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College Librarians Urged To Play Video Games
An anonymous reader writes "At meeting of college librarians, experts tell them they need to start thinking the way video game producers think and provide library services that will make sense to those who play computer games. 'In an era when most students would have to go to a museum to see an old-fashioned card catalog, there's no doubt that libraries have embraced technology. But speakers said that there was a larger split between students -- who are "digital natives," in one popular way of classifying people based on their experience with technology -- and librarians, who are more likely to be "digital immigrants." They may have learned the language, but it's a second language.'"
100 - Uncommon Loot
200 - Rare Loot
300 - Epic Loot
400 - Instances
500 - World Zones
600 - Creatures of Azeroth
700 - Biographies of Alliance and Horde Leaders
800 - History of Azeroth
900 - Addictions
I have never had a problem with the Dewey Decimal system. Could it be that most digital natives are of a younger generation who feel the world should be handed to them and they also feel they have no need to learn anything except that which is of interest to them forcing the rest of the world to conform to their lack of motivation?
And that is different from anyone else
Haven't us guys ALWAYS been accused of skipping the instructions? Be it stereo or bicycle or whatever.
Apparently everything old is now new.
I don't want my library to be digitalized for the masses! I like to go to the library as a place to go find real books. Yeah, doing research in a library is totally different from doing it online. Isn't that the point? And you definitely don't need to do lots of reading about how to use a library. You want to get information on a subject, you ask a librarian where you can find information about it, they tell you, you go there and you read the books. It's that simple.
And what was with that religion analogy? Someone seems a little biased, on multiple levels.
The biggest obstacles in the way of librarians teaching students are the librarians who don't want to teach, and the students who don't want to learn.
So where is the companion article titled:
Video game players encouraged to learn to use libraries
?
This is just depressing. More dumbing down.
We should never read before we play, Gee said.OK fine, but I never thought of research as play.
Likewise, tools students will use should be designed with this in mind, Gee said, just the way video games are designed. With video games, you can play while you are inept, he said.True, I do this every day. But again, we're not talking about play. It's a little harder (but not impossible) to graduate from college and hold a job while inept. And of course, the best quote from the article:
Lowered consequences of failure is a key value to embrace, he said.Because we don't want failure to hold anybody back, teach people to learn from their mistakes, or encourage them to work harder.
What about the elderly or other computer illiterates who also will need to use the system? They need to balance the needs of both groups - and not replace the standard catalog search with a FPS because it'll be easier for the youngin's to understand.
When the power goes out? Card catalogs.
I come from the generation who can actually do math without
a calculator. We used slide rules and log tables. We could
interpolate.
Todays digital kids would be lost in a society with no gizmo's.
Surely this is not a survival trait.
"Don't you know the Dewey Decimal System?"
sigh. Gotta pull out that UHF DVD and watch it sometime...
I feel that the suggestion to have college libraries host LAN parties is just ridiculous, unless the purpose is to drive up user traffic (which a lot of the time affects funding). It seems to me that hosting LAN parties for gaming is antithetical to the purpose of a library, and would be distracting to people using the library for work (even if it's in a separate, sound-proofed area -- the temptation would be distracting to me, I'm sure). If the library has resources to host parties after hours, then I believe those resources would be much better used keeping the library open for study longer.
As for 24-7 support services, wouldn't that be expensive? And why should a college library offer full services 24-7 other than making life easier for students? I know for certain that when I work late, I don't have full support from staff at my company. I think students should get used to the fact that not all resources at at our fingertips 24-7, and we should not expect them to be. Students need to learn to manage resources well, and that includes dealing with part-time access to them.
I don't ant to sound like I'm going off on a get-off-my-lawn tirade, but I truly feel that libraries should stick to their base functions as information repositories and access points. Does this mean that library use may drop, since the internet has become the prime access point for information among younger people? Sure. But rather than expand the scope of libraries, I'd rather see reduced expenditures (like shared acquisitions {when licensing permits}, more efficient use of technology (why keep all those little-used dead trees around when digital versions are both more useful and cheaper to deal with?).
