And now for something completely different.

Its amazing what a hashtag can do. I tweeted about my last blog post on the games for libraries workshop using #libraryplay and I immediately get 3 times more views than we normally do. I'll have to some more promoting of our blog on Twitter.

As part of our activities for Mythical Maze, the Summer Reading Challenge 2014 I am going to running a couple of family boardgame afternoons with our Children's Librarian. Recently I have been investigating the possible uses for games in libraries including listening to the "Games in Libraries and Schools Podcast", reading Scott Nicholson's Everyone plays at the Library" and the International Games Day Blog.

I'm not going to discuss the benefits of gaming in this post, more look at the reasons we are looking to run something slightly different to Worlds Away, with a different target audience and organisation. One of the particular area that is mentioned within Scott Nicholson's book is the advantage of providing a gaming experience over simply providing games. Bournemouth Libraries already provide examples of both methods of provision. We provide games and play items to lend through our toy libraries at Kinson, West Howe and Winton Libraries and some of our libraries also have jigsaw puzzle swap schemes. We also provide a gaming/play experience via Stay, Play and Takeaway sessions at our Toy Libraries, a jigsaw group at Charminster, a junior Boggle/Scrabble club at Kinson, a Scrabble club at West Howe and our club at Bournemouth Library. When providing games rather than gaming experiences customers will often, quite understandably, be conservative in their approach. They will pick games that they are familiar with and avoid games that look complicated. By providing a gaming experience we can direct customers to games that we think are suitable, exciting or educational.

The gaming club is a gaming experience but the games are not not chosen by library staff, the primary goals of the club (as far as the library service is concerned) are to provide a welcoming social space that