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From my friend Lisa Alvarado, the following bit of news. Congratulations Lisa!!

Lisa Alvarado's Mexican Woman's Toolkit, Sin Fronteras is a large floral
tote bag hanging on wooden pegs, which visitors are invited to rummage
through. The bag belongs to a Mexican domestic in WWII-era Chicago: her
life is service to others, she has no privacy.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/markart/2414858942/

Reimagining The Distaff Toolkit

"Reimagining the Distaff Toolkit" is an exhibition of contemporary art,
each of which has, at its visible core, a tool that was important for
women's domestic labor in the past (the 18th century through World War
II). The old tool becomes the fulcrum for a work of art. Each work and the
exhibit as a whole have the power to speak to viewers independently,
Artists are placing objects such as a dressmaker’s figure, diapers,
graters, grinders, needles, pins, pots, pans, baskets,
garden-seed-packets, rakes, hoes, dress patterns, dish-rags, rolling pins,
brooms, buckets, darning eggs, knives, rug-beaters, and other tools at the
center of their work. One piece will have an early 19th century distaff at
its visible core. Part of the point of this exhibition project is to
explore the idea of "seeing as context." As I imagine the process here, I
look at a tool that facilitated very hard and repetitive labor and that
evokes women's degradation as domestic drudges. I look again, through my
early 21st century eyes, at a moment when "old tools" have become
commodified and expensive, and I see costly beauty. Reimagining the
distaff toolkit for the purposes of this exhibition might include
(overlapping) gestures in any of the following directions – or other
directions – history / memory / gender / labor / material culture /
household objects / family relations / power and powerlessness / drudgery
/ craft and beauty. Reimagining the Distaff Toolkit puts utility in
conversation with art, the past in conversation with the present.




March-May 2008 Bennington (VT) Museum
Oct-Dec 2008 The Mead Museum, Amherst College
Jan-Feb 2009 Morris Museum, Morristown, NJ
March 2009 Oklahoma State University
Sept-Dec Union College, Schnectady, NY


http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2008/04/double-double-toil-and-trouble.html

--
Lisa Alvarado, poet, novelist, literary critic

I’ve been telling everyone who will listen about Paul Waelchli’s work mapping the ACRL Information Literacy Standards to skills used to play popular videogames. I’ve been waiting for someone to do the same thing for school libraries, and now we have our first step towards that goal because Brian Mayer has mapped New York State’s education standards to some modern board games.

Gaming, School Libraries and the Curriculum

“Games engage students with authentic leisure experiences while reinforcing a variety of social, literary and curricular skills. When an educational concept is introduced and reinforced during a game, it is internalized as part of an enjoyable experience and further utilized as one aspect of a strategy to attain success.

Games also carry other benefits. They help students connect and build social skills, working as part of a team or negotiating the most advantageous situation for themselves. It also provides an opportunity for students to to explore a host of life skills not inherent in the curriculum , but important for success. Some of these include: micro-managing resources and options; actively re-evaluating, re-prioritizing and re-adjusting goals based on uncertain and shifting situations; determining acceptable losses in an effort to obtain an end goal; and employing analytical and critical skills to more authentic social experiences.

Here is a list of NYS standards currently supported by a well established school game library:

NYS Social Studies Standards:

• Standard 3: Geography Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of the geography of the interdependent world in which we live—local, national, and global—including the distribution of people, places, and environments over the Earth’s surface.
  • Ten Days In.. Series
  • Ticket to Ride Series
     
• Standard 4: Economics Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of how the United States and other societies develop economic systems and associated institutions to allocate scarce resources, how major decision-making units function in the U.S. and other national economies, and how an economy solves the scarcity problem through market and non-market mechanisms.
  • Catan Series
  • Puerto Rico” [Library Gamer]

Several more are listed in the post, so please click through to see just how good a fit this can be.

If you still question whether there are literacies (especially information-related ones) involved in playing videogames, ask yourself if those same things happen around playing board games. If your answer is that yes, they do, what then is the difference between learning those skills through board games and learning them through videogames? Brian’s work helps illustrate the similarities but even more importantly, it shows how easily a school library could start out with the familiar world of board games as a way to implement gaming services and engage students more interactively in learning information literacy skills. Thanks, Brian!

Shout out to Gaylordg for helping get this project off the ground.

