Audible.com and then pre-loading them onto library iPods and checking the device out, or allowing users to bring in their own iPods and loading whatever book/album they want onto the user’s iPod.

How can we allow iPod use on our PCs? My understanding is that iTunes is so highly customized that it’s impossible to use in a multi-user environment.
iTunes can be installed on Macs and PCs. The library we discussed loaded all of their CDs into iTunes on their public computers. So…users could listen to the music on the library’s PCs without having the CD in hand. We’re not sure if the library allows people to bring their iPods in, actually, to transfer the files from the library’s iTunes account to their iPods. iTunes is an individual library of songs, but can be used in a multi-user environment. It just depends on what you’re trying to do.

I work in a multi-branch public library. Can you recommend online games that teens at my branch can play versus teens at another branch?
As Aaron replied to a similar question during the webcast, the best recommendation we can give you is to ask the teens in your area which games they would like to play. Some of the games that seem to work well in a competition environment, though, are those that go quickly so teens can take turns playing: driving/racing games and Dance Dance Revolution come to mind.

Hi – this was good – it’s 2am where I live so I’m off to bed. Have a happy day!
Thanks for getting up so early and listening!!