How are Libraries Supporting Gaming: A Pilot Exploration

摘要

Over the last few years, some libraries have been turning to gaming activities like Dance Dance Revolution as a way of bringing in new demographic groups and exposing them to library services. Recently, Jenny Levine, a.k.a. The Shifted Librarian, wrote an American Library Association publication highlighting different types of video gaming activities in libraries (Levine, 2006,) and other librarians have written about their experiences in print and online (Neiburger, 2007; Schmidt, 2006; Gallaway, Schwarzwalder, Czarnecki, 2007). Gaming is rapidly growing into the next new media as sales of games have outpaced box office sales and are predicted to grow beyond music sales in the near future (Alpert, 2007; Cheng, 2007). Just as libraries have caused controversy in the past by adding fiction to their offerings and circulating recreational videos, libraries are creating controversy today by supporting gaming through in-house gaming activities and circulation of gaming materials. At this point, there is little data about the penetration of gaming in library services. There is anecdotal data and guides to best practice, but there is little data about how many libraries are supporting gaming and in what ways. Over the last year, the Library Game Lab of Syracuse has done a number of surveys to understand how libraries are using and supporting games. The purpose of this short paper/poster is to present the results from these first few surveys and to engage attendees in discussions about future research needs and paths to explore the intersection of gaming and libraries.