The Ubiquitous Librarian

Rethinking Video Games in the Academic Library

Stacey Greenwell over at The Uncommon Commons recently wrote about their welcome event . She works at the U of Kentucky, so it shouldn't be a surprise that basketball hoops were involved.

She ends her post stating:

“I've gone so far as to submit a proposal to purchase a few consoles for the library.”

It's nice to see such enthusiasm, but I've recently started to turn against gaming in academic libraries. I think its fine for special events or if you want to disguise it as a “study break” session, but trying to brand your library as someplace cool because of Madden Tournaments or that you have a Wii or Playstation available for checkout is weak. You play to a niche, maybe a big niche, but ultimately I think it deteriorates the mission of the academic library.

I've spent some time this semester visiting GT dorms and frat houses and they all have commons spaces with screens and projectors available to them. The gimmick of using video games to lure students into the library is off base, at least for my population. Sure we could easily turn ourselves into an arcade, but we already have one of those on campus and it's only about 100 yards away from the library, so why should we duplicate that effort?

I think a stronger position for the academic library is to aspire to offer the premiere productivity and study space on campus. We should provide something that isn't offered elsewhere and that fills a stated need.

In the long run, a better generation of buzz is through programming and partnerships, gather than Xboxs. I was pleasantly surprised today when I clicked a random date on our events calendar and saw the wide variety of offerings:

Keep in mind, we're undersized, and personally I think under funded, yet Tech is an entrepreneurial and scrappy library. (That's a compliment!) I like that we push a varied agenda of experiences, and I feel that academic libraries should attempt to inspire students, not just entertain them.

And sure, someday we'll probably have video games available for checkout. We do have a leading game critic on our faculty, but conversations with my users reveal that they'd prefer nicer quiet study spaces and more computers and printers, rather than video game zones. It's a matter of priorities. For $1,000 we could buy a console and a load of games, but I think that would be “off code” with out intention. I also think that there are better opportunities for relaxation and leisure than this .

So Stacey, good luck with your effort. I'll be curious to follow your progress, but be mindful of the cause and effect of gaming in the library. I'd much rather have my students complain about a noisy Calculus 2 review group rather than a bunch of kids pretending to be guitar heroes. When gaming becomes a daily occurrence, it quickly loses it's charm.

Raising our Game – ideas for the next phase of Gaming @ the Georgia Tech Library

If you are a librarian with a blog then you have to mention gaming from time to time. This is my obligatory post. Here are a few upcoming projects -- a peek at what's on my drawing board.

POKER

Many librarians have expressed interest in our CeLIBration event. We're gearing up for this annual “welcome” event the weekend before the start of the Fall Semester. (Aug 18) This time around I am hosting a poker tournament (and we've still got ninja tag , speed dating , retro video games, board games, ddr , improv, and pizza.)

Poker, Round 1 begins at 8pm. 10 tables, each with up to 5 players. Participants are given 25 chips at the start. After 1 hour of play, the top chip-winners at each table will advance to the championship round starting at 10pm. Those 10 battle it out for a trophy and a fabulous prize.

I'll post a follow-up review of the event later this month, along with our advertising strategy.

HALO 3

Harry who? Halo is the gaming equivalent to Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings or Star Wars for you old timers. People will camp out at Best Buy in order to purchase this game. Halo 2 sold over 7 million copies -- we're talking $125 million on opening day. Epic!

This is a great opportunity for all types of libraries (academic and public) to be a part of pop-culture, or at least geeky gamer culture. I am going to try and talk our admin and commons coordinator into letting me host a Halo 3 party on Tuesday , September 25 (the release day.)

We have an 80 inch screen with surround sound that would be awesome. We can dim the lights or illuminate that particular area, pull up couches and comfortable chairs and really offer a unique gaming experience. Something like this in our East Commons:

 

If it goes forward, I might put in some calls to Red Bull or Monster (coca cola), GameTap (Turner), and Microsoft (xbox) to see if I can get a few giveaways. Maybe start at 7pm and roll until whenever (we're 24 hours so…)

It's something you should think about too; I highly recommend you take advantage of the opportunity... you could probably easily find an enthusiastic gamer (use your online social networking connections for more than chatting with other librarians) and invite them to bring their friends, xbox 360, and halo 3. You give them space and a big screen and maybe invest $100 in food or try to get it donated.

GAMING THE WALL (like gleaming the cube, dude!)

This idea developed today on the reference desk with Dottie Hunt – the last hour on the last day of the summer semester. We were talking about the “halo 3 experience” and she suggested that we project a game outside on the wall of the library. This conversation evolved to “gaming the wall” on a Saturday after a football game. We have thousands of people walk by the library in route to their cars—so why not offer a distraction? It would be cool to have an ncaa football video game projected on a huge wall, hooked up to speakers. Or maybe a battle royal type game? This could be a big payoff in terms of street cred.