Professor receives grant to bring gaming to libraries, other campuses

“[Scott] Nicholson, an associate professor in the School of Information Studies, recently received a $5,000 grant from Gaylord Brothers, a library supply company located in Syracuse, to begin building a portable library game lab. Money from the grant will specifically go toward purchasing projectors, consoles, screens, accessories and games, Nicholson said.

‘This was a great way for Gaylord to support Syracuse University, the community and gaming libraries in general,; said Henry Orr, director of business development at Gaylord. He also noted that the credit for the grant should go to Gaylord’s President and CEO Guy Marhewka….

Nicholson’s goal is to explore the implications of offering gaming as a library service. Additionally, he hopes to study the entire gaming experience and how gaming will change the attitudes of students toward the library.

‘Gaming activities are like the new coffee shop in Bird Library; it’s not about the coffee so much as the social atmosphere it creates,’ Nicholson said….

‘Gaming is currently the wild, wild west of libraries,’ Orr said….

The Library Game Lab project will occur in three main phases, depending on the availability of outside funding. Nicholson has been working on the first phase of the project for the past year, working with students to survey libraries and how they view gaming….

The project’s current phase, to create a portable library game lab, will be followed by the next phase, to increase awareness about the project.

‘With this project, I will travel to library conferences and expose librarians to the spectrum of games, talk about what types of games are best for certain demographic groups with libraries and collect more data about what is happening,’ Nicholson said.

The third and final phase of the project will be to set up research projects, which will explore how the different types of games relate to different types of people.

‘This will be the ongoing life of the lab - to analyze new games and game types, to recommend the best games for different goals and demographic groups and to work with industry to help them create gaming experiences more suited for a library/school setting,’ Nicholson said.

Nicholson said as soon as he is able to secure more funding to build the program, he hopes to start aggressively drawing in students to help with the project. So far he has relied heavily on volunteers to help with research and promoting the program. In addition, Nicholson is teaching a graduate-level iSchool class in May on gaming in libraries, and it has already received considerable student interest.

There has been both support and criticism from the Syracuse community at large regarding the Library Game Lab, but Nicholson said the key is getting people to understand that this is not about ‘first person shooters,’ but rather about ‘understanding how gaming works as a service and how libraries and schools can be engaged.’ ” [The Daily Orange]

Check out Paul Waelchli’s article in the January 2008 issue of C&RL News in which he expands on his blog posts about information literacy and fantasy football.

Librarians’ Sport of Choice: Teaching Information Literacy through Fantasy Football

“Librarians want students to effectively identify and evaluate information and make decisions based upon what they discover. These are just some of the skills that an information literate student successfully applies. These are the same skills that more than 19 million people use on a daily or weekly basis playing fantasy sports.1 As the NFL football season comes to a close, millions of Americans, some as young as 12 years old, have spent the past few months connected to information literacy. They just don’t know it.

The challenge for librarians is to connect fantasy sports skills to information literacy and create building blocks for academic applications of the same concepts. One library, University of Dubuque, did just this by teaching fantasy football research to incoming student athletes. Through the lesson, students engaged in discussions of creditability, validity, timeliness, and search strategies to find and evaluate fantasy football information….

The high level of player investment creates educational opportunities for librarians. According to a 2006 study by the Fantasy Sports Association, a large number of college students play fantasy sports. Librarians can build upon the information literacy skills that students are already unconsciously using through fantasy sports play. The successful fantasy sport player consistently applies four of the five ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards (2000)….

At the end of the sessions, the students completed a short evaluation that assessed both criteria for evaluating sources and library perceptions. More than 80 percent of students were able to describe two of three appropriate source evaluation criteria and more than 60 percent provided all three. The students were asked to describe what research meant to them before the session and responses included, ‘headaches,’ ‘work I didn’t want to do,’ and ’school work.’ The responses to the same question after the sessions showed a dramatic change in perspective and included, ‘making sure one is getting accurate information,’ ‘comparing and knowing where I’m getting my information,” and “fun work.” While the ‘fun work’ might be a stretch when homework is involved, it does show a change in perspective and awareness about research. One student first said that before the session, research meant ’school,’ but afterwards he responded, ‘everything.’

