Gaming in School Libraries

[Christopher Harris]

There was a great deal of buzz about gaming, so here is a place to share some additional information about gaming in school libraries. As a member of the ALA/Verizon Foundation Grant on Gaming and Literacy in Libraries, I would love to be able to share back with ALA any thoughts or experiences you have had when in comes to the use of games. I also want to be able to share any questions you might have as one of the grant activities is to create a toolkit for use by libraries looking to start a gaming program. You will find that I use "we" rather a lot in this post. I have to give major credit to Brian Mayer with whom I work at the School Library System of Genesee Valley BOCES. Brian has been instrumental in creating our game library through selection, alignments, and instruction about the games. Brian and I will be presenting half-day pre-conferences on gaming in libraries at BOTH ALA Annual in Chicago and at AASL in Charlotte.

A brief introduction
If you are new to the idea of gaming in libraries, here are some thoughts to get you started. According to research conducted by Dr. Scott Nicholson from the Game Lab at Syracuse University, about 77% of public libraries in the country support gaming. This is very broadly defined, and includes even allowing people to play web-based games on library computers. Just under half of libraries have active gaming programs. This means the library is holding some sort of formal event centered on gaming. These numbers are a bit over a year old at this point, and my guess is that based on the most recent survey from the Game Lab the figures may be a bit higher.

So you are thinking about looking at gaming? How do you get started?
Well, our school library system started with a library of modern board games. No Monopoly or Sorry here, these are an entirely new type of game that has been emerging from Europe over the past 30 years. Most of the games in our collection are built around as much strategy as they are luck from rolling dice. Additionally, most are designed to allow players to continue to stay involved and competitive to the very end; nobody is getting eliminated 10 minutes into the game. Most people have never heard of these modern or Euro-style games...but that is actually a good thing. We have had great success rolling these out in our member libraries because there are fewer pre-conceptions attached to these new types of games. They don't have the stigma that computer or video games (which are probably already regulated by Internet Acceptable Use policies).

So where do the curriculum alignments come in? Didn't someone say they were aligned?
Like any other instructional resource added to a school library collection, we have carefully reviewed all of the games in our game library. Brian Mayer, a specialist of library technologies that works with me at the School Library System of Genesee Valley BOCES, clarified the four selection criteria we use to evaluate the games.
1) The game must be an authentic game.
That is to say that we aren't looking for "educational games" found in many school catalogs. Students (85%-90% of whom are gamers) see right through those imitations. The first key is quality game design.
2) Alignment. Then we take the games and look for alignments to local, state, and national curriculum standards. All of the games in our library are aligned to the AASL Standards for the 21st-Century Learner as well as the NY State Learning Standards. This means we can as easily justify the use of our games during classes as we could any other library resource. This also means that we have found many games that we love to play, but haven't added to our circulating collection because we cannot find strong enough curriculum connections (though they may be great for after school play).
3) Time is a factor.
School bell schedules are insane. My wife, Christine, is a K-12 librarian in a building with 38 minute periods! We recognize that good games for use in study halls or to create casual reinforcements in a class need to be set up, learned, and played in about 40 minutes. When Christine asked me to create curriculum unit support kits of games, we had to select a variety of games to meet this time limit. We are working with game designers and publishers to create more games around this magic time for schools.
4) Return on investment is important.
This isn't to say that all games in our library can be played in 40 minutes. Some of them take upwards of two or three hours. Longer term games, however, are more carefully evaluated for a strong positive return on investment. If a teacher is going to spend a week of class periods on a game, then it had better be the one of the best ways for students to learn a topic.

Okay, so bring on the alignments already. And what games should we be buying?
All of our alignment work and game suggestions are available online for you to use. Just go to http://sls.gvboces.org/gaming and browse through our documents and the game library. If you want to jump right in to the deep end of the board game pool, I highly recommend Board Game Geek. For a guided video tour of board games with instructions on how to play, check out Dr. Scott Nicholson's Board Games with Scott. Brian Mayer, a certified school librarian, offers school library specific reviews of games at http://librarygamer.wordpress.com. Auditory learners can follow updates from the ALA Gaming grant with the Games in Libraries Podcast.

I have attached our two main alignment documents (AASL and NY State) here. As we release new documents (including an upcoming alignment down to the NY State performance indicator level) they will be made available at http://sls.gvboces.org/gaming.