So, you are reading this on the OLD 8bitlibrary.com. 8bitlibrary.com no longer redirects here (to blog.8bitlibrary.com). Here’s JP’s “farewell” post to the blog…but first, some nostalgia…

In 2009, JP Porcaro and Justin Hoenke met for drinks and found out they were both ALA Emerging Leaders for the upcoming year. Our bromance continued with daily IM chats until Justin one day said:

Let’s start a librarygarden of gaming.

So, we did. We really started taking off and getting hits when Justin made a joke on twitter:

Let’s all get library tattoos.

And I was like, YEA LET’S DO IT. And that’s how this whole thing happened…Justin & I would brainstorm crazy ideas, and if they were just crazy enough to work, i’d #makeithappen. So we started Project Brand Yourself a Librarian, librarians shared it like crazy, and a bunch of librarians got tattoos.

So from the very start, within weeks, we strayed from the original “library garden of gaming” idea.

We came up with other crazy ideas and made them happen:

• ALA DANCE PARTY (and other parties like the NJLA ones and the ACRL Social)
• #TeamRock8
• The Adventures of Flat Justin
• Think Tank (which grew into ALA Think Tank, facebook’s largest active group of international ideas-sharing for librarians)
• Cranky Kong, librarianship’s oldest blogger.

We also had lots of fabulous contributors, almost all the top names in the field of “gaming in libraries” either wrote for us or were considered part of the team.

And then we shifted from crazy ideas to more traditional ones:

• We ran the petition to start a the ALA Comic Book & Graphic Novel Member Interest Group, and with the help of everyone who sent in an online signature, we made it happen at ALA Mid Winter 2011.
• We ran National Unconference Day ’11, a hybrid online & in-person conference. We had fabulous lightning talks at it by Michael Stephens, Jaime Hammond, and Eli Neiberger.
• We became the largest active source for game reviews for librarians, and eventually lead the charge to make GameRT a reality.
• We hosted Retro Gaming Days all over New Jersey.
• Got involved in Buy India a Library.
• Launched #makeithappen and inspired MIH.
• Launched #libgaming (which has since died, sad sad…)
• We ran webinars.

In our heyday, we were getting about 4000 clicks a day (which is BIG for library blogs), and alexa.com had us listed as one of the highest trafficked library blogs. The only blogs that were getting higher traffic at the time were the ‘official’ ones; the LJ, SLJ and some of ALA ones…

Lots of success here in a short period of time, maybe moreso than any other library blog. So why did we let blog.8bitlibrary.com “die”?

• All of our contributors are doing other things.

We all got busy. 8bitlibrary lead us to publication deals, speaking gigs, new jobs, and new leadership opportunities. Now that GameRT exists, we have a more formal place to do our gaming-in-libraries work.

• Blogging is boring.

We should have figured out from day 1 that blogging was not what we were about. We were a successful BRAND, but never a good BLOG. All of the successes I listed had more to do with 8bitlibrary as a brand, and less to do with blog.8bitlibrary.com.

• WordPress sucks.

The blog was constantly marred by slow load times, login problems for contributors, and errors on the user and contributor end. Anyone who was a frequent contributor knows what I mean when i say “500 Internal Server Error”

• We have better places to “publish”

Blogging is NOT publishing. We’ll get some game reviews actually published via GameRT hopefully soon!

SO WHERE DOES THAT LEAVE 8BITLIBRARY?!

When Justin posted this on the new 8bitlibrary.com, people FREAKED out (they though we were killing everything, the facebook page, the twitter, the tumblr (which is now the main site) and the blog) and I had to write this.

Where we’re left without the blog is where we always belonged: as the party people of librarianship. So we’re still gonna do all the stuff we used to do, like ALA DANCE PARTY, Project Brand Yourself a Librarian, and all the Think Tanks and subsequent parties…but we won’t have to worry about keeping up this illusion that we’re a “professional” library blog.