In addition to the change in perception of research, the student athletes were asked about their perception of librarians. Prior to the fantasy football orientation session, the students had a 66 percent ‘very positive’ impression of librarians. After the session, the students “very positive” perception was more than 90 percent. While these results are not scientific and large enough to generalize, they show a distinct change in students’ impressions of libraries and their own abilities. One student stated, ‘I made the fantasy football connection to looking up school stuff quick, it worked well.’ “

And if you haven’t seen it, Paul’s chart illustrating which of the ACRL Information Literacy Standard are involved in playing Final Fantasy, Halo, and Madden (football) is also well worth your time.

One of my favorite things about going to conferences is getting to meet and talk with people I normally wouldn’t get to know. I had another such experience at Midwinter when I met Leslie Morgan, First Year Experience/Education Librarian with the University of Notre Dame’s Libraries. Last year, she received the Outstanding New Librarian Award for the State of Indiana because she is an avid supporter of information literacy and diversity programs issues in academic librarianship. She is also very active promoting literacy in the community where she lives.

I met her at Midwinter because Leslie is the chair of the Research to Practice Literacy Discussion Group that hosted a panel presentation about gaming and literacy by Scott Nicholson, Julie Scordato, and myself, along with discussion from the standing room only participants. I was unfamiliar with Notre Dame’s efforts around gaming, so my ears perked up when she began talking about what the librarians there have been doing around gaming.

My favorite initiative is a program they created for first year students. Called Caching in at the Libraries, this program played on the popular hobby geocaching in an attempt to help incoming students learn more about the various libraries and services on campus.

“225 First Year Students signed up to play the game which consisted of finding 17 hidden ‘caches’ throughout Hesburgh and the branch libraries. 40 students ended up finding at least some of the caches, and 26 students were able to find all of the hidden caches. 10 of these students won iPod Shuffles, and the others won the ND ‘Shirt’.

Though the turnout for the game was not as large as we had hoped, the students who participated were very enthusiastic about it. Many of them have commented on how fun it was, and how much they enjoyed visiting all the libraries. One participant volunteered this comment: ‘I know I’ve been on campus for only 3 weeks but I probably would’ve never found out about those libraries. They are very valuable and interesting. If I had to give any evaluation of the program, I’d say continue it. Very rewarding.’ Plans are in the works to survey participants to find out ways to improve the program for next year.” [IRIS Department Newsletter

I think 225 participants is a darn good turnout for a first attempt, but their efforts didn’t stop there. In addition, the librarians hosted their first gaming night last December as an outreach activity for students.

“This year IRIS, with financial support from User Services and The First Year of Studies, hosted their first ever Game Night on December 12th and 13th - the official “reading days” before finals begin. The events took place in the library lounge and
featured coffee, cocoa, hot tea, a host of snacks, and several lo-tech games. Game Night is our effort to help relieve some of the stress of studying for finals, and it is loosely modeled on a program that has been hosted at St. Mary’s for the last few years.

No official count was taken, but somewhere between 300 and 600 students flocked to the library lounge to graze and game their troubles away. Games included Twister, Clue, Monopoly, Connect 4, Operation, Play-doh, various card games, and several coloring books and crayons. What games do students like to play? Operation and coloring were by far the most popular activities. Perhaps we had an abundance of pre-med and art students on hand!

Student’s reactions to Game Night were overwhelmingly positive. Roughly 60 students completed comment cards, and according to their responses they truly appreciated the food. Many suggested that we try to provide healthier snack alternatives such as fruit and milk. Many students liked coloring best, and one student suggested that we provide more hot guys! We’re not sure if that is in our budget, but we do hope to host Game Night during future finals weeks, and we welcome suggestions for easy and fun activities.” [IRIS Department Newsletter]

Now I’m very interested to track ND’s efforts, as it’s great to have more data from successful gaming initiatives, especially when they’re creative ideas.

Last year, I noted a librarian who waives the fines of patrons who play DDR against her. This year, the Wadleigh Memorial Library makes it an official part of its Patron Appreciation Day.

Library Patrons Try to Dance Away Late Fees at Video Game Competition

“Library users with unpaid fines had a chance to redeem themselves Thursday during the annual Patron Appreciation Day at the Wadleigh Memorial Library.

Instead of a scolding when they arrived, delinquent patrons were received like party guests.

Patrons were invited to make good on unpaid fines by donating canned and packaged foods for the local soup kitchen or by entering a dance competition, ‘Dance Dance Revolution.’