We could do it Sept 29 (vs. Clemson) and develop that week into some type of gamer's heaven (remember Halo 3, Sept 25), but I like November 1 (Virginia Tech) better because it's a Thursday night game and it's Va Tech vs. Ga Tech -- outdoor gaming fits nicely into the “techie” stereotype. Plus it will be televised on ESPN. I would love to take on Herbstreit and he can even play with his gator bait team . Perhaps this is something we could tie in with Homecoming too… I'm sure we could get funding from someone somewhere? Obviously there is still a lot to be worked out, but I just like the idea of gaming on the wall.

For more info on gaming @ GT, check out Lori Critz's presentation . We don't mess around in our library:

Welcoming Freshmen Event - 2007 - (preview)

The murmurs have begun about what we’re going to do this year for our welcome freshmen event. Last year we had a decent turnout and I hope we can continue that success. I also hope we call it something other than CeLIBration, but people around here tend to like to stick with a name rather than mix it up.

The biggest lesson I learned last year was the need to make the activities structured more concurrently. For example, with speed-dating a patron needed to commit a full hour and consequently had to miss out on other activities. So I am going to strongly urge that we try to build everything into 30 minute segments.

Last year I co-hosted/co-coordinated speed-dating, which had a high turnout, but I have no interest into doing that again. I hope someone else will run with it this year. If anything, several of the patrons I spoke with said they’d like to see some type of formalized meet-and-greet activities in the form of a game or whatever. They liked spending a few minutes in the company of strangers. So with or without the dating structure, we have to do something.

This year I have two activities I am going to try to pull off:

1. I want to invite several football players to come in and accept the challenge from the student body to beat them at their own game: NCAA Football for Xbox or PlayStation. Rig up a few consoles and set the games to 10 minutes and see what happens. I’ve met several of the players and they are cool and approachable and I think they’d get a kick of out playing as themselves in a public setting. I think the students would enjoy it too—a chance to mingle with the athletes. Our season opens at Notre Dame and bank on it, GT will win.
   
2. The second idea I’m floating around is a poker tournament. Take 5 tables with maybe 4-7 players at each one, and play for 30 minutes and the winner (top number of chips) at each table advances to the championship. So later in the night those 5 winners go head to head in the finals.

In May we’ll start talking seriously about the event, but I’m looking forward to it.

Oh and you can’t tell me that Idol has better performers than Rockstar (well, you can but I’d disagree with you.) Here is the Rockstar version of a Stones classic, and here is the wanna-be-diva Idol version. Seriously.

Games @ the GT Library (CeLIBration, PART 4)

As I mentioned in part one , we had tried the LAN approach with mild success. The students that were into it were REALLY into it, but with less than 100 attendees two years in a row, it didn't make sense to continue targeting that niche. Our goal was to appeal to the widest group possible, so we scrapped the LAN plans. Here is what we did instead:

The Arcade

Background & Setup

Retro Gaming is hot right now! What's that? Old school games. Stuff that us Gen X kids grew up on. Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Atari. While modern game systems are sleek and offer complex challenges , there is just something cool about playing Super Mario Brothers. Essentially we turned our Multimedia Center into an arcade. This is a small area filled with Macs. We also offered Dance Dance Revolution , which had been popular at last year's event.

We cranked up the volume and it was packed all night.

Lessons Learned/Recommendations

• The sounds and noise from the games creating an exciting atmosphere.
• The area was too small. We thought it would be cozy, but it was cramped. Some people just wanted to watch and we could not accommodate the crowd.
• We needed more USB game controllers in order to create a realistic gaming experience. Using keyboards just wasn't the same.
• We offered a handful of game options, including Donkey Kong Country, Street Fighter, Mega Man, and Super Mario Bros. I would like to expand this, but you can only do so much.
• I would have liked to offer an unofficial NCAA Football Tournament. The Madden Tournaments are very popular and it could have been fun to incorporate the Georgia Tech team, especially with Notre Dame as the home opener. Or even if we had several rounds in which students play the computer (GT vs. UGA) and the highest winning score each round wins a prize. I would have liked to enable them to play against each other, however the impression was that students just wanted to play and wanted to watch and be watched.
• We had considered bringing in a Dreamcast , but decided against it because of space limitations.
• You need someone with emulator skills .

Board Games

Talk about retro-gaming! I'm sure lots of libraries offer board games for patrons to play. Again, we were not trying to be ground breaking here, just appeal to a wide audience. We didn't think too many people would play board games, but this was another area that was packed all night. Library staff were gracious enough to let us borrow a handful of games, including Yahtzee, Monopoly, Twister, and Risk. We built the area into a living room / coffee shop zone with the very relaxed vibe. Bean Bags. Couches. Tables and Chairs. Blankets.