We’re still here.

#partyhard and #makeithappen,

JP

For those parents who believe that video games have no redeeming educational value, I simply ask you to sit down and watch your child for a while – not just once for a few minutes, but over a period of time. If we take the time to really pay attention – to put down our iPhones, step away from the TV, lay aside our book – and really watch them, we can see some amazing things. Some of those things are obvious. The can learn about history, art, music, adventure, and a wide array of other things that virtually all parent views as “beneficial learning.”

6 months ago i would have said “it’s the gaming-in-libraries blog”! And I’m not, 6 months later, saying that statement is wrong. But we’re about a bigger issue, and that is: “we’re the #makeithappen blog“.

In libraries, #makeithappen is a taking new exciting ideas and seeing them through to the end. It’s the blog about all the really cool new stuff people are actually doing in libraries.

I had the opportunity to watch the Joaquim Phoenix movie I’m Still Here thanks to the Netflix instant queue. It was a great documentary about Joachim trying to become a Hip-Hop star. I won’t give spoilers, but the end, to say the least, “leaves you wondering”.

Tonight, again because of the Netflix Instant Queue on Xbox, I got to see the 1998 documentary Wrestling with Shadows, which ultimately chronicles the end of Bret Hitman Hart’s WWF career, with the Montreal Screwjob being the crux of the story. Everyone KNOWS wrestling is scripted, and the movie takes you through the process of how wrestling IS scripted. However, the end of the movie is the story of a script gone wrong, where the person who was supposed to win was “screwed”. In the 90s wrestling era, this was a defining moment of “OMG, wrestling can be REAL sometimes!!!”.

When the movie started, I felt that the fact that a documentary was being recorded at the convenient moment when the ultimate wrestling “real” outcome (vs the usual fake wrestling) was proof that even at the time wrestling was “real”, it was also an elaborate hoax.

I suggested to my wife that this would be a great program for a library (like a book discussion, but with movies instead of books). Show both movies and have people discuss the fictional and the factual elements of both, and maybe try to decide which told a better fictional but factual story.

My wife said “this doesn’t belong in libraries“. There’s lots of dicks, boobs, balls, sex, and drug use in the Joachim movie after all, and the wrestling movie was full of violence: everything we love to censor.

I thought back to all the books I have read since becoming a librarian. Lots worse violence. Way more sex and drug use. Much more graphic violence. They are making a MOVIE out of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, after all! As an aside, that book was set right in the same historical period as the Montreal Screwjob.

I said to myself: WHY is it ok to have certain forms of “inappropriate” expression in books but not movies? Why do we treat some forms of media as sacred, and other forms as dirty?

This, of course, is also what 8bitlibrary.com is about. We believe that storytelling media shouldn’t be judged just because it is presented in a certain media format and not another.

And so, I ask, how have libraries dealt with “controversial” content in one form of media that is less-controversial in other forms? We already know that some library board in the middle of nowhere decided to ban their library from showing the Michael Moore movie Sicko just because they didn’t agree with the argument the movie made. I’m sure they already own books that make similar arguments, and no one cares. Cranky Kong, Donkey Kong’s grandfather, would probably applaud their ban.

So, should libraries ban content in some formats and not others? And, do you feel like 8bitlibrary.com is just a “gaming blog”, or do you feel like we talk about gaming so much because we are touching on an issue that is really relevant to current libraries?

I wrote an article in January 2011′s School Library Journal along with 8bitlibrary.com contributor Beth Gallaway on the USA Supreme Court Case on First Amendment Rights and how they apply to video game content (vs, say, the same content in a Bugs Bunny cartoon). Same issue, different media format.

I would really love to get a convo going, either here, on twitter, or on facebook, about what you think!!!

Thanks for reading, true believers.

#makeithappen!

Here’s the PDF with the details.

