Paisley Park is in your heart
Posts tagged ala
Emerging Leaders present best practices for video game collection development
22 years ago
Emerging Leaders present best practices for video game collection development
Are you thinking about starting a video game collection for your library? Are you wondering how to take your video game collection to the next level? Join the 2011 ALA Emerging Leaders Team G for a poster presentation on video game collection development at the ALA Annual Conference on Friday, June 24, 2011 from 3:00pm – 4:00pm in Conference Center Room 271-273.
Team G, comprised of Erik Bobilin, Abby Johnson, Kate Kosturski, Jonathan Lu, and Nicole Pagowsky, will present information on issues and best practices when developing a video game collection, including Circulation & Access, Selection & Purchasing, Weeding, and an ideal MARC record. The team surveyed public, academic, and school libraries across the United States and Canada and spoke with experts in the field to find out what innovative ideas might change what we know about video game collections in libraries.
ALA’s Emerging Leaders program allows new professionals to gain experience and create personal networks within the American Library Association by working with a group on an assigned project.
For more information, check out the team’s website: http://bit.ly/libvideogames
JP and I had the opportunity to work with the awesome Team G over the past six months on this program. They’ve done some amazing work with this project that I hope you all will check out if you’re going to be at ALA 2011.
8bitlibrary+Unshelved+IMchat=#MIH
02 years ago
Can you really hold an interview on IM chat…with four people?
Perhaps, we here at 8bitlibrary (Andrea & JP) gave it a whirl with library comic legends, Bill Barnes & Gene Ambaum from UNSHELVED, which coincidently (nah, not coincidently at all, we’ve been planning this post since ALA MidWinter) is celebrating its 9th anniversary/birthday…TODAY: February 16th.
Here’s a snippet from the chat:
Andrea: sooooooo – unshelved….
happy early birthday!!!
Bill: Thank you.
Gene: Thanks!
Bill: Next year is our 10th. I think we’ll have to do something awesome.
Andrea how does a 9 year old comic strip behave?
Gene: I’m thinking cake
Andrea (you’re doing something awesome now)
10:37 AM Gene: Lots of random crying and temper tantrums. We’re hoping Unshelved will hit puberty soon.
JP: Why “un”shelved. Why not “de”shelved?
like that whole defriending/unfriending scandle
Bill: Unshelved predates defriending.
It also predates Facebook, Twitter, and the iPhone.
10:38 AM Unshelved is your grumpy uncle who doesn’t understand technology.
JP: Do you guys work in a library now?
Bill: I never worked in a library. And I never will.
Gene: Occasionally. But very occasionally. I left my full-tiMe job in library land in October 2009.
10:39 AM Andrea So Unshelved has become a fulltime gig?
Gene: It has!
Bill: It’s a little more than fulltime.
Andrea How does that feel?
Gene: fulltime+
Andrea Where do you get your “material” now?
Bill: I love answering to no one other than my wives.
10:40 AM Andrea plural?
JP: Poligamy!
Yes!
Now we’re getting somewhere
Gene: It feels strange whenever I have a moment to think about it. It’s usually when someone asks Me what I do for a living. “I write a comic.” “You draw a comic?” “No. Let me explain.”
Bill: I have my actual wife and two collaborators who I very much feel married to.
10:41 AM Andrea makes sense, interesting phrasing
JP: Ok, so you left your job(s) for Unshelved. Is this a “forever” thing for you guys?
Gene: I get my material mostly when I’m in line at Target, trying to return something, or just watching people lose it with their kids. Probably my favorite place to people watch these days because the red shirts make it so easy to figure out who’s the employee behaving badly and who’s the customer.
I’m like two questions back…
JP: Sorry lolBill & Gene of Unshelved
For the complete (hilarious) transcript, read on…
Congrats to the 2011 ALA Emerging Leaders
12 years ago
Congrats to all of the 2011 ALA Emerging Leaders! The 2011 class includes 8BitLibrary Contributor Brandon Robbins as well as 8BitLibrary friends and family Melissa Brisbin, Lauren Comito, Kate Kosturski, Tiffany Mair, Samantha Marker, and Andromeda Yelton.
CHICAGO - The American Library Association (ALA) Emerging Leaders program, now in its fifth year, kicks off with a daylong session during the 2011 ALA Midwinter Meeting in San Diego. Eighty-three individuals have been selected through a very competitive process for the program this year.
The program enables librarians and library staff from across the country to participate in project planning workgroups; network with peers; gain an inside look into ALA structure; and have an opportunity to serve the profession in a leadership capacity early in their careers.
Participants will receive two days of orientation and education with Maureen Sullivan, an organizational development consultant whose practice focuses on leadership development for the profession, and Peter Bromberg, assistant director, Princeton Public Library in New Jersey. “It’s wonderful to see so many Emerging Leaders from the previous four years now serving in leadership positions across the association. They’ve shown how valuable the Emerging Leaders program is in creating sustainable leadership for ALA’s future. In our fifth year we will continue to build on the lessons learned and success achieved by them,” Bromberg said.
Following the kickoff session, the program will continue in an online learning and networking environment for six months, culminating with a poster session in which the 2011 Emerging Leaders will showcase the results of their project planning work at the 2011 Annual Conference in New Orleans. Participants commit to taking part in all aspects of the program and may have an opportunity to serve on an ALA, Division, Chapter or Round Table committee or a taskforce or workgroup upon completion of program.
Nearly half of this year’s participants have received sponsorships. The sponsors included ALA divisions, offices, round tables, state chapters, ALA affiliate groups and other organizations. Each sponsor commits to financial support of an Emerging Leader in order to defray costs for attending the ALA Midwinter Meeting and the Annual Conference.
Read the complete list of the selected participants and sponsoring organizations (PDF).
JP, Allen, and myself were part of the 2010 class of Emerging Leaders and we highly suggest that you try for Emerging Leaders in the many years to come!
Fighting Fire with Free Speech: Protest Book Burning on 9/11
42In what is emerging as a series on “why I became a librarian”, here’s my next blog post. I started out this series, not realizing at first what it would become, by talking about the ALA Office of Intellectual Freedom’s Banned Books Week Machinima contest. As it turned out, there was a short depiction of book burning, in a video game, included in that post:
Denying people the right to freedom of speech via the burning of media is a pretty anti-American act. Libraries are constantly facing struggles in making sure that information, even information some people want to censor, is available to all.
That brings us to my 2nd post on “why I became a librarian”, and I credited a group of musicians as influencing my future career. You know who is another group of musicians who influenced many people? The Beatles. (this post happens to come on the 1-year anniversary of the release of the first Beatles video game)
How did they deal with this American opposition to their British music? They took the true ideals of America, staging protests and standing up for what is right:
And that brings us back to this post. In the most un-American way possible to remember 9/11, a pastor in Florida will burn copies of the Qu’ran.
In Chicago, the ALA will be staging a protest to this act.
Fighting Fire with Free Speech: ALA Will Protest Book Burning with 9/11 Qur’an Reading
“The librarians of America will not stand by and let ignorance rule,” says ALA Executive Director Keith Michael Fiels. “For every would-be book burner, there are thousands of readers who will speak out for the freedom to peaceably assemble and read whatever they choose.”
Book burning is the most insidious form of book banning, and just as the American Library Association is preparing to celebrate the freedom to read during Banned Books Week, along comes one Rev. Terry Jones of the 50-member Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida. The good reverend’s idea of world outreach is to commemorate the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001 with a public burning of the Qur’an, the Muslim holy book.The mind-boggling logic behind Jones’s plan has attracted the attention of Muslims and media around the world, and this morning, news sources reported that Gen. David Petraeus had personally pleaded with the reverend to restrain himself because of the potential for retaliatory violence against U.S. troops and citizens overseas that the book burning could provoke.
Meanwhile, the American Library Association and librarians across the country will move the Qur’an to the top of the Banned Books Week agenda. (Leading the way by modeling tolerance, an Oklahoma public library has been hosting an exhibit of artwork inspired by Muslim tradition.)
“Free people read freely,” says Barbara Jones, director of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom. “That is a fundamental principle of the American Constitution and a basic mission of public libraries. We don’t burn books, we read them.”
Whether or not the Rev. Jones (who is no relation to ALA’s OIF director) proceeds with his plan, librarians and library advocates will assemble on the steps of the American Library Association headquarters in Chicago this Saturday at 1 p.m. for a public reading from the Qur’an to counteract the burning in Gainesville, and Banned Books Week will launch on September 25 with readings from the Qur’an.
Link to the ALA’s full post on the topic.
PLEASE HELP US HELP THE ALA SPREAD THE WORD BY TWEETING THIS LINK:
http://bit.ly/dgkn2t
This is why we became librarians, folks. Let’s stand up for Freedom of Speech.
Banned Books Week ’10 Machinima
3As the video game medium grows in cultural importance, it is natural that game players will want to use these communication tools (are they REALLY games?) in creative ways. A good friend of 8bitlibrary.com, filmmaker Justin Strawhand, released a documentary in 2006 titled (appropriately) 8 bit. The trailer for the movie, interestingly enough, includes a shot of an artist who used a video game to depict “book burning”, see if you can catch it about 1 minute in:
The largest movement towards “using video games as to make art” is called Machinima. When you make a Machinima, you record video game characters as your “actors”, the video game is your “set”, and you are the director. Machinima is so popular that the PR campaign for the upcoming game Halo: Reach include humorous machinima commercials using Halo as the tool to make the commercials. Here’s an example of machinima:
And that brings us to the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom’s contest:
Banned Books Week 2010: Second Life Machinima Contest
Calling all filmmakers! As part of our celebration of Banned Books Week (BBW) in Second Life this year, we’re inviting everyone to take part in our Banned Books Week Machinima Contest. Machinima is filmmaking within a real-time, 3-D virtual environment like Second Life.
Your inspiration for your machinima entry should be “Think For Yourself and Let Others Do the Same,” the theme for this year’s BBW campaign. Submissions will be accepted between August 22 and September 25, 2010. Participants can enter as many videos as they’d like. The grand prize winner will receive 10,000 Lindens; a BBW 2010 T-shirt; and their video featured on the OIF Blog and in AL Direct. For more information about the contest, including rules and specifications, please click here. For further questions regarding the contest, please contact Tina Coleman (AKA, Kay Tairov in Second Life) via e-mail at ccoleman@ala.org.
You know 8bitlibrary.com will be participating! We will for sure be taking that little clip of a “video game book burning” as inspiration.
Please help us help the OIF spread the word about the contest by tweeting this link: http://bit.ly/deMZui
ALA10 Battledecks: JP Porcaro
02 years ago
Mad love to my 8BitLibrary brother JP for representing 8BitLibrary at the ALA 2010 Battledecks competition. I’m proud of you bub.
Want to see the rest of the videos? Click here to be taken to Librarian by Day and the rest of the videos!
Project Brand Yourself A Librarian
12 years ago
THE TIME HAS COME.
BRAND YOURSELF A LIBRARIAN TODAY!
The 8BitLibrary team and YOU (well, if you want to) will be going to Jinx Proof Tattoos in Washington DC on SATURDAY JUNE 26TH at 4:30PM.
The bummer? They don’t take appointments. JP and myself will be getting tattoos and we’d love for you to be there to support us (one of us will cry, but who?) or get your own tattoo. Of course, there will be lots of pictures and video. Which leads me to this:
TAGS: Twitter: #librarytat8bit Flickr, Etc: librarytat8bit
AFTERPARTY!
Saturday, June 26, 2010 at 9:30pm
WHERE: RFD Washington
ADDRESS: 810 7th Street
If you support the project, please add this to your blog/wiki/facebook/myspace:
PROJECT BRAND YOURSELF A LIBRARIAN FLICKR GROUP!
OTHER PLACES TO GET TATTOOS IN DC
- Fatty’s Custom Tattoos PHONE: 202-452-0999
- Tattoo Paradise PHONE: 202-232-6699
- Off The Hook Tattoos PHONE: 202-581-2018
- DC Ink PHONE: 202-232-7711
ALA Open Gaming Event & free stickers at ALA
0FYI, the largest gathering of gaming-in-libraries personalities from across the country will be at the ALA Open Gaming event on Friday, June 25th at 7:30pm in the Renaissance Ballroom at the Renaissance Hotel. You can RSVP on facebook here. It is an official ALA Annual Conference event hosted by the Games & Gaming Members Interest Group and sponsored by Neal-Schuman and Information Today.
The 8bit team will be in attendance handing out 8bitlibrary.com stickers and promoting the message that “games in libraries = good”. JP & Justin will, in fact, be handing out stickers everywhere we go, from Thursday night before conference to the very end of the conference on Tuesday, so track us down :)
So what if aren't the PRETTIEST bloggers in libraryland?! We're handing out free stickers!
Pokewalking at ALA Annual 2010
1Hey all,
Since I’ve spent so much time on SoulSilver, I have yet to get around to cracking open Pokemon HeartGold (despite buying it the day it came out). This set of Pokemon games were released with an accessory called a “Pokewalker“, which is like a combination of a pedometer and a Tamagotchi.
The Tamagotchi-like Pokewalker! Looks like Pikachu has taken 367 steps so far :)
It’s a fun device on a few levels. Firstly, in the game, you can take your Pokemon for “walks” and they accompany you in your travels. This is a more literal manifestation of that idea, in that you load a Pokemon into the Pokewalker, and as you literally walk, your steps are counted and your Poke walks with you :)
How to load Pokemon into the Pokewalker!
Second, it’s fun because there are times where you gotta take a bunch of steps before youe Poke can level up. These games came out right before Pax East 2010, and I always knew who was trying to add steps to a Pokewalker, because they’d be frantically running around for no reason. Funny!
Third (and this leads into my “project”), it is a highly visible device, so people can see you are “playing” Pokemon. As the ALA’s resident “King Pokemon Fanboy”, everyone will be SURE that I’m a true Pokefanatic now.
SO I’ve decided to spend some time playing HeartGold before the 2010 American Library Association Annual Conference, and the morning the conference kicks off, I’ll load it up with a Pokemon. I’ll carry the Pokewalker everywhere I go for the entire conference, and by the end, I’ll know how many steps I walked for the entire conference, and hopefully my Pokemon will have leveled up a few times. But I need your help:
[poll id="2"]
Here’s pics of the Pokes, in case you wanna see them:
Growlithe
Mudkip
Pichu
Primeape
Gyarados
Also, don’t forget that this Poke will be dancing with me at the ALA DANCE PARTY!
“Super Bowl, Olympics, Super Mario: How games help teach” (via Christian Science Monitor)
03 years ago
The Christian Science Monitor ran a blog on February 6, 2010 about gaming as a teaching tool that we’d like to share with you. It features some really great quotes from all around amazing librarian and gaming in libraries advocate Jenny Levine.
CLICK HERE FOR “”Super Bowl, Olympics, Super Mario: How games help teach”
(Many thanks to Andy Woodworth for bringing this article to our attention)