Last summer my college’s 50th Anniversary committee asked me if I could create a campus-wide game that would engage the campus community in the anniversary celebration in a fun and unique way. In Syracuse, we have a Winterfest Medallion hunt each year so they were thinking of something along those lines. After much research and brainstorming I came up with a CLUE like game that involved solving clues to reveal details about a specific moment in the college’s history.

The game ran during the last week of September. Two clues were posted each day via email, college websites, and social media pages. We also had a display in the library with clues posted daily. We ended up with over 60 submissions. Just over 30 guesses were correct. Prizes were awarded via random drawing.

I had a great experience creating this game. I hope to do something like this again in the near future. I will be presenting the details of game design process at the 2012 ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim, CA.

Last Sunday I played the Chevy Sonic SCVNGR challenge in downtown Syracuse. The prize was a 2012 Chevy Sonic. To win the prize your team had to earn the most points during the game. These were the rules given to us:

• Each team consisted of two player teams
• Teams had to stay together during the entire game
• Players must use the SCVNGR app or text messaging to play
• The game would last two hours
• There were 48 challenges.
• Each challenge varied in its value. The harder the challenge the more points you would earn for completing it.
• No wheels allowed.

My sister and I ran all over downtown and completed 29 of the 48 challenges. We had a great time trying to complete the challenges. We didn’t win the car, but I thought this would be a great event to run at the college. We don’t have a car to give away, but I am sure we could come up with some fun prizes. I also would want to figure out a non-mobile option for playing the game. I would not want to exclude anyone that wanted to play because they didn’t have a phone.

I found several ideas for how to use QR codes in my library. Here are some of the ideas I am considering.

• Promote database QR features (ie. Alexander Street Press – http://www.lawrence.edu/library/music)
• Scavenger Hunt via QR Codes
• Place QR codes at the end of book stacks/special collections. Scanning the code will take you to more information (ie. highlight books on shelf, link to virtual version of items, etc…)
• Link to catalog records
• Snap & Go – Library uses this for multiple ideas (http://guides.ccclib.org/qr)

The codes are so easy to create it is easy to go overboard. I think careful consideration should be given to how often these codes are used. There should also be alternative access provided to the information for patrons that do not own smartphones.

I am exploring the possible uses of foursquare in libraries. Below are some of the ideas I came across when I read David Lee King’s blog post “Foursquare and Libraries – Definitely Something There!” (http://www.davidleeking.com/2010/02/01/foursquare-and-libraries-definitely-something-there/) and Stephen Abram’s blog post “Foursquare Brainstorming” (http://stephenslighthouse.com/2011/02/02/foursquare-brainstorming/).

• Prizes for your library’s mayor
• Create unique library related badges that patrons can earn by visiting the library a certain number of times, participating in a library event, etc…
• Hide something (ie. fake book) and leave clues in the tips for your library. The person that finds it and checks it out wins a prize.
• Provide tips of things you can do at the library and/or create To-Do lists of things you may want to do.
• Add any big events that you library hosts. You can give prizes to participants that check-in that meet certain criteria.

I am waiting for foursquare to approve my claim that I manage this venue so I can try some of these ideas.

 

I am a recipient of one of my college’s President’s Incentive Grants to explore mobile technologies in libraries. As part of the grant, I decided that I would document my discoveries and explorations on this blog. I am waiting for a couple iPad and iPod Touches to begin my exploration. Part of the grant is also providing funds to license the SCVNGR mobile app support and software for a year. We plan to offer a mobile library orientation experience during the fall 2011 semester with this application.

This session was part of the lightning strikes session. Each speaker had 7 minutes to present an overview of their project. This session was titled “Challenging First Year Students to Compete in the Amazing Library Race: Do You Have What It Takes?” presented by Michelle Baratta from Toronto University.

The Amazing Library race takes place in the Engineering Library as part of faculty day which is part of the orientation for new students.

Some of the activities that take place on this day are:

• Yoga
• DDR with your profs.
• Etc…

Library staff decided to create a game based on the Amazing Race. They created passports. The challenge is to see what if they had what it takes? They needed to find a book, article, ask a question at the reference desk, and login in to the system. They also had just for fun stations (ie: create a paper airplane). Passports are stamped at stations upon successful completion of a challenge.

The goal of this event was to reinforce that library staff are helpful and have students visit stations that will be most useful to them.

The event ran once in the morning and again in the afternoon. One person planned the event and they had three months to plan. 68 students participated.

As promised I am posting additional reflections about WILU. This post describes a concurrent session I attended. Fred Roecker from Ohio State University was the presenter.

They conducted a user survey prior to development of the game. The game is for first year experience students. They send postcards each year to students in the program. There first idea was to have students go through four quests, but their consultant said it looked too much like a homework assignment. They scraped it and started again… They decided to go with casual games.

Positive focus with a general overview of libraries. It is more fun, easy, no instruction, just information. More like a tour, not an assignment.

Decision 1 – Campus is the game board

Decision 2 – Casual games

• Crossword puzzle
• Jigsaw puzzle
• Multiple guess games
• Matching games

If students complete the games they are eligible for prizes. Some of the prizes are iPods, iTunes cards, movie tickets.

The game is available here: http://nextweb.lib.ohio-state.edu/sites/fye/

He also suggested getting involved with the gaming program or club at your school.

I attended WILU 2010 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada last week. This conference provided some wonderful information related to both my sabbatical research topics. I will give a summary of my experience over several posts.

Here is my summary of the Keynote.

A New Paradigm for Learning in the 21^st Century (And Where Libraries Fit In)
James Paul Gee, Arizona State University.

This presenter argued that today, outside of our educational institutions (K-20), in popular culture, a new paradigm of learning is arising. He stated that in online gaming communities (ie. Sims, World of Warcraft, etc…) learning happens in these key ways:

• The community is not age-graded. You have all ages, genders, etc.. participating and learning in these communities.
• Some days you lead, other days you follow.
• Knowledge is distributed. There is not one authority that has all the knowledge.
• It is never wrong to ask for help, but you must be responsible for your own learning.
• There is no time-limit on learning.

He encouraged librarians to partner across library types to create space (physical & virtual) to foster these types of learning environments. He thinks libraries are the ideal setting to these types of communities.

Last month I attended an online Nylink webinar titled “Library Mashups: Exploring New Ways to Deliver Library Data”. Nicole C. Engard, editor of “Library Mashups: Exploring new ways to deliver library data” (http://mashups.web2learning.net), explained what mashups are, how they can be used and shared examples from libraries around the world. Some of the highlights for me were the following:

• She suggested that we ask vendors for read-only access to data so we can repackage the data for various features and services we want to offer. She also emphasized that we should not need to pay for this access.
• Yahoo Pipes is an interesting tool for creating programs that manipulate data in various ways. I had heard of this resource before, but I wasn’t sure how to use it or what I could do with it. I have a general idea now, but I still need to do more exploring.
• Big Huge Labs has a lot of great tools for manipulating images. I like the idea of creating a puzzle from an image of your library or something else unique to your library. Then put the puzzle out for your patrons to complete.
• Flickr is not only a great place to store all kinds of images, but once your images are in Flickr you can manipulate them in many ways.
• Delicious is great for bookmarks, but again you can manipulate in many ways once you have tagged your links. Most of the links on my Gaming in Academic Libraries site (http://academiclibrariesgaming.yolasite.com/) are actually in Delicious. I brought them to my site by using the link rolls feature that Delicious offers.
• She suggested using Google maps to create a custom map to your library. We have this feature, but I plan to make it more prominent when I return from sabbatical.

I plan to buy her book. I also noticed that she is leading a preconference at ALA covering much of this content. I would recommend attending if you want some practical tips for including mashups on your library website and elsewhere.

Over the past couple weeks I created a website to document the gaming events taking place in academic libraries around the country. I initially planned to create a mysql database to store all this information, but in the spirit of web 2.0 research I decided to use tools I discovered during my sabbatical. I create my gaming in academic libraries website using the following tools: Yola (free website service), Delicious (social bookmarking site), and Wufoo (free web form creation service). I also played with a Flickr collage tool at the bottom of my “additional resources” page.

The website can be found at this web address: http://AcademicLibrariesGaming.yolasite.com