WHY: Killing Floor is a cooperative game; players work together to achieve a common goal–namely, killing zombie-like creatures.  It promotes and encourages good communication skills, communal strategy development, and watching your friends’ back.  Like most multiplayer FPS games of late, Killing Floor uses a class system.  Before each game, players pick one of several perks, which gives boons to weapons and abilities and discounts to items at the trader.  For example, the Commando perk grants the player additional damage with assault rifle weapons, faster reloading, and a discount on assault rifles at the trader.  Sharpshooters get damage bonuses on headshots.  Support Specialists can weld doors faster.  If your skill with the keyboard-and-mouse doesn’t allow you to be a pinpoint sniper, maybe you want to be a Field Medic, whose primary responsibility is to heal your teammates.  Like things that go ‘splodey?  Then you’re fit for Demolitions, who specialize in grenade launchers and other explosive weaponry.  With the players relying on each other so heavily, everybody has a place in this game.

WHO: With this being a cooperative games as opposed to a competitive one, gamers who want to work as a team in an intense game play environment but don’t want the difficult experience that competitive play can be will find much to love here. However, between the constant threat of danger, impending sense of doom, often panicked pace, and buckets and buckets of gore, this is NOT a game for children or the faint of heart.  If the films 28 Days Later or its sequel 28 Weeks Later is too much for you, this game is probably too much as well.  Also, most libraries focus on games as a service for kids and teens, but there are lots of adults that game as well–this would be an ideal game for an adults-only gaming night, what with the blood and violence and disturbing imagery.

WHY?Aside from tense game play and a so-simple-its-complicated plot, Limbo challenges gamers on another level as well.  The main character is a boy–that’s made very clear–and he dies many gruesome deaths (it’s part of the game play actually: sometimes, the only way to figure out a puzzle is to die so that you may start over again).  These deaths are always shown in silhouette, so it’s not as graphic as it could be, but some of the imagery is unsettling, especially when cast against the frightening environments (chiefly a forest and a factory).  It’s the kind of game that makes you ask question of yourself and challenges you to confront realities you’d rather not–it’s a video game that is unquestionably art.  And what better institution to take a stake in this game-that-is-art than a library?

WHO? Limbo is not a game for the younger set; I’ll even break proper librarian protocol by skipping over the “it’s up to each parent to determine what is appropriate for their child” disclaimer, as I don’t see how any parent could let their child play this unless they were quite, quite mature.  Despite it’s brutal difficulty and open-ended, philosophical narrative, the disturbing imagery was almost too much for me; I can only imagine how terrible it would be for a child.  There is an option to turn off the gore in the game, so it’s possible to experience the game without the death scenes, but I’m not so sure it would be as memorable an experience were the game play the only thing the gamer experienced; without the philosophical pondering, the game might seem a bit too difficult and therefore a bit too not-worth-it.  Gamers with a good deal of patience, an open mind, and a willingness to be challenged on an emotional level will find lots to love here.

NJ has a truly great library community.

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Simple & easy shared library ideas – August 2010

Ways to Engage Patrons
Front Desk Raffle
Run a fun contest at the circ desk every few months (e.g. get a quote from a book, display it and have patrons guess origin of quote. Those who guess correctly are entered into a drawing to win something simple (a gift card to Starbucks, DD, etc)

Raffle Ticket Inside Book
Variation of above, but put a “raffle” ticket inside books so people will be surprised when they find the ticket. (Bestsellers, hot movers, etc). The raffle ticket could even ask people for their opinion of the book.

Summer storytime

Does your town have a pool or a lake? There’s no law that says storytime must always be offered at the library. One library does a special storytime at the pool during the summer.

Book Bingo for the Whole Family

“Join us to play Bingo and win a book! All ages welcome, parents and grandparents too! No registration required.” All you need is some refreshments and some books as prizes (they use donated books so there is no cost aside from the refreshments). This has been very popular – the library who ran this had over 70 people in July.