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
But I can still find the section in the library where the book WOULD have been shelved and I can go to that location to find what OTHER books are there.
That's what bugs me the most. They seem to assume that you have to know the cataloging system in order to find anything - Dewey Decimal system and whatnot - and that if you don't know the system, you're screwed. I have absolutely no clue how the Dewey Decimal system works, but I also have no problem finding things in libraries. It's not like the libraries don't actually label the sections. If you're looking for history books, it'll say "HISTORY" on the shelves. It just means you have to walk around for a bit. Not to mention they ignore the obvious solution of walking up to said librarian and asking "Excuse me, could you tell me where the history section is?" And then they tell you, and all is well.
(Bonus points if you can identify the major US university I'm referring to.)
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
"Language" as it's used here is a metaphor for the whole digital/computer culture that modern people are steeped in. Basically, they're saying that librarians aren't tech savvy enough, and they need to find some way of participating in the tech culture at a higher level than just "I know what a web page is." Video games might be an example of this, and while I don't necessarily think they're the "best" way to go about it, it will get you more computer facility than taking a bunch of training courses that you'll never put to use.
If you've dealt with a librarian recently, this isn't any surprise to you. They just aren't savvy at what I would consider the "required" level for a position that ought to require extreme information aptitude in this day in age; facility with the Dewey Decimal system ain't going to cut it. You need to know which digital archives are most likely to have pertinent information, and you need to know the best ways to dig through them. You also need to know enough about it that you can help drive intelligent computerization in your library system.
Library sciences is a masters level degree, and it's hard to be a librarian without that degree. They really ought to have a pretty substantial computer requirement, but from what I can tell they don't....Courses like "LBSC 690 Information Technology" would seem to indicate that they actually require some advanced computer work, but looking at the actual syllabus, it looks more like "CS 101 -- How to use Microsoft Office"...That's just not going to cut it.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
> librarian, where is "war and peace"? ...
The librarian coos, "Oh, that's a lovely book. I can point you directly to the shelf where it belongs. It's in the basement, near the new Ancient Egypt exhibits."
> north
You are in a twisty maze of Paleology stacks, all alike. > north
You are in a twisty maze of Bolivian Studies stacks, all alike. There is a staircase leading down. > down
I don't understand you.
> go down the stairs
It is dark. You might be eaten by a grue.
> light light I don't understand you.
> turn on flashlight
You are in a twisty maze of Egyptian stacks, all alike. An archway leads east between two papier mache sphynxes.
> east
A janitor yells at you, "Hey! You can't go in there! The exhibit's closed until Monday. But if you fetch me a bottle of whiskey I stashed in the Astronomy stacks on the third floor, I'll let you in."
>
[
Yeah, just like in the old King's Quest games. Or just about anything from Sierra's old line.
Again, just like the old games. If you're looking for the "armourer", you look for the shop with the say saying "armourer".
It's like a trip down Memory Lane.
Just like in the old games. You walk up to EVERY person you see and you talk to them.
The ONLY difference (and this is a BIG one, folks) is that you do NOT pick up everything you find and put it in your pack to see if you can use it later. Aside from that minor point, using the library is EXACTLY like the old video games.
This article is interesting, despite their wide generalizations of gamers, many of which are not really true. If you take out their focus on mentioning video games and gamers every sentence, the article is really about two things.
People aren't having a whole lot of fun in libraries. They suggest: Hold LAN parties, after hours, in libraries. In effect, make the library somewhere that people associate with fun, instead of... not. I don't think this will ever work: people come to the library to find books. If people enjoy reading, they'll enjoy the library. If they just come to do work, then they probably won't. Nothing wrong with that. In my opinion, if you want to make libraries seem like a more fun place, they should have more sections that don't stress silence so much. Of course, people who are trying to work or read quietly, perfectly understandable, but if I'm just leisurely reading and I see someone reading an interesting book, I might want to have a chat with that person. If you go to any bookstore, especially one with a cafe attached, you'll see tons of people reading, drinking coffee and chatting. Why? Silence isn't an enforced rule.
