Submitted by Cindy McGee
MLibrary 2.0 on July 31, 2007: 9-noon
Eli Neiburger shared how libraries, including Ann Arbor District Library, are transforming library interactions with users through the use of gaming technologies. Jane Blumenthal demonstrated how medical libraries are using Second Life to extend their services. Lisa Hinchliffe wrapped-up the morning with a discussion about strategies for leadership and implementation of these innovative technologies in the library environment.
Report from Workshop:
Eli discussed how gaming provides motivation and how games could be used within the curriculum: simulations such as Sim City or Civilization can be used for examining alternate histories (what if the Nazis won the war), civil service and urban planning concepts, architecture, and political science. These all highlight complex decision-making skills.
He also discussed the opportunities provided by libraries playing “host” to gaming, gamers, and gaming events as ways of appealing to users and enhancing the library’s role as the “third place” (home, work, other). Detroit Mercy provides their card playing students a specific card table area within the library; Georgia Tech sponsors gaming tournaments—most students bring their own equipment and games so cost for library is low.
Links:
· presentation slides:
http://www.aadl.org/files/umforumgaming.pdf·
http://www.aadl.org/aadlgtJane discussed the efforts of the Medical School and the Health Sciences Libraries within Second Life. The Medical School has purchased an island in Second Life and has offered some space to the libraries. There is also a Health Info Island which includes the Second Life Medical Library. The ideas they have for using Second Life include recreating things that you can’t do in real life, for example, creating standard patient profiles that you can’t do in real life (children, etc.) for medical students to practice with as part of their training and education.
Some of the HS Libraries current ideas for using Second Life include: representing the libraries to the public, taking advantage of the uniqueness of the environment, creating “amulets” and a “roller coaster”. They are also partnering with the Medical School in testing the virtual reality environment for medical education, and collaborating in looking at new tools for teaching and meeting information competencies.
Links:
·
http://del.icio.us/janeblum/secondlife· presentation at Med Lib Assoc 2007
http://mla2007.pbwiki.com/Lisa talked about leadership in the library 2.0 world. She discussed that libraries have a disconnect in communication with students and that we need to discover new ways to share information with students, to engage them in conversation, and to speak a new language with them (Cluetrain Manifesto). “We need to take hundreds of students as seriously as we take one faculty member.” She mentioned Smith’s 7 Levels of Change and suggested an eighth: the Audacity Principle—doing things that “just aren’t done”, and that at UIUC they work on saying yes to good ideas with the realization that they might fail, but fail early and fail often in order to be ultimately successful. “Leaders create conditions for people to succeed.” They discuss and try new things quickly—if it doesn’t work, then they change it (i.e., put up a search within Facebook in just a couple of days). Discussed leveraging the social networking tools: created a UIUC browser toolbar and took out a $50 Facebook ad on it—only a 100+ clickthroughs from the ad, but then discovered they had 600+ downloads of the toolbar afterwards.
They also sponsor gaming nights and have actually started a gaming collection (games, consoles, etc.) for both circulation and in an attempt to preserve and archive this area of materials.
Other useful links:
· A blog for posting ideas about 2.0 types of projects to see who else might be interested in working on them or who has the expertise in that area--
http://mblog.lib.umich.edu/lib20projects/· More on Web 2.0 at UM and some good posts on Second Life uses:
http://mblog.lib.umich.edu/web20/