Adult Summer Reading Program
A librarian writes: Based on this year’s water theme, we expended to the elements in general. We asked people to read a book or watch a DVD concerning the elements. We provided a list of suggestions to get them going. For each title, they fill out an entry slip for a drawing. We’ll do a drawing for some mugs at the end of August.

Teen summer reading program
At Long Hill we run both a teen and an adult summer reading program. For each book the patron reads or listens to, they fill out a raffle ticket. We draw winners weekly, and they win either a mug or a book (we use donated books as prizes). At the end of the summer we have one grand prize teen winner and one grand prize adult winner, each win a $25 gift card to Borders. We also offer the option for the patron to review the book, and we post their reviews on our library blog.

Storytime for Grownups

Because why should kids have all the fun?

Blind Date with a Book

In late January/early February, wrap up some books in brown paper, decorate with Valentine’s Day theme and encourage patrons to choose one to take home. Long Hill did this last year, it was fun and patrons enjoyed the opportunity to check out a book they might not otherwise have chosen.

Happy Holidays from the Library Staff!

Engage the staff by asking them to recommend holiday or winter themed books or DVDs. Then create a bookmark with their recommendations and give it out to library patrons.

Sharing Our Knowledge w/ Patrons
Staff Picks/May We Recommend?
Display backlist titles or staff picks that people may not have had a chance to read, at the front desk. You’d be surprised at how the staff picks fly off the desk. One caveat: pick books that are in good shape with interesting cover art. They are more likely to catch patrons’ interest.

If You Like cards in the stacks near popular authors

“If you like James Patterson you might also like….” these have been very popular at our library, I am happy to share the cards with anyone who wants to use and/or modify them.

Help patrons find their way around Nonfiction with shelf end cards that include not only the Dewey numbers but the subject patrons will find within that Dewey range – e.g 910.202 – 940.54 Geography, Travel, Ancient History or 600 – 618.24 Nutrition & diets, health & medicine

Recent Returns cart
In front of the circ desk, we have a cart where we put recently returned new books. We deliberately put the cart next to the book drop at the desk, because right after people drop off their old set of books is when they’re looking for new stuff to read. It cuts down on shelving, gives people a smaller section of books to browse.

“Bestsellers You Haven’t Read Yet”
Create a new section right next to New Fiction (or even use a folding bookcase or cart in front of the circ desk) with colorful books by big authors (Grisham, Roberts, Patterson, Picoult etc). You could even do a variation on the theme and do a “Best Books You Haven’t Heard Of” or a “Staff Picks” section. Assign someone to keep the display fresh and replenish it when necessary.

Get those oversized books circulating!
A librarian writes: “One thing we do is combine our browsing shelf with two lower shelves, and we choose a selection of oversized books there. Our oversized books tend not to go out as much as the other books, mainly because they are shelved separately. By showcasing them, not only do they go out, but people will go to the oversize shelves more than before.”

Oversized art books
One library I visited has a special set of shelving near the circ desk where they display oversized art books. As soon as they created this special section, the circulation of this type of book skyrocketed.

Summer Reading Lists
Make sure you have printouts of the local schools’ summer reading lists (both required, and recommended), and put them in binders. It may also be nice to post links to the reading lists on your library’s web site. We didn’t have the K – grade 5 recommended reading lists printed out until one of our staff members mentioned that she was getting a lot of requests for them. So I talked to the elementary school librarian and got the lists, then printed them & posted on our website.

Creative use of volunteers
Reading Buddies (teen volunteers)
Teen volunteers come in to read to little kids. Great all year round but especially during the summer when you have all those teens who want to volunteer

Computer Tutors (adult volunteers with computer skills)
Adult volunteers who have computer skills come to the library once a week at a set time, and help whoever comes in with their questions. It’s been very successful at Westwood Library and they’ve gotten great feedback from their patrons.
Another library described a similar program, PC Tutoring. They offer one-on-one computer tutoring to patrons twice a month, on several PC basics.