To sweeten the pot, during most of the day the library served coffee, bagels, pastries and ice cream, donated by area businesses….

The teen and preteen girls who showed up to play Dance Dance included 18-year-old Missy Hutchins, who owed $5 in fines, and Elicia Vallier, 12, and Maria Romanenko, 11, who had no debts to pay.

Hutchins, who has been playing the video dance game for four years, including several as part of DDR club at Milford High School, won her round against Spofford and happily reported to the front desk with a coupon she used to pay off her $5 obligation.

The other girls took second turns competing against the librarian, just for fun.

‘Video games are things kids like to do, and we thought this would bring them in to the library,’ Spofford said before the dance contest began. ‘If they have fines, they don’t come in. We don’t want them to be afraid to come in.’ ” [Nashua Telegraph, via joystiq, thanks James!]

Putting for Dollars: Library Raises More than $10,000 with Golf Fundraiser

“Winter winds and swirling snow failed to dampen the enthusiasm that greeted the inaugural miniature golf championship held at the Southworth Library on Dartmouth Street on Sunday afternoon.

‘We were a bit worried when we saw the snow, but we had a great turnout in spite of the weather,’ said Dolly Sharek, treasurer of the library foundation. ‘We had 274 golfers sign up, and we raised just over $10,000.’

As attendance reached its peak at around 2 p.m., all of the 100 putters borrowed for the occasion were in use on the 18-hole course that wound its way around the stacks on both floors, and a line had formed at the registration table.

Golfers of all ages were challenged by the unique aspect of the library course, which explored all corners of the building with a 10th hole that teed off on the second floor and finished on the first.

Some of those taking on the newly installed circuit were evidently more practiced than others.

The seventh hole brought library trustee Paul Pereira to his knees — and it was not to line up a putt. He was trying to retrieve his ball from beneath one of the stacks.” [SouthCoastToday.com]

Game On at the Undergraduate Library

“The upcoming November 3rd event is co-sponsored by the [UIUC] Undergraduate Library and the Sousa Archive and Center for American Music and is part of the celebration of American Music Month. The evening will focus on music in gaming and will include speakers from the Department of Music as well as industry experts from Volition, a growing gaming company in Champaign. The event will also introduce a game created by campus researchers (Musiverse).

Gaming at the library - come to play, come to learn. Game On!” [@ Your Service]

Adapting Library Services to the Needs of Gamers – Chad Boeninger

started out showing Lego Star Wars
one of the great things about it is that it encourages exploration within the game
get used to the interface by probing the environment

games also encourage immersion, not just exploration
showed some video of Resident Evil 4
not just shooting things, but also lots of times when you have to make decisions to do things (buy wepaons, make adjustments, etc.)
the immersion here is that the player has control of their own experience

can also essentially play “Barbie” by customizing avatars
showed video of customizing his player in Madden, to the point where his name is on the back of his shirt

showed some video from the game Bully
showed some God of War
here’s how gaming encourages learning while doing
- you basically get thrown right into the game where you start mashing buttons to figure out what to do
the PS2 controller has 16 buttons that you learn how to use within the first 20 minutes of the game (open hatches, etc.)
you figure out the sequences pretty quickly
learn through trial and error
as the game play progresses, we learn new things and have to adapt new skills to get to the next level because the game gets harder

so how can we integrate these kinds of things into libraries?
we try to create immersive environments, encourage learning by doing, and encourage exploration

people grew up in video games, and as a result, they maneuver differently
part of our role is to help them adapt to our stuff, while the other part is for us to adapt to them

what you never hear in the mainstream media is how frustratingly difficult these games are
research is hard, too

(some of this from “The Kids Are Alright” - Mitchell Wade)

we need new nomenclature
information literacy
reference
reserve
catalog
database
periodical
bibliographic instruction

job security for us, but meaningless to everyone else

we need consistent interfaces
why can’t our interfaces be as intuitive and easy to learn in the first 5 minutes as they are in video games?
what does our feedback give users?
positive or negative?
how do we create environments that attract and engage these folks?

the library as immersive space
make learning/information commons more
- inviting
- wireless
etc.

customizable interfaces

learning while doing
incorporate hands-on instructional experiences
must be relevant and timely
give context - don’t just do BI to do teach people something

need smarter catalogs with point-of-need help
give them instant help
- best options right now are IM and Meebo

help them help themselves via a site map or online FAQ

doesn’t really have a conclusion but the discussion about how to do this is important

