Liberal Education Today

A presentation on gaming and a university library, Gaming as Learning, Research, and Collections:
Strategies and Issues for Today and the Coming Years, was given to CNI by a team from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).

Gaming lets the library work more closely with faculty and students.
"Library is a natural home for gaming, both for collections and for access. It links teaching to library content."

The presentation began by sketching out the role of gaming in society, including demographics, economic scale, and increasingly social nature. David Ward (Head of Information Services, Undergraduate Library) introduced educational gaming software, serious games, and alternate reality games (ARGs). Ward went on to lay out a series of game design principles, including fun, teaching a game by playing it, feedback-rich interfaces, immersion, progressive challenges. Further principles are drawn from James Paul Gee, including active/critical learning, identity, achievement, multiple routes, and the freedom to take risks.

The UIUC undergraduate library started its gaming initiative by doing research, which involved a gaming night and survey, along with a literature survey. The library purchased players and viewing stations, along with software. The collection is diverse, including controversial games, "much as with books." The collection also draws on the library's history of collecting popular culture.

Archiving as a topic divides into two areas. First, games as objects, which involves preserving aging devices. Emulators are being explored. Secondary literature (strategy guides, analyses, discussion) are being collected. Second, games as experience, such as how to support archives of game play. Teaching and research with games is interdisciplinary. The library is providing some classroom support. For example, a history class is using Civilization IV. A gaming cluster is being explored.

Lisa Hinchliffe (Head of Undergraduate Library) offered an example of embedding games in library functions. The ESP Game draws on Flickr images to have players compete in guessing taboo words. This teaches analogically, by reflection, as students discuss game play.

Future directions: more gaming nights, integration with games, collaborations with industry, collaboration on archival and use standards. Librarians are emerging as researchers and teachers.

Provocatively, Hinchliffe asked us to consider what a library would look like, redesigned as a game. Interface design, feedback loops, and sense of play would radically revise a library.

EDITED to add collection URL (http://www.library.uiuc.edu/gaming/).