Better Communication with Patrons
Ask patrons for help in maintaining your collection
Patrons complaining about DVDs, audio CDs not working properly? You can create a simple slip asking patrons “Help us keep our collection in good repair” and including checkmarks where they can indicate what is wrong with the item. Then train staff to look for those checkmarks when an item is returned. And clean/repair item before it is reshelved.

Ask for what you need in your answering machine message
At Long Hill, we noticed that when people left messages for us at the front desk they usually failed to give us the info we needed (e.g. if it was a renewal) or they would be crystal clear in their message up until they told us their last name, which always ended up sounding like “Blarfengar.” So we changed our answering message to say “We’re sorry we missed your call. Please leave a message with your name, and please spell out your last name for us. Provide your phone number and your request. We’ll return your call as soon as we can.” This friendly message that clearly tells them what info we needed from them. It has cut down on the head-scratching we were doing when we checked our messages.

“You don’t have enough mysteries.”
One librarian writes: I met an elderly gentleman at a community event. He told me he stopped using our library because we didn’t have many mysteries. When I asked him for more details I learned that he thought the only mysteries we owned were on the New Book shelves. So now we have a sign on our New Mysteries shelves that says “We have over 7,500 mystery novels and many others available from other libraries at no charge…”

Cheap Advertising/Marketing
Use printable business cards to advertise services. For instance, if you want to promote Reference USA you can print business cards and hand them out to business patrons for them to file in their wallet, where they might actually have a chance of finding it when they need it.

Contact your local newspaper and find out if they have “community blogs.” Long Hill’s local newspaper encouraged us to start a blog with them. We use it to promote library events and what is interesting is that the newspaper staff read our blog, so occasionally they will print an article in the paper about the library even though we didn’t send them a press release – they just take the info from our blog.

At Long Hill we get BookPage book review magazine (for patrons) and we subscribe to the NextReads database (providing 21+ book related email newsletters people can sign up for.) When BookPage comes we put a sticker on it saying “Like what you read here? Sign up for NextReads for even more great recommendations.” To increase use of NextReads newsletters we also created easy sign up sheets and put them all around the library (including in our New Book binder) to encourage people to sign up. (We also use NextReads for our monthly children’s events email newsletter.)

Tax Forms
As you know the State of New Jersey stopped providing tax forms and instructional booklets this year. One of Long Hill’s staff members suggested we print out a couple copies of the instructional booklet, put them in binders and allow patrons to check them out for 7 days. This was a great way for us to serve the patrons

Easy Technology Tools
A librarian writes “We are a small library and only have 4 public Internet computers. We also have a large number of latchkey kids. This summer we decided to implement separate adult and juvenile usage times. Adults get their time on the computers from 10:30 to 12:30 and kids get their time from 2 to 4. Now we don’t have adults complaining about the noisy kids at the computers with them, and can guarantee that kids won’t be bothered by adults during their designated time period.”

Digital frame
You can get a cheap digital frame and put pictures from library events on it. Long Hill has this at our front desk. The kids especially are mesmerized by this – they look for themselves and their friends in the pictures.

“bit and run” — Mario’s Ladder from Cory Godbey on Vimeo.

I saw this on Topless Robot today. Corey Godbey, if you don’t know, is an amazing artist who curated a collection of Where the Wild Things Are inspired art entitled “Terrible Yellow Eyes.” He’s also illustrated many folk and fairy tales. His work and interests are a lovely intersection of gaming, art, and storytelling, which is a wonderful model for libraries to follow.

This debate was inspired by recent comments made by film critic Roger Ebert, who claims that not only are video games not art, but that by their very nature they cannot be art.  Ebert cites a TED talk given by the lovely lovely Kellee Santiago, who inverts the film critic’s argument by saying that not only will video games one day become art, but that they already are … art.

