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!

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!

CLICK HERE FOR THE DETAILS

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

Some of my favorite librarians, the ones with an eye on how information is communicated in our digital age, have told us to get on twitter. We are.  They’ve told us to get on facebook, and you can now logon to 8bitlibrary.com with your facebook name. You can fan us on facebook. They’ve told us that the mobile web is growing, so we’ve set up 8bitlibrary.com to work beautifully on an Android OS or iPhone mobile browser.

What are we missing? We are trying to continue to move forward. What are you doing that we aren’t? Librarians in the 2010-2020 decade need to be asking that question: what are our users doing that we aren’t yet doing?

Libraries, for the sake of our very existence, need to stay relevant. Not only for advocacy efforts, but for our future place in the information landscape of those we serve. Sure, 8bitlibrary.com is about “gaming in schools and libraries”. But we what we really care about is keeping the library and educational (information) communities in the same place as those we serve.

So, what now?

Also, I would love those of you surfing this site via the mobile web to give us a shout-out, via our comment box, from your phone.

Signed,

JP & the whole 8bitlibrary.com team.

Here are some youngins at a Pokemon card trade-off at Wilmette Public Library in Wilmette, Illinois.

Some older folks playing Pokemon at St. Joseph County Public Library in South Bend, Indiana.

Here is an eye catching awesome advertisement flyer for a Pokemon Rumble program at the Lester Public Library in Two Rivers, Wisconsin.

Here we have a fun display of Pokemon manga at the Ridgedale Library in Monnetonka, Minnesota.

Some adults playing Pokemon Monopoly.

Here we have Gaming-in-Libraries guru and author of Gamers…in the Library?! The Why, What, and How of Videogame Tournaments for All Ages, Eli Neiburger, running a Pokemon event. Pulled off the American Library Association Flickr account!

Is your school or library including Pokemon? Let me know! jp@porcaro.info

COMING THIS SUMMER TO A NINTENDO WII NEAR YOU.

You’ve read the blog.

Now play the blog.

8BITLIBRARY.COM: THE VIDEO GAME features everything you want in a game.  Action.  Mystery.  Puzzles.  One on One Fighting.  Co-Op Online Play.  Blogging.  All wrapped into one game.

Select your favorite 8BitLibrarian and take them on a journey of a lifetime.  Help Librarian JP gain respect for Pokemon in the Education World! Join Justin The Librarian as he tattoos every librarian he can find! Feed the world with Andy Woodworth and his endless supply of Ben and Jerry’s!  Join in on Laverne’s quest to be the #1 gaming and comic geek of all time!  Erin needs your help…becoming a librarian!  Join Craig as he just walks around in Second Life!  The fun never stops in this one of kind video game for the Nintendo Wii.

Featuring 33 levels of non-stop entertainment, all ages will enjoy this title.  Online, 4 player, or solo…8BITLIBRARY.COM: THE VIDEO GAME is a load of fun for you and your family!

This is your chance to life the dream that we all have: BECOME AN 8BITLIBRARIAN!

COMING SUMMER 2010 TO THE NINTENDO WII.

click for the story on the cancellation...

While this idea is not original and ALA has hosted similar events, I still feel like the time is right for an annual Gaming in Libraries conference. There are so many issues to address: Collection Development, Literary elements of gaming, diversity issues, how gaming can be used as an advocacy tool, gaming & information literacy, gaming across the curriculum (and gaming as a teaching tool), gaming as way to boost circulating materials collections, gaming as a marketing tool, LoFi gaming (board & card games). There could also be lots of related technology elements: mobile phones & library service (make no mistake, foursquare is a game), implementing gaming into your Library 2.0 program (think Farmville), QR codes in schools & libraries (a scavenger hunt game), texting as a teaching tool. We could also expand it to Gaming in Schools & Libraries Conference, which would more than double the opportunities for both conference programs and attendance. The issues are there, and the thinkers/presenters are there. This would probably also be one of the more fun conferences around, because at its root, games are fun.

Here’s my questions: Is the time right? Would you attend? If your library didn’t sponsor your attendance, would you still be interested? How pumped would you be to play Xbox Live’s 1 v 100 with a roomful of teachers and librarians? (YOU KNOW we’d take top score)

But saying “we need video games in our classrooms” is one thing, actually implementing that is another. I’ve posted some lesson plan ideas that use Pokemon to teach, and Justin has posted some teaching ideas based around Super Mario (are we Nintendo fanboys much?!). Here’s two more ideas that you can use in the classroom to help the cause of “reforming education”:

