The following press release not only shows what Scott Nicholson is up to (some very cool stuff), but how the concepts of participatory librarianship can extend beyond the online world.
Press 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 [email protected].