Roger Ebert’s comments have ignited many responses from people in the game community, including such luminaries as Yahtzee Croshaw and Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade. (see below)

At the heels of this online debate, comes the news that the US Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a case this Fall involving the First Amendment protections of violent video games.

This is not the first time that video games have come under scrutiny for issues relating to free speech.  It seems like only yesterday that the ultra-violent video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas came under fire for a secret modification that incorporated a fully nude sex scene into the game.  The double standard did not go unnoticed by the media.  Here was a game that allowed your character to steal cars, murder cops, and beat prostitutes with a baseball bat.  But one scene of completely consensual sex was enough to get the moral guardians in a tizzy.  More recently, the game: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 became the target of controversy for the inclusion of a mission that allows the player to commit an act of international terrorism on some unsuspecting Russian civilians. (warning, contains really disturbing imagery)

Whether or not video games should be considered “art” is only part of the question.  The broader questions are: “Where do video games fall with regard to First Amendment protections?”, and: “Why does it seem that people automatically assume that the only people who play video games are 4 – 12 years old?”.  Recent (and even not so recent) studies have already shown us that the average gamer is actually between the ages of 25 – 30, yet public opinion still seems to link “video games” with “kid stuff”.  This is why violence in video games has become such a First Amendment issue.  Not because they are more violent than your basic Tarantino flick, or that they are more sexually explicit than a Friday-late-night Cinemax movie, but because they’re games; and most people still parse “games” as: “child’s play”.

So where do libraries make the distinction?  As self-proclaimed First Amendment warriors, we as librarians have an obligation to preserve the availability of certain materials that others may find objectionable.  Yet if we’re hosting game nights for young teens, we might not necessarily want them to orchestrate a terrorist attack on Russian civilians in our children’s section.  So how do we reconcile these issues?  We can start by recognizing that the medium of video games does not necessarily define the audience; and that not everything with a health bar is family friendly kid stuff.  Librarians will defend to the death our right to provide the public with Mapplethorpe, Salinger, and Anne Frank, but that doesn’t mean that we intershelve them with the Doctor Seuss books. ;)

Personally, I would defend video games, even violent ones, as an art form, but only under a very broad definition.  Ordinarily, I think of art as something to be enjoyed passively, rather than interactively.  In video games, the observer guides the action, and becomes an accomplice in the creation of the art.  This does not make video games any less valid than the more discrete forms of art.  A masterfully executed level of Tomb Raider can be every bit as beautiful as a perfect game of chess, a Baryshnikov fouetté jeté, a Salvador Dali painting, or a Hendrix solo. But I feel that the interactivity of video games places them into a different sphere of aesthetic appreciation. It is a hybrid of visual art and performance art that defines the participant as collaborator.  For this reason, I feel that video games as art form deserve every protection that our Constitution provides. I eagerly wait the foundation of entire galleries devoted to the art of the video game.

Maybe we can get some eccentric billionaire to give us a grant. :)

• Larger screen size than the DSi, 93% larger than the DS lite
• Two locking viewing angles
• Speakers are louder and clearer
• Longer stylus comes with system, also includes pen type stylus
• DSIware games included, Brain Age Express Arts & Letters; Math
• Top is glossy with a matte bottom
• Larger size, weight seems same
• Buttons all identical to DSi

Nintendo is hoping to gain an older gaming market with this system.   The larger screen size makes it easier to see, and the look and pen makes it seem less juvenile.  Sharing gaming experience could be better with this larger model.

Libraries could potentially have gaming with DSi XLs, perhaps attracting a different age crowd.  E-books are rumored to be released by DSIware– could be a player in the ebook market for libraries to be aware of.

Price point is $20 more than the DSi.   Comes in either Bronze or Burgundy color

If you have a DSi, you might wanna wait for the upgrades in the next version (DS2)…

Nintendo DSi XL game system

Nintendo DSi XL compared to DS Lite

Cnet review