Randy Christensen

threw a bean bag into the audience and asked the person who caught it to come up on stage
that person then threw the beanbag to someone else, who came up on stage
did this until he had 12 people up front
played “Internet Librarian Chase,” based on IL2006 information
“what are the advantages of a federated search”
“name one way you can make a library website more user-friendly?”
etc.

walked around the audience asking questions about how they could incorporate gaming into library services

I love that my friend, the newly minted Dr. Stephens, devoted one of his LIS class nights to gaming. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there to help out, but it sounds like the students did quite well on their own. I would love to see more LIS courses playing and exploring like this, helping the students form their own opinions.

Games…Games…Games…

“How do you make your college-age son jealous? Tell him you played Guitar Hero… in school…for a class…while the teacher was there. Hey, I thought it was great fun at our Wednesday game night. I’m not totally convinced of all the educational values of these games, but in terms of building community, gaming really show teens that libraries are willing to invest in their interests. I love the idea that gaming allows teens to get to know their librarians on a more casual basis. We might not seem so ’scary’ when they need us for informational purposes. I’m undecided about the concept of making kids check out books before they can play games. That might be a little like having to eat your lima beans before you can have your chocolate cake. In the end, does anyone learn to like lima beans?” [Sharonlis768’s Weblog]

Gaming

“I definitely think there’s a place for games in libraries, including board games. From my own experience with strategy games, I know that some games require a great deal of thought and attention, as well as critical thinking and a lot of decision-making. At my old job, the president and I would often discuss corporate strategy in terms of strategy games, since we were both avid gamers at the time. He was the ‘conquer and pillage’ type while I was the ‘research and develop’ type, so we complemented each other well. The problem with some strategy games, though, is that you can sometimes learn what it takes to beat an AI without necessarily learning fundamental strategy. I don’t mention this as a criticism of the notion of gaming in libraries or to say that good skills can’t be learned, but I’ve always been disappointed by games that turn out to be puzzles. I guess that’s a bit tangential…” [Nat’s Weblog]

dominican university, gaming, gaming and libraries, gaming in libraries, gslis, library school, michael stephens

There were many reasons I hosted the ALA TechSource Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium this past July, not the least of which was to share with others the breadth of gaming services libraries can offer. The fact that I got to meet some of my heroes (like Henry Jenkins and James Paul Gee), as well as meet new people doing interesting things around gaming, was rich and tasty gravy.

Two of those people were Mark Engelbrecht and Martin House from the Public Library of Charlotte Mecklenburg County, who received a $69,000 LSTA grant to study gaming for adults last year. There’s a reason we talk so much about the kids and the teenagers when it comes to gaming in libraries, but we can’t forget that there are valid gaming services for 20somethings, 30somethings, families, parents, boomers, seniors, and pretty much everyone else who enjoys games. So their session at the Symposium was high on my list to hear but as it turns out, when you host an event like this, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll actually get to see much of the presentations. So I missed almost all of their talk, and unfortunately we didn’t have video of it. There is audio, which you can grab to listen to here, and I highly recommend you do that.

But now, you can also read (and subscribe) to Martin House’s new blog Technaeum, where he will be posting excerpts of their research and data from the grant. I’m thrilled about this, because it solidifies 2007 as the first year we started getting actual numbers of any kind surrounding gaming in libraries, and just like Scott Nicholson’s data, PLCMC’s numbers are fascinating.

Gaming and Libraries: Reference Ain’t Dead

“As an indication that reference really ‘ain’t’ dead, I would like to share some research with you from an LSTA Innovations Grant. The library received $69,000 to create gaming programs for adults and study the impact of these events in terms of their library use. What we found is that the single biggest reason patrons cited for coming to the library was reference, or an informational need….

…libraries today are still faced with the age old charge, being ‘The People’s University.’ If my research is any indication of this, libraries are more needed than ever due to people’s needs to have knowledgeable professionals guide them through the world of information overload - oh and bad information too boot.

There is also a very good indication that patron who attended the gaming programs frequented the library more in subsequent months.”

Be sure to read the rest of Martin’s post and to check back or subscribe to his blog, because he will be posting about their research regularly. Thanks, Martin - this is a huge contribution to the profession.