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8bitlibrary.com is now located at 8bitlibrary.com

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2 months ago
by JP in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

HEY 8BITLIBRARIANS,

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:

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:

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

 

WE ARE TEAM ROCK8

1
11 months ago
by JP in , ,

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What type of media belongs in a library? (or, Who Are We?)

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1 year ago
by JP in , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’ve been getting alot of questions lately: “what IS 8bitlibrary“?

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 are video for you to watch

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1 year ago
by JP in , , ,

Some videos:

Game Night X at Jackson Library in the University of North Carolina – Greensboro. (already dead link, bummer)

Some guy singing about reading books. I HATE library videos about books, but he steals books from a 7 year old kid’s birthday party, so i’m posting this for the LULLZ.

Here’s Green Day playing at a high school in 1990. The song is about a boy who has a crush on this girl who he met (i’m assuming) in the Library, since the title of the song is “At the Library”.

Most downloaded iPhone app Bubble Ball created at a public library

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1 year ago
by JustinLibrarian in , , ,

From John Kirriemuir over at his most excellent blog Use Libraries and Learn Stuff:

Where do you go to find help and information that enables you to make a game which is downloaded over two million times in two weeks, gets rave reviews and becomes more popular than Angry Birds?

When you are 14 years old.

The public library, of course. In this particular case, Spanish Fork Public Library in Utah.

Things I’m reading (January 13 2011)

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1 year ago
by JustinLibrarian in ,

Who Wins?  Playing Games With Kids takes a look at playing games and parenting.  What really blew my mind was the whole cooperative game play theme the entire post presents to the reader.  Gaming isn’t about winning…it’s about the experience, something that we here at 8BitLibrary have been saying for quite some time.

Download Free Kaplan Educational Textbooks for eReaders: As a teen librarian, how could I not be excited about this?  Sure, the teen has to have something to read eBooks on (which, from my experience, most do not) but in any case, this offer could help out some people in need.  Lasts through January 17, 2011.

Moss Rug: The living bathroom mat goes on sale File this under neato.  Basically, it’s a rug for your bathroom created out of moss.  The humidity from the air and the water drops from your shower/bathtub water the rug, and in turn, you get this really cool, organic feeling when you step out of the shower.

Who owns your digital downloads? (Hint: it’s not you)

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1 year ago
by JP in , , ,

Who owns your digital downloads? (Hint: it’s not you)

Click the link, read it, and explain to me how libraries (or, more importantly, WHY) libraries plan on overcoming this obstacle. Why not just drop the whole “libraries are places to loan out popular commercial materials” and focus on what’s really important: connecting people.

Last chance to add a petition signature!

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1 year ago
by JP in , , , , , ,

Hey all,

All of the petition signatures for the creation of a Comic Book and Graphic Novel Member Interest Group in the American Library Association need to be in by 4pm EST today, Tuesday January 4th. If you haven’t added your email signature yet, it’s easy!

  1. Go here.
  2. Follow instructions/ fill out your info.
  3. Click submit!

    4. EDIT: We’ve got more than enough signatures, but if you want to sign as a show of solidarity, look for JP at ALA Mid Winter! He’s got long hair and wears flashy kicks.

Thanks everyone for your help and support. We’ll keep you informed as the process moves forward.

- J 2 the P

Sly Stone on our human need for approval.

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1 year ago
by JP in , , , ,

How many times have you not done something that could have been great because you felt the need for approval first?

What we’d like to do is sing a song together. Now you see, what usually happens is you get a group of people that might sing, and for some reasons that are not unknown anymore, they won’t do it. Most of us need approval. Most of us need to get approval from our neighbors before we can actually let it “all hang down”, ya dig? Now what is happening here is we gonna try to do a sing along. Now alotta people don’t like to do it because they feel that it might be “old-fashioned”. But you must dig that it is not a fashion in the first place, it is a feeling. And if it was good in the past, it is still good. We would like to sing a song called “Higher”, and if we could get everybody to join in, we’d appreciate it.

What i’d like you to do is say “higher” and throw the peace sign up; it’ll do you no harm. Still again, some people feel that they shouldn’t because there are situations where you need approval to get in on something that could do you some good. Heh, yea…

Now if you throw the peace sign up and say higher, get everybody to do it…. There’s a whole lot of people here, and a whole lot of people might not want to do it, because they could somehow get around it; they feel that there are enough people around to make up for it. And on, and on, etcetera, etcetera, zzrawr! We’re gonna try “Higher” again, if we could get everybody to join in we’d appreciate it. It’ll do you no harm.

ALA Comic Book and Graphic Novel Member Initiative Group

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1 year ago
by JP in , , , , , , , ,

Hey 8bitlibrarians,

Guess what? We’re starting a Comic Book and Graphic Novel Member Interest Group in the American Library Association! Robin Brenner, Creator and Editor-in-Chief of www.noflyingnotights.com & I will be co-conveners, with the fab Tina Coleman serving as our ALA Staff Liaison.

BUT WAIT! Before we can make it happen, a

“Petition to Establish a Comic Book and Graphic Novel Member Initiative Group
in the American Library Association”

must go before the ALA’s Committee On Organization (COO) to be voted on and approved. We need 100 signatures on that petition. Would you kindly help us get them?

Enclosed in this post is the petition and the statement of purpose for the newly proposed group. If you are an ALA member-in-good-standing (i.e., you’ve paid your membership dues) and you’d like to sign your name to the petition, please fill out this info. An automated email will be sent to my email box and will serve as your digital signature.
Thanks so much, and please help us spread the word by posting / tweeting this link: 8bitlibrary.com/?p=2101


And here’s what you are agreeing to when you email me:

Petition to Establish a Comic Book and Graphic Novel Member Initiative Group
in the American Library Association

To the Committee On Organization (COO)

We, the undersigned members in good standing of the American Library Association, ask that the Committee On Organization approve the establishment of a Member Initiative Group (MIG) concerned with comic books and graphic novels in libraries, pursuant to ALA policy and refer to Council the following “statement of purpose” for the MIG,

“To provide a method for engagement and networking among ALA members interested in comic books and graphic novels. To collaborate with ALA units to support the inclusion of comic books and graphic novels in library initiatives and programs across the Association. To advocate for wider incorporation and acceptance by the profession and the Association for comic books and graphic novels in library services, programming, and collections. This group is open to all members, and encourages participation from members from all library types and members who serve various library user demographics.”

IF YOU AGREE to this, please click here to email me!

Thanks errbody. – J2theP

http://blog.8bitlibrary.com/sign-the-petition/

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