A student asked if we were going to keep Risk in the library so she and her friends could play throughout the semester. We're talking about this, with the theory that providing leisure activities supports our goal of being more than just a place to study or do research, but also a comfortable, inviting, relaxing, social environment. (More on that in PART 6)

Marketing

FaceBook should give me an endorsement deal. Once more we were able to target students with interest in gaming. Of all the activities we promoted, this one received the more buzz. Student posting several comments to each other and there was tremendous excitement before they arrived.

See also:

• Gaming in Libraries
• Gaming: The Next Hot Technology for Libraries?

Some of my favorite retro games:

• Faxanadu
• Final Fantasy
• Pitfall II: Lost Caverns

Photos:

Ninja Tag @ the GT Library (CeLIBration, PART 3)

I was not very involved in this activity, other than helping to unscrew (and than re-screw) about 100 fluorescent lights. This was the brainchild of the stealthy Bonnie Tijerina . Bonnie is very involved with the Electronic Resources and Libraries Conference . Hmmm, Meredith is offering her content for free . ERL offers their content for free . ACRL, get a clue!

One of the things I liked about our CeLIBration crew was that it was very open and nimble. We had a little over $1,000 to spend and tossed around a ton of ideas. One that stuck was idea of playing tag in the library. Bonnie (and Charlene) ran this activitiy and sexed it up with a “Ninja” theme. Very successful!

Here's what Bonnie shared with me, combined with my observations.

Background & Setup

Initially we wanted to create a huge game of tag throughout the library, but we narrowed it down to most of one floor. This helped regarding containment of activities to just two floors of the building. We investigated the price and logistics of laser tag, but that could not be done, so we stuck with a game that was a blend of tag and capture the flag. To change it up a bit, we added a teamwork component. Students would compete in groups, with the winning team receiving movie tickets. 52 students participated in three sessions, however many students were turned away. We easily could have had 100+ willing participants.

To make it more interesting and difficult, we turned off all the lights and installed several black lights and a strobe light. We did this in a space with lots of tables and cubicles so that we could rearrange the environment and create a maze with various obstacles. Knowing that ninjas are cool with kids these days, we decided to call it Ninja Tag, and emphasized the need to be ninja-like to tag out the opposing team.

Students were placed on one of two teams, and wore colored reflective tape to identify their side. The goal was to remove a white tag that was attached to the tape of the opposing team, while running throughout the maze with loud dance music blaring.

Supplies & Costs

• 12 Black Lights (new) $190
• 1 Strobe Light (used) $10
• Movie Tickets for 3 rounds: $150
• Sign-up Sheets
• Cubicles & Tables
• Colored Electrical Tape
• Music! Helps if you have a PA system.

Total: $350

Prep Time and Staffing

1 hour set-up and 1 hour take down with the help of 5-6 people. During tag matches, 3 - 4 people serving as referees, preferably dressed in white so as to be easily identified.

What students said

Students, especially male students, LOVED it! They had many suggestions including:

• Increase the number of players on each team (we tried to limit teams to 8 players)
• Having tag throughout the entire library.
• Having tag throughout the school year.
• Making it a tournament.
• Letting people wear two tags, essentially two lives, to prolong game play.

Some players bonded through teamwork and created names, such as “Team KILL” and “Team Sexy Beasts.”

Students also didn't seem to care about the prizes. They just wanted to play and wanted their friends to be on their team – that was more important than a prize. Bragging rights were very important.

Lessons Learned/Recommendations  

• It helps to actually know what young people are into. We gained invaluable knowledge from someone close to their age.
• The colors we used (pink & red) were a little too similar. Next time we plan to use a wider spectrum to include blue and yellow.
• Students wanted to keep playing. It's an adrenal rush for a few minutes and they wanted more.
• Many students went home and changed into dark clothes (ninja attire) once they discovered the game.
• We're considering running a tag tournament over the semester, or at least hosting another night organized into a tournament style game.
• Having tag on multiple floors would increase the challenge. We could create multiple mazes or black lit zones, however areas of total darkness (shadow zones) are intriguing too.
• Having multiple teams playing simultaneously would also increase the difficulty, as well as allow more people to play.
• Facebook! 16 students listed ‘tag' on their profile. 127 listed ninja. This allowed us to directly market the event. We're also forming a FB group to build anticipation for future events. This will allow us to create a community of interested ‘tag' students. We'll also probably advertise widely on campus, and try to get people signed up early.
• Maybe we could form an actual Campus Club called Ninja Tag, and host monthly events in various locations. Students seemed passionate about the game, so why not let them play? And why not let SGA pay for it?

  Photos