Going for the Gold
Innovating and
Collaborating thru Gaming
and Digital Technologies
The Georgetown County
Library’s
Challenges and Successes
Dwight McInvaill, Director
Georgetown County Library, SC
843-545-3304
dmcinvaill@georgetowncountysc.org
Presentation to the Association for Rural and Small Libraries
Conference
September 2009
Georgetown County’s Library in
1859
Prosperity on the Back of
Enslaved Persons
Georgetown County Library
2009
But Enduring Problems
Remain
We’ve Got Local Problems that
Need Creative Solutions!
And Also Some Scarier
National Ones!
How Do We Continue to
Succeed in a
Brave New World?
Let’s Do Something Exciting!
Presently, Libraries are
Popular.
Recommendations for
Libraries
(According to the Da Vinci Institute)
1. Evaluate the library
experience (Survey the
community; figure out how
to get at the heart of what
matters most to your
community.)
2. Embrace new information
technologies.
3. Preserve the memories of
your own communities. (Don’t
let yours disappear.)
4. Experiment with creative
spaces so the future role of
the library can define itself.
A Paradox?
If we would like things
to remain the same –
with libraries at the center of their
communities (universities, schools,
businesses, cities, towns, etc.)
– then, maybe, we
have got to do some
things differently?
Augmented Library
Users?
Graz University of Technology,
Austria
Augmented Libraries?
Brabant Library, Netherlands
(proposed)
Graz Tech University, Austria
American Library Association Library
in Second Life
Why Wait for the
Future?
Delft Library, Netherlands
We Need to Cultivate
All of Our Resources
Now!
Georgetown County Library, South
Carolina
Our Library Faces Challenges. For
example, we have
•
Limited Resources
– Staff (Only 24 FTEs to serve
60,000 citizens at 4 locations)
– Money (Of 42 public library
systems in SC, we rank only
19th in total operating income)
•
•
Lack of Expertise
Need to Garner Support for
Innovations from:
–
–
–
–
–
Library Board, Itself
County Government
Staff
General Public
Grant Givers
The Library Does All
Sorts of Programs for
Youngsters
We’ve had Success in Innovating and
Collaborating
When We Hosted a Ben Franklin
Exhibit, We Even Had Dancing in the
Heart of the Exhibit!
To achieve success , we collaborated
successfully with our national funders,
with the Humanities Council of SC,
with the Studio of Dance, and with the
Georgetown County School District.
The library system is a key member of the Georgetown
County First Steps Partnership which aims to prepare
preschoolers to be emotionally, intellectually, and
physically ready for first grade. As part of this aim, the
library established book collections in 42 childcare
centers throughout the county. The library also obtained
grant funds to develop a special educational curriculum
and to supply a storyteller to visit each of these
preschool centers monthly to entertain the youngsters and
to serve as a model for the childcare providers.
Additionally, the library continues to furnish monthly
workshops where preschool instructors can earn
continuing-education certification credits. For this
work, the library system won in 2003, the first “Counties
Care for Kids Award” given by the National Association of
Counties.
So We’ve Always Known that
Libraries can Benefit Young
People, but First, You’ve Got
to Get THEM inside!
We’ve Used Innovative
Technology Projects to Get Folks
to Visit Us
One of Our Projects
Involves Interactive
Gaming
Here’s a View of our
Interactive Gaming Center at
our Carvers Bay Branch
Your Public Library: Keeping Your Community Connected
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM7jAbvLUFc&eurl=http
%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Egclibrary%2Eorg%2Fdefault%2Easp
Success Takes Good Rules,
People, Spaces, Equipment,
Games, and PR!
We Started with
THE LIBRARY CARD.
Checking Out Library Materials
Comes With Being in the
Library Gaming Club.
Graphic Novels, Videos, Music, Magazines, Gaming
Rules, and Even Regular Books!
Great Staff is Key to Success!
Marilynn Robb, Carvers Bay Branch Manager
Donald Dennis, Overall
Gaming Project Manager
(Bunnelle Youth Technology
Experience Series –BYTEs)
Truman Winns, Carver
Bay Branch Library,
Gaming Site Assistant
Good Spaces are Needed, too.
That takes additional planning,
along with equipment.
