Scott Jeffries, Reference Librarian at Dallas Baptist University writes,
For four afternoons in November, the Dallas Baptist University Vance Memorial Library hosted their Are You As Smart As A Freshman? event. Patterned after the popular game show Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?, this event had 2nd-4th year students competing for prizes by answering questions that university freshman should be familiar with. They were able to use a panel of Freshmen as part of their “lifelines” as well as one of the library’s reference librarians …The intent of the event was to raise awareness of the library and its resources and to offer a fun outlet for students within the library’s facilities.
Gaming in libraries does not just mean video/computer games! Nice work!
I’ve been emailed a lot with questions similar to this one that appeared on the LibGaming google group.
I do have the question of whether there are legalities of using
Nintendo images/wallpaper images (located throughout their website) for our first upcoming gaming event?
You are in the clear. I was told by GolinHarris, Nintendo’s Marketing Firm, that using their Intellectual Property in promotional materials for a free library event is allowed and legal. You are promoting their products. They love that. =) There is no legal issue here. This is allowed, and even encouraged, by the rightsholders. Let me know if you have any other questions about this!
You all are playing around with the Nintendo DS, right? The awesome handheld gaming system that features titles such as (my favs) Brain Age, Cooking Mama, Trauma Unit, and the game that’s practically an interactive eBook – Hotel Dusk? It really is great device, and is, like the Nintendo Wii, fairly multi-generational.
Here’s a service station that a mall in Korea created. Whilst shopping, people can recharge their DSs, and clean their touch screens. This is a fantastic example of an institution understanding the habits of their customers. Not only should libraries be this understanding in general, but some might be able to replicate this particular service.
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.
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