The real substance of the article, though, is about usability. It's not really true that no gamer reads the manual before playing, but the reason that it's not mandatory is because games (especially console games) have a common interface. If you're playing on the 360, you know the controller layout, it's just a matter of pushing a button and seeing what it does. PC games can be a bit more complicated, and I would argue that most people tend to read the readme or look at the Controls option in the game to find out what the controls are. Libraries without a doubt could use a usability overhaul. A requisite link for talking about usability is Don Norman's publications.
As a sidenote, I really hate the term "Digital Natives". I hope it doesn't catch on.
How does this relate to the iPhone? I think it will change the way people use libraries.
Now if only their instructors could figure that out too.
Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A (Start)
Press select before you press start, and you can get 30 free books for your friend, too.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I agree that part of learning to be a scholar is learning to use the tools of the scholar. But at the time the online tools of the scholar were developed, librarians were thinking in terms of replicating a paper system, not making the best possible use of the digital world.
IANALibrarian, but I worked as a cataloger and cataloger team lead in the early '90s, entering card catalogs, books, and other media into online databases for a vendor that serviced libraries. Many of the people I supervised or worked beside held or were seeking their MLS degrees, and at the time cataloging was respected among librarians as perhaps the most technically demanding part of their degree. I was informed last year by a librarian/cataloger colleague that the curent tendency is more and more to outsource cataloging to highly trained non-librarians, and that schools are starting to drop cataloging as a requirement to obtain a library science degree.
While there, I participated in a brainstorming session developing new services for libraries, and improving information accessibility (this was 1992). Among the suggestions given were scanning books, creating new ways of searching for data, creating new interfaces, allowing searches outside the library itself, and many more. Anything involving redesigning presentation of cataloging data was shot down because "people are used to the card catalog system." The idea that new users might want a different way, or that old users might profit by an improved approach and embrace it, was not supported.
The problem lies in the fact that librarians tend to categorize within existing systems. Even librarians who have migrated into the web world do this. I sat on a meeting discussing user interface for a personalized telecommunications site, and two people actually argued that the user interface should be identical to the directories storing the content. Those two were the sole librarians on the team, and the rest of us had to explain that the core concept of personalization (and indeed a major strength of the internet) is that content can be presented effectively in a broad variety of ways. One of them continued to resist, nonetheless, not comprehending that the architecture taxonomy did not need to equal the UI taxonomy (although of course it affected what was possible).
I agree wholeheartedly that learning to use library tools is part of learning to be a scholar. I think librarians serve an invaluable purpose. But I do think there is a hidebound tendency, which is being shown in the tendency to diminish the emphasis on online technical competency (not requiring cataloging for MLS degrees) and the tendency to dismiss the potential for improved interfaces out of hand.
Frankly, I think this article is somewhat a load of junk. Learning how to use a library isn't exactly difficult, even when resorting to the "traditional" card catalog method. If students aren't able to learn the basics of using a library, there's something else *severely* wrong with the educational system.
That said, there *ARE* plenty of ways that libraries can be made more accessible to the younger generation.
For instance, the library at the university I attend requires that their reference staff be accessible by e-mail or Instant Message during their desk hours. With more and more journals and databases being online, this makes perfect sense.
I've used the Instant Message service countless times, and it's amazingly convenient.
Last year, I worked on a paper dealing with a somewhat obscure topic. The reference desk librarian wasn't able to find any journals or anthologies off the top of his head that addressed the topic, and told me he'd get back to me in a day. By the next morning, he had e-mailed several professors who he thought might be familiar with the topic, who in turn referred me to two graduate students who had written papers on similar topics, who then happily supplied me with the list of sources they had consulted.
Libraries don't need to be 'hip'. They need to be accessible.
Of course, stimulating the intellectual curiosity necessary to get people into libraries is a different ballgame entirely. (We also do have a 'popular reading' section, that in addition to popular books and movies, contains scholarly works that tie in closely to books or films, which can be a fascinating follow-up to books like The DaVinci Code or Freakonomics)
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose