GAMERT (Gaming) Round Table

Question for the group: do you find value in ALA continuing to promote and coordinate National Gaming Day? Does it help your gaming efforts at your library? Do you think it moves gaming forward within the profession?

Or are games now like books, and we don't need a special event specifically to promote their use in libraries?

Curious to hear your thoughts.

Thanks,
Jenny

I think the benefit to NGD is no longer as much for the participating libraries, but for the leverage it gives ALA and libraries to get gamers and the gaming industry involved.  As it's a big national event, it's something that raises eyebrows as it's not a typical event.

Perhaps that should be the focus this year - a broader message out to the industry and helping local libraries reach out to the game shops and the gamers in their area.

We have summer reading programs, Banned Books Week, Teen Reads Week, and countless One City, One Book events to promote books and reading; we should continue to celebrate games as a medium and gaming as a positive social activity, despite the fact that fewer and fewer people are shocked by the presence of games and gamers in the library nowadays.

Question for the group: do you find value in ALA continuing to promote and coordinate National Gaming Day? Does it help your gaming efforts at your library? Do you think it moves gaming forward within the profession?

I dig NGD and I think it should go on.  Like Brandon said, we have all these other programs for books....keeping a cool program like this for games is a grand idea.

However, I still think NGD could benefit from a "reimaging" of sorts.  It's good to go back every few years and think about why you do something and how you can update it.

My thoughts are pretty much in line with everyone else. It's nice to have a regular focal point for gaming as a legitimate activity in libraries. We get patrons asking about it every time fall comes around.

But like Justin said, I think we can expand the scope of the event. Who else can we work with to give NGD wider reach, and create greater exposure for libraries and gaming alike?

Agreed. REthinking and REfining is always very benificial, though can be difficult to orchestrate. I love that we have a whole day dedicated to putting gaming programs front and center. It would be interesting to see about making certain aspects of NGD a game, perhaps that fostered or built that collaboration between friendly local gaming stores and varying library branches in the community. I don't want to say "scavanger" but something that motivates patrons to find and visit multiple branches and gaming resources in their community..... something that motivates them to discover and connect with these local resources.

Just thoughts at the moment.

Brian

Like the others have stated, I think NGD is still important to have.  It has helped validate the use of gaming (video gaming that is)  in the libraries in my area.  What I would like to see is more of a focus on table top and board games.  I know that in my area, I have been attempting for a while to host some Magic or D&D gaming events with little luck.  They are still seen as "occult" and something not to promote.  Not that I don't love video gaming, but it would be nice if there were perhaps a slightly different focus to sort of liven things up.

Michelle

Yes! This was our first year to participate and it was a great success. I work at an academic library and we are beginning to support classes in game programming, design, and theory with our game collection. This was a good way to pull in students to the library not only to play games but to hear local game developers talk about the industry. It was exciting for students who had never really thought of this as a viable career. We intend to keep offering these events.

This is a great show of support, everyone - thank you for responding!

I'll move forward with planning this year's event, but right now I'm essentially the only person working on it. If anyone has time to help with the following during the next nine months, I'd really appreciate the assist. I probably won't be able to "take it up a level" without help, as I've been treading water just to keep it going as is the last two years.

• Help keep the NGD site current with news about gaming in libraries
• Same thing for the NGD Twitter account and eventual FB event page
• Create marketing materials for this year's event, including a poster, flyer, postcard, bookmark, web badges, etc.
• Help create a marketing campaign and push material out on a regular basis, including contact gaming sites
• Reach out to potential donors
• Help implement any of the ideas proposed to "take it up a level"
• Anything else you can lend a hand with

Thanks,
Jenny

I haven't forgotten promising to help out, Jenny. I'm taking three classes this semester and I have two more classes to go; maybe by this summer and certainly by this fall I can actually contribute more. In the meantime, I'll chip in whenever I can.

I will be happy to work on the promo materials if you are happy with the work I have done so far. I can try to help contribute in other ways as well... perhaps with updates.

Brian

We are just beginning to bring games into the library (an academic library) and are going against so many who are not as open minded.  Without the ALA, gaming librarians and especially NGD, we basically have no leg to stand on.   Every positive reason we have for gaming is met with doubt, distrustfulness and blunt opposition.  The issue is off course, violent video games (first person shooter) especially with them remembering Columbine and Virginia Tech.  But without games like Modern Warfare, Halo, etc, our students are not interested in many of the games too.

As always it’s a balancing act but having ALA support gaming is a big plus and NGD is a trump card for us so please continue.

At the Midwinter Games/Gaming MIG meeting, I commented about us taking on stance on age-appropriateness when it
comes to game content.  We have children's, YA, and adult books--we should recognize that there are children's, YA, and adult games.  Given your story, Vang, I say that now is the time for us to get serious about this.  Hopefully one of the next steps we can take is educating librarians on how to get the 18+ games into the library and patrons on why it's okay to have those games in the library.

Hi Jenny,

I'm willing to help out with whatever you need.  I'll be moving into a new position in an academic library where we don't do gaming or game activities, but I hope to change that!  I'll also be working on a new gaming project that just got funding through ALA (more on that later).  At any rate, this is one of my big research interests so I would like to have more involvement with this group and project here.

Thanks for the offers of help, all - they're very much appreciated.

Brandon, I knew you were pretty busy right now, so I didn't want to speak for you. Whenever you have a few minutes to help with anything on the list, lmk.

Brian, I will definitely take you up on your offer to help with promo materials. I plan to have the 2011 logo on the NGD site today, and my first order of business is to put together a flyer for the public. I know this is really short notice, but ALA will be at C2E2 this weekend, so I'm hoping to have NGD flyers at the booth. If you have any time to work on it before end of the day on Thursday, I'll be forever grateful.

Shannon, if you see anything on the list that you think you can help with, just let me know. Otherwise, I'm sure I'll be posting additional calls for help as we move forward.

The other thing everyone can do is propose ways to integrate ideas like Michelle's for additional types of gaming activities.

Jenny

I will get working on the flyer today. The new logo will help me tie color schemes and look. FYI the video post from December on the front page is broken. The user took down the youtube video.

Hi Jenny,

I'm finally settled in, so let me know what I can do to help.

-Shannon