Gaming in libraries
Thursday, April 19th, 2007Press Release
Exploring the Intersection of Gaming and Libraries
(Syracuse, NY)
The music pounds and the sweaty teenagers stomp their feet in rhythm
while another pair swing their guitars in the air. No, this isn’t a
rave; it’s the local library. Many libraries are integrating gaming
into their offerings for users, targeting younger members of the
community. Libraries are bringing in teenagers through gaming
programs who haven’t visited since their parents brought them to story
time, and many are being exposed to other library services in the
process. Cleverly placed books and media on computers, games, and
other related activities go home with the users.
One role of many libraries is to serve as a community center where
people living in the same area can meet and enjoy activities together.
Games, as the next new media, are quickly being integrated into
library services as an offering for groups of users who may not
frequent the library for other reasons. As with any phenomenon,
scientists wish to understand more about this intersection of gaming
and libraries.
In order to explore games in libraries, researchers from the Syracuse
University School of Information Studies, the American Library
Association and the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana are
working together. As the project grows, Director Scott Nicholson
hopes that it will attract other researchers: “The advantage to having
a common place to gather, both physically and virtually, is that it
allows us as a group of researchers to explore gaming in libraries
more effectively than if we were all working individually. Our
connection with the profession through the ALA will allow us to focus
on the most important issues with the scholarly rigor that good
science demands.”
Other researchers involved with the process are Ian MacInnes and R.
David Lankes, both from the School of Information Studies at Syracuse
University and David Dubin, from the University of Illinois at
Champaign-Urbana. These researchers are tackling early problems of
the development of a classification structure for games and
determining the public good served by the library providing gaming
programs. George Needham, VP of Member Services at OCLC, has been speaking on
gaming in libraries for several years and brings a perspective from the
largest worldwide library cooperative to the project. In addition, Jenny Levine, from
the American Library Association, has considerable experience with gaming in libraries and
will be bridging the research with the practice of librarianship.
To extend their current work, the researchers are working to secure
funding to build a research laboratory at the Information Institute of
Syracuse, where they can replicate the gaming programs currently put
on in libraries and explore new program ideas. The researchers wish
to explore the effectiveness of different types of gaming activities -
not only video games, but also physical face-to-face games like board
and card games - with different socioeconomic and age groups. In
addition, the laboratory will be portable so that results can be
tested in local libraries. The results will be disseminated to
libraries as a guide to selecting gaming activities for a particular
demographic profile and program goal. Questions about this project can
be directed to Scott Nicholson at srnichol@syr.edu.
