EDIT 7/10/08: Audio from session available!
20 people attended the games and gaming member interest group meeting Saturday at 10AM. The mission of the group is to address larger issues of games and gaming in libraries. It’s a cross platform group not intended to take the place of divisional interest or discussion groups. One of our goals is in 3 years, to be a round table: 600 member signatures are needed. Member roles may include gaming ambassadors to get info to state conferences, liaisons to ALA divisions, liaisons to gaming vendors/industry, people to run gaming night, market our events and programs, and more.
Communication Venues for The Games & Gaming Member Interest Group:
Add your name to the member list at http://gaming.ala.org/resources/index.php?title=Games_and_Gaming_MIG_Members! ALA Community Spaces is coming, and there is a mailing list at http://lists.ala.org/wws/info/gaminginlibraries. Messages are being cross posted to the LibGaming group. Sign up at http://lists.ala.org/sympa/info/gaminginlibraries.
Resources
ALA Gaming Blog
The first half of the meeting was introductions and sharing. A rundown of some of the great projects from public, special, academic, school, and virtual librarians:
- Aligning games with AASL standards http:// sls.gvboces.org/gaming
- Aligning games with ACRL standards
- Syracuse Game Lab
- 21st century learning skills acquired in World of Warcraft
- Second Life, Game design classes, a Game Lab, LAN and online gaming, all at Imaginon
- Senior Center “Transforming life after 50” grant
- Online RPG to teach info lit skills
- Senior spaces @ old bridge library
- Bringing in materials to support use of games in curriculum, and investigating games for info lit at UIUC @ urbana champaign
- Game collection for circulation to university students
- Public library gaming in 21 libraries in Columbus OH, with a tournament to utilize AADL software
- Console based gaming @ Hennepin County Library System
- University of CA-Davis in Second Life
- Gen Con Trade Day for Educators – using games for curriculum
We gave a quick overview of proceedings at Open Gaming Night, which was only a preamble for annual 2009. Open Gaming Night and the Gaming Pavilion have been well covered by ALA press. Verizon Foundation welcomed us, and Presidential Citations for Gaming presented by Loriene Roy. (winners were Brian Myers of the Wilmette Public Library, Julie Robinson, Branch Manager of the KCPL Ruiz Library, and David Ward and Mary Laskowski at the University of Illinois Library. For next year, we hope to have better PR, better signage, and assessment of the event. The program is a development of a Best Practices Model for Gaming Night for librarians at your local library conference
Shameless plugs followed:
- The new International Journal of Games and Computer Mediated Simulations is working on issue 2, deadline is ongoing.
- The Cartoon Network has a free game design software called Game Creator that reached 1 million users in the first month.
- In May, there was a scientific convergence conference in World of Warcraft on the Earthern Rings server Guild: US Science
- Check out a gaming literature review and survey on learning skills gained in WoW at http://whygames.pbwiki.com
- There is a Librarian Guild on WoW now, Kirin Tor server
Upcoming Events
Now-July 15
2007 Gaming Program Survey by Library Game Lab of Syracuse
July 9-10, 2008: Games Learning & Society in Madison Wisc
video of sessions will be posted at http://glsconference.org
August 14-17 2008
GenCon – Gaming Convention in Indianapolis, IN
Nov 2-4, 2008 Games Learning and Libraries Sympoisum, Oak Brook, IL
Register soon! One thing to look forward to this year: bathroom breaks!
November 2008
CA library association preconference for technology (will include gaming)
November 15 2008
National Gaming in Libraries Day
Hasbro is donating 16,000 copies of Pictureka for simultaneous play on Saturday November 15
2009 Program Planning followed. After tossing around ideas like Legalities of Gaming, How to Run Game Night at your Local Conference, and Games You’ve Never Heard Of, we settled on Gaming Advocacy program to highlight the value of games and go over talking points, and host a poster session at open gaming night to showcase games you’ve never heard of.
Join us in Denver for our next meeting, time, date and location to be announced!