Surround Sound Rear Speakers in ceiling
Center Channel (High)
Meetings
Gaming
Research
Teaching
Movies
Listening
Learning
Teleconference
Camera
LCD Flat Panel Display
Main Left
Main Right
Center Channel (Low)
XBOX
Receiver
DVD/VCRHeadphones
Computer
Network HUB
USB HUB
Sub Left
Signal
Limiter
Audio Mixer
Network Port
Power Outlet
A/V Input
Sub Right
Kool-Aid Jammers will Draw
Some Folks in like Bees to
Flowers!
So will Good Publicity.
Wait! Is This Really Okay? Are
You Sure?
Parents are often concerned.
See ALA’s Gaming Web Site for
Some Good Points about the
Value of Gaming for Kids.
• To Play, Kids will get Library Cards & Read Books
• Games Sometimes Provide Stories in a New Format
• Games Encourage Problem Solving and Critical Thinking
• Games Involve Experimenting and Evaluating
• Games Meet Developmental Needs of Teens
Established by National Middle School Association
• Games Encourage Social Interaction Between Peers and
Non Peers, Enforce Rules and Boundaries, Encourage
Creative Expression, and Reward Competence
• Some Games Help to Release and Manage Anger and
Frustration (See this Book: Grand Theft Childhood)
• Some Games are Physically Healthy: Dance Dance
Revolution Gets Heart Rates Up to 140 Beats Per Minute
• Some Games Help Students with Special Needs (See
this study from 2005: The Effects of a Consumer Oriented
Multimedia Game on the Reading Disorders of Children)
• Games have Recreational Value
• Many Games are Social
• Some Games Require Reading Instructions, Menus, and
More
• Some Games (D&D, Sports Games, etc) Require
Statistical Skills and an Understanding of Probability
• Some Games Introduce Us to History, Music, etc.
• THE LIST COULD GO ON AND ON!
Have a Good Event Schedule
Carvers Bay Library
Tournament Schedule (Detailed below)
•OPEN 2nd or 4th weekend of every month (Detailed below)
•GAME CLUB ONLY 3rd weekend of every month (Detailed below)
Digital Arts Literacy Experience Through the end of the 2009-2010 school year.
Additional programs will be created if their grant status does not continue.
YDACS Game design program Weekday Afternoons June 9th – July -27th 2009.
(Perhaps expanding to Georgetown.)
Andrews Library
Tournament Schedule
•OPEN 1st weekend of every month (Starting with completion of room)
•GAME CLUB ONLY 3rd weekend of every month (Starting with completion of room)
Digital Arts Literacy Experience Through the end of the 2009-2010 school year.
Additional programs will be created to fill the gap if their grant status does not
continue.
YDACS Game design program Weekday Afternoons June 9th – July -27th 2010. (If
test run at Carvers Bay is successful.)
WBL Library
OPEN Gaming 1st weekend of every month (Starting March 2010)
Digital Arts class Starts January 2010 if Andrews room completed.
•Writing/Storytelling/Blogging January
•Digital Photography February
•Audio March
•Film April
Repeat in summer and Fall
Georgetown Branch
Kids Activities
Small Bytes June 9th – July -27th Kids programming in the Technology and computer
lab
•10:00 am – Noon on Tuesdays
•Afternoons on Thursdays
Mid-Week Manga Talk about Manga, comic books, Anime, and related web sites
•Afternoons on Wednesdays during the summer. June 9th – July -27th
•2nd Wednesday evening of the month thereafter
Family Game Night
•Tuesdays starting in May
Game Tournaments
•OPEN TOURNAMENT 2rd weekend of every month (Detailed below)
•GAME CLUB ONLY 3nd weekend of every month (Detailed below)
Have Speakers at Game Club
Meetings andTournaments:
May – Norman Lewis (Mentor – Local)
June – Tronster Hartly (Sr. Programmer ~
Firaxis Games Web conference)
July – Ron Brown (USC)
August – Adam Cooksey of Perry
Cunningham (Game Stop - Local)
September – NONE – Hurricane party
October – DJ Hammonds (Artist - Local)
November – Alan Webb (Game Tester,
Level Designer - Web conference)
December Tim Collins & Donald Dennis
January – Kathy Tempesta (Zenimax,
Producer, Test Lead)
February – Steve Roff Service over Self
(Approached, not confirmed)
March - Sean Torrens (Parks & Rec – Local)
April – County IT guys. (We’ve talked to
several, and they are interested. Asked us to
get in touch as we got closer to the time.
Here’s the URL for Libraries,
Literacy and Gaming at ALA:
http://librarygamingtoolkit.org
ALA & Verizon Made It
Possible
10 Recipients of $5,000 Literacy and
Gaming Initiative Grants
•Anderson Public Library, Anderson, Ind.: “Techie
Tuesdays” emphasizes technology and information
literacy through gaming. Held over a period of six
months, the program is divided into three, six-week
courses engaging students by making a video game, a
board game, and a book trailer.