This first link comes to me via Dennis Nagle, a fellow 2010 ALA Emerging Leader and one of my tweeps. It’s a school library that uses a Flash-animated game to teach the topic of “plagiarism”:

http://www.lycoming.edu/library/instruction/plagiarismgame.html

This second link circulated all over twitter via the #edtech hastag. Both librarians and teachers should follow this hashtag very closely, because it’s a resource for educators who use technology in the classroom. There are a small number of librarians who use the hashtag as well. It is a link to an article about how employers and teachers are using the gaming model of “leveling up” as an incentive. The basic idea is that tasks are assigned numbers. When a certain task is completed, points are earned and your “score” is raised (aka, you are “leveling up”). The most interesting part of this is that it is essentially an assessment model, yet the teachers in the article said it is exciting and motivating students. Think of other ways that students are assessed, and ask yourself if you could EVER describe the assessment as motivating? This can be a revolution in education resulting in large learning increases.

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/169862,employers-look-to-gaming-to-motivate-staff.aspx

Feel free to pass on your gaming in education and libraries links to us. I would like to give a shout out to Sara Kelly Johns, who is a school librarian in NY. She’s running for ALA President, and the idea to put these links together into a post was sparked by a discussion she started on facebook about rethinking curriculum and instruction. Justin & I both personally endorse her for president because of her use of these modern communication tools, so she absolutely has 8bitlibrary.com‘s endorsement as well!

Let’s start with the controversy. This controversy transcends Pokemon. The controversy is: “What does Pokemon have to do with reading!?” Or, on that larger scale, “What do video games have to do with literacy?!”. This is the stigma that libraries face not only with video games, but with many forms of media. This is why we have Banned Books Week; this why we are constant advocates for our own roles as librarians. What the controversy almost always entails is a single person (or group of people), without a proper understanding of the specific story’s context of the content they oppose, trying to censor material from all users of a public or school library. The outcome of most of these well-meaning censorship attempts is that the person who tried to censor the material reads it, understands the content in the context of the story, and actually likes the story and withdraws the censorship attempt. This is a very frequent occurrence and I think that Pokemon’s detractors would feel the same way if they spent time within the story, playing the game.

That brings us to content. As a follower of Marshal McCluhan, I always try to hip people to the fact that a distinction must be made between the content of media and the media itself. In this case, the media is “video games” (arguably, “handheld video games”), and the content is “Pokemon” (and more specifically, “The story contained within Pokemon HeartGold”, or whatever Pokemon game you are speaking about). If we understand this distinction between content and the media transmitting the content, we have already raised the legitimacy with which the “gaming-in-schools-and-libraries” discussion takes place.

And as that discussion is raised, it reaches the level that OTHER media has reached in schools and libraries: the literary value of gaming. I don’t need to rehash it completely, but games now have a plot, character development, thematic elements, and interactive narrative devices. This is why the Pokemon franchise can release Pokemon Silver in 2000, and release Pokemon SoulSilver in 2010: SoulSilver is a game with a similar plot and theme, retold using the new character development & narrative devices possible that technology allows for 10 years later. THIS is what Pokemon and gaming-in-general has to do with reading. 8bitlibrary’s Craig Anderson has written more on that subject in LibraryGuyCraig’s review of Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Some library yougins at a "Pokemon Trade-off" I hosted last year

As a little addition to the article (I didn’t know where else to put this), I think the release of HeartGold and SoulSilver is an interesting one. As technology moves forward and more can be “done” with video games, Pokemon as a franchise has taken to “retelling” stories. HeartGold and SoulSilver and RETELLINGS of the stories contained within Pokemon Gold and Silver, which were released for play on the “inferior”-to-DS hardware system Gameboy Color. These new game are not really “remakes” of the old games; these are new games telling the same story. This reflects the true nature of video gaming: a modern storytelling medium. One of the library’s most important roles in the community is “storyteller”. From baby storytime lapsits to book discussion groups for seniors to archiving the local history of the community, libraries are a place to tell story. This is why Pokemon belongs there.

Gaming: All Libraries & All Ages

Gaming: All Libraries & All Ages will be a webinar highlighting collection development and advocacy issues that all libraries deal with when implementing (or planning to implement) video games into library collections and services.

Attendance will be fun and free. There will be an interactive chat box for the entire session, and the event will be presented as an un-conference collaboration.

All you have to do to attend is go to URL tinychat.com/8bitlibrary on March 13th at 1:00pm EST. We’ll have about 45 minutes of webinar time, with plenty of time after for chatting and collaborating. We hope you can be there.

An RSVP is not necessary, but there is a Facebook event which you can RSVP to here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=10150110150540521

Also, don’t forget to add 8bitlibrary.com’s feed to your RSS Reader, and during the webinar be sure to follow the hashtag #8bitweb on Twitter.

PLEASE help us get the word out by tweeting about it / sharing on facebook / word of mouthing it / posting to listservs. In a time of shrinking budgets, free education for librarians is good!