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There’s an interesting post on Future-making Serious Games titled Retro Remakes Competition: Serious Gaming For Accessibility that includes a call for “entrants to create accessible updated counterparts of real or imagined arcade games from the 1920’s to date.” This is a topic I hadn’t really considered before, and I’ve been learning more about it as I’ve been planning the program for the 2008 ALA TechSource Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium. There’s that saying that you know you’re old when you insist that your generation’s music is better than that of the current generation, right? Well, I apply that to videogames, too - my favorites will probably always be the ones I grew up with (although Mario...
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 I’ve had my Kindle ebook reader for just about four months now, and as I suspected, the amount of book reading I’m doing is going up. I know two books doesn’t sound like a lot and some people read that in a week, but for me, this is a big difference. Before the Kindle, I think I’d finished two books in two years, both when I was away on vacation. And even though most people may read books more during the summer, I tend to read fewer, as I’m working and playing outside a lot more. In...
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Last week, I highlighted Ed Vielmetti’s thoughts about adding covers to the list of overdue books you have checked out, as well as the ability to text the location of an item to your cell phone. Both of these are enhancements that I, as Patron 2.0, would very much appreciate my library providing. In the comments on that post, Jason from the Iowa City Public Library gave us a working example (working in an Innovative catalog, at least). I tried it out and sure enough, a few seconds after entering my cell phone number, up popped a text message with the location of the item.Very slick, and very useful. Link Email item
2ndliferead.jpg
Originally uploaded by ash966
Another great READ mini poster! No Tags
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more graph humor and song chart memes
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Using Wordle in Schools “The idea of creating Tag clouds is not new or unique but the Wordle application offers those in schools with a uniquely visual way to view and/or analyse some text. It is very simple to use and the results are created quickly. The style can be changed easily, if required, and easily saved…. We used this aspect in the library this week when we made a Wordle using a number of lists of banned books. The authors, the titles and types of books were entered into the text box. Overwhelmingly the word ‘novel’ stood out. A second Wordle on banned authors had William Shakespeare and George Orwell as the standouts. This could form part...
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Win $100 of Games! “Out of the Box is giving $100 worth of games to whoever posts the best story about using games in education! The deadline is 8/31/2008. What are you waiting for? Go Post!” ] This offer includes libraries, and I know we have some great stories about using games in educational ways! Out of the Box publishes a whole slew of boardgames (including Snorta, which I really want to try), but they also distribute one of my all-time favorites, Apples to Apples. Did you know that you can make your own A2A cards using a special pack of blank cards you can buy for $5.99? For the trial run of...
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As always, Ed Vielmetti is thinking about how to make the library’s data work harder for him, with or without the library’s help. (Of course, Ed’s library is the phenomenal Ann Arbor District Library, which already offers more web-based services than most other libraries, but the simple openness of their systems makes it easy for a superpatron like Ed to extend these services even further on his own.) So when Ed couldn’t find some overdue library books in the house, he started wondering aloud how the library’s services could help him out. Now we just need to think like Ed, too. Now Where Did I Put that Book? “All of the library books I have are...
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Just a quick note that the preliminary program for the 2008 ALA TechSource Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium is now available online. I’m excited about the program, because I think we’ve got some great tracks and sessions that will be valuable for anyone trying to implement gaming in their library or looking for ways to expand or enhance an existing program. Like last year, we’re going to push the boundaries of the connotations for “gaming” in libraries, in addition to answering your practical, “in the trenches” questions (legal issues, accessibility, cataloging, etc.). Our keynote speakers continue last year’s tradition of addressing games & learning while also helping to make sense of today’s hot topics. Andrew Bub, writer,...
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Little Library Got Wii “I had a fabulous time in at the ‘Gaming in Libraries’’ session of the Midwest Library Technology Conference, where they not only talked about games, they let us play. It’s more than a Field of Dreams approach, just tossing games into a room; I have worked with, read about, and heard from those clever librarians who design activities, resources that do what librarians do so well, put information in context for us. This is not even meant as a post to ponder the implications, more of an observation I had a few weeks ago when I stopped by the Isabelle Hunt Memorial Public Library in Pine, Arizona — the closest town (3...
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