•Brewster Ladies Library, Brewster, Mass.: The library
will use GPS technology to create an adventure game
that requires reading, research, critical thinking,
problem solving, teamwork, and aligns closely with
technology standards established by the International
Society for Technology in Education.
•Cascade Middle School, Cascade, Wash.:
The library’s Gaming Zone initiative will develop two
afterschool programs a week, encompassing board and
video game creation workshops, tournaments and hint
book/cheat sheet development.
•Henshaw Middle School Library, Anchorage School
District, Anchorage, Alaska: Expand DDR to 10 middle
schools & add a lunchtime computers gaming program
to use Spore & Civilization, strategy simulation games
•Indian Trails Public Library, Wheeling, Ill.:
Participants will learn about four categories of
gaming from gaming experts: computer
animation games, card games, board games, and
role-playing games, then work in teams to create
games. Then, they will participate in a Game Fair
using the Science Fair model, and compete in the
Chicago Toy and Game Fair Young Inventor
Challenge.
• Manhattanville College Library, Purchase, N.Y. :
Students will design games for middle school
students on how to use the library to find a book,
use a general database, ask for reference help,
navigate the library website, and develop a time
management plan.
•San Pablo Library, San Pablo, Calif.: Youth will
track their participation in a variety of musicliteracy related activities via a 'Musical Scavenger
Hunt' big game.
•Sewickley Public Library, Sewickley, Pa.: In this
10-week program, middle school youth will plan and
facilitate gaming events for younger students, which
will then be held at the public library. Participants
will document their efforts by producing a video of
the steps they followed. A school assembly to
showcase participants’ finished movie would entice
fellow teens to get involved with the next session
and would make the students accountable for their
time spent in the program. A viewing would also be
held in the library for parents and interested
community members.
•Wayne County Public Library, Goldsboro, N.C.:
This narrative focused experience includes a
variety of creative and competitive events to give
the youth in the community a place of their own that
caters to their interests while fulfilling their needs for
intellectual growth. Example: A fan-fiction contest
where young people will write original stories about
their favorite video game characters and create
stories incorporating characters they create in
games.
•Weber Country Library System, Ogden, Utah:This
ambitious proposal to move tween/teens beyond
merely playing games, and to immerse them in a
physical, creative, visual, and written game
creation process to foster artistic, literary, and
media literacy has many unique components,
including a computer building workshop that
addresses a level of technical analysis and critical
planning skills in a practical hands-on effort seen
in no other proposal.
Try Educational Games
http://www.stopdisastersgame.org/en/home.html
Turn Little Devils
Into Little
Angels!
Some Educational Games Can
Be Found Online. Here’s a
Selection of Nine.
Bank Jr.
Teaches grades 1-5 students about how to
handle money through simulation and games.
This is a fun site.
http://www.bankjr.com/
What2Learn
Prepare for exam success by playing over two thousand
FREE interactive activities and revision games.
http://www.what2learn.com/
CBBC Roar
Run your own nature park.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/roar/
CBBC KS3 Bitesize
Here’s an online video game from the BBC where
players have to answer questions related to English,
Science and Math. As you answer the questions
correctly, a little “questionaut” in a balloon gets to
continue on his journey.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/games/quest
ionaut/pop.shtml
Time Pirates
Here’s an extraordinarily ambitious interactive gamesite designed to help students learn about the history
of London from 2,000 years ago to now.
http://timepirates.atticmedia.com/flash/
iCue
It’s a very interactive collaboration between NBC and
MIT with much to the site. It deals basically with how to
learn about the news, but that’s an understatement. It’s
designed for students thirteen years-old and above. You
can play games, watch videos (with very easy
simultaneous access to transcripts, save student work,
and a ton of other activities. You have to register, but it’s
free and easy to do so.
http://www.icue.com/
Free Poverty
It’s an online geography game similar to the popular
Free Rice vocabulary game that donates money to
purchase rice for distribution by the United Nations. In
Free Poverty, though, money to distribute water is
supposedly distributed to Third World countries for
every correct answer.
http://www.freepoverty.com/
Maps are a part of every great adventure. They help you
find your way, share information, look at patterns, and
solve problems.
What can YOU do with maps?
Help endangered animals
Find sunken treasure
Explore a pyramid
Collect rocks on Mars
Go on a family adventure
Learn more!
http://www.mywonderfulworld.org/toolsforadventure/index.
html
Stock News Game
In it, you’re given a very short piece of information
about a company, and then have to predict if its stock
goes down, stays the same, or goes up by the end of
the day that news came out. It’s accessible to high
Intermediate or Advanced English Language Learners
to get a little more of a sense of how the stock market
works.
http://www.stocknewsgame.com/play_game.php
And Have a Family Game Night at
the Library
It was a full house Tuesday April 7th, 2009 when we had our first family
game night at the Georgetown Technology and Game Lab. We had twelve
participants that evening, mostly kids with some parents, a number we
expect to grow in the months to come.
Webkinz are stuffed animals with a code
for online play. Kids tend to their virtual
pets in safe online activities.
http://www.webkinz.com/us_en/
Ooga is a tabletop recognition game
where kids hunt dinosaurs with
rubber suction cup spears.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boa
rdgame/9506
In Blokus 3D, players get 3-D pieces to try
to place by already-set pieces of their own
color.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgam
e/6411
Bella Sara gives girls the chance to trade
special beautiful horse cards. Online, girls
can care for their horses in various ways.
http://bellasara.com/
Bring a New Crowd and
their Parents Into the
Library!
And Watch the Magic
Happen!
Track Kids’ Progress in
Literacy and Good
Behavior
Expect Good Results.
Here’s Ours in “Year One”:
• Increase in library card holders
from only 2% to 13%
• 42.7% of registered users are
under 18 years old
• 56.8% of these juveniles are
checking out library materials
• 15% of local high school students
are members of the gaming club
(81 of 550)
• 30% of gamers are checking out 4
items monthly
• 90% of gamers are AfricanAmerican Males
• 20 teens monthly attend cultural
programs at the library
Add an Exciting Video
Game Design Endeavor.
http://scratch.mit.edu
Try Video Game Design
and Review
Competitions
Video Game Concept Competition
• Over the course of the summer, June 9th – July -25th
BYTES participants at any GCLS location will be able to
present video game design concepts. These concepts
will be presented to video game design professionals for
review. Prizes will be awarded for the best idea, and best
presented pitch. Awards will be given at the August open
tournament. Each entry of sufficient length satisfies one
literacy requirement.
Video Game Review Competition
• Over the course of the summer, June 9th – July -25th
BYTES participants at any GCLS location will be able to
submit video game reviews in one of three categories
Written in word or other appropriate program, Oral
recording, Video recording. Reviews will be judged by
professional video game reviewers. Awards will be given
for each category with at least five entries at the August
open tournament. Each entry of sufficient length satisfies
one literacy requirement.
• Competitions will be repeated during each school
quarter, if participation justifies continuing the program.
We Also Use Digital Arts
to Stimulate Literacy along
with Library Usage
It Takes Good Equipment
It Needs Good
Instructors
Add Great Young
People to that Mix
You’ve Got
Success!
Again
And Again
And Again!
A 2009 ICMA “Library Innovation Grant”
Let’s Us Bring it All Together!
The Hurricane
Project
Georgetown County, SC
ICMA Public Library
Innovation Grant
Digital Library
of Historic
Hurricane
Photographs
Digital Film
Collection of
Oral History
Interviews
Digital
Storytelling on
Hurricanes using
Photostory3
Digital Video
PSAs on
Hurricanes by
Teens
Digital Game
Simulations for
Young People
on Hurricanes
Web 2.0 Ways to
Communicate
Hurricane
Dangers
Collaborators:
Georgetown County Library
Georgetown County Emergency Management
Georgetown County Service Over Self
Georgetown County Schools
Frances P. Bunnelle Foundation
Contact: Dwight McInvaill, Director, Georgetown County Library
dmcinvaill@georgetowncountysc.org
843-545-3304
Kids Star in PSAs on
Hurricane Prevention
Local Artists Design the
Props that Help the Kids
Become Stars!
Young People Go “Out on the
Town” to Film Other PSAs
Themselves!
Using Technology
Creatively Can Lead to a
Good Community Spirit
Some Folks Have
Considered our
Strategies to be Good
Ones.
We Plan to Continue to
Reach for the Gold thru
Gaming and Digital
Technology!
For More Information, Contact:
Dwight McInvaill, Director
Georgetown County Library, SC
843-545-3304
dmcinvaill@georgetowncountysc.org
Here he is going after more gold
at the White House!