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“Five Mistakes We’re Making” by Liz Danforth @ Library Journal
“Five Mistakes We’re Making” by Liz Danforth @ Library Journal
This highly inspiring article comes to us from Liz Danforth at Library Journal. Great stuff here. I’m feeling particulary inspired by number five on her list “WE DON’T BROADEN THE EXPERIENCE”
One simple thing that I’ve found that really works is to provide users at a gaming program with a collection of strategy guides. When they’re not playing, they’ll be reading and analyzing strategies for a game. Make sure you advertise your gaming strategy guides collection well and the users will flock to it. This pulls them into the library and will introduce them to an even bigger world of things for them to discover…
This entry was posted by JustinLibrarian on January 19, 2010 at 7:22 am, and is filed under 8BitLibrarian Justin Hoenke, list, news. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0.You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.
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#3 written by Liz Danforth 2 years agoThanks for putting this out further, Justin! I’m surprised by the response that particular post has gotten, but pleased.
I agree with Brandon insofar as #1 is what I see as the minimum requirement. Play. Give a d*mn about what you’re doing.
But I’m pleased how you picked up the “broaden the experience” aspect because I think that’s where gaming librarians can really soar. There is SO much more we can do than just play or have our patrons play. I’d love to see programs like the philosophy one I suggest (I’m reading “World of Warcraft and Philosophy” and it’s blowing my socks off), or any of the other tangential ideas that are rooted in game experiences.
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I had a great talk with Allen Kesinger about this very subject when I was interviewing him for the post here — why not use games as a gateway to direct patrons to other things they might enjoy? One example — Bioshock players, check out Atlas Shrugged.
There’s no reason why we can’t create these opportunities and linkages for our patrons, with programs or displays or flyers — but before we can do that, Liz’s #1 point is critical.
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Not broadening the experience is a big mistake, but a bigger one is #1 on her list: We’re not playing. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a gamer first, a librarian second–and I’m sure that has something to do with my feelings on this–but I will never get over how many librarians want to do gaming programs but seem uninterested in actually playing the games themselves. You can only supplement gaming expertise so much: you need to be at least a casual gamer if you’re going to offer gaming in your library. You don’t conduct book talks without at least reading a summary of the book, do you?