The exhibit floor at ALA Midwinter featured a video game playing demonstration at the ALA booth. I would venture to say that most boomer librarians, myself included, are not up to speed on the currently popular video games. This presented a good opportunity to learn and gather some intelligence. I watched a young man face off against a librarian in a game of Guitar Hero.
I got the gist of how the game worked, and I could see how our students can find these games enormously entertaining. It did give me a greater appreciation for video game playing. While I still don’t think I’m ready to suggest that academic libraries should acquire games for their collections, I can see some possibilities for offering more video game playing events in the library.
Maybe not on every campus …. at UIUC gaming research is a rapidly developing area – classes too. This semester, we’ve had our first request to place a game on reserve for a class research project. http://www.library.uiuc.edu/gaming/ is the beginning of our portal. With this degree at MSU – http://dmat.msu.edu/degrees/gamespecialization.html – maybe someone from MSU Library can tell us what they are doing?
I actually wrote a posting in my blog that considers some of the relevant issues. The short version… I think libraries should carry video games, though selectiveness is a necessity, and they should not replace other modes of learning.
Take a look at this MacArthur Foundation public session tomorrow night, ‘Do Video Games Help Kids Learn?’ (http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.2427777/k.23C7/Do_Video_Games_Help_Kids_Learn.htm).
This forum–“part of MacArthur’s $50 million initiative to explore how new technologies are changing the way kids learn”–of course, is aimed at educators and others who may be interested in using video games as teaching tools for KIDS. But kids are future academic library users (hopefully)…
I personally would love to be able to check out video games at my library (academic or public). Education and games go together, in my book. Research seems to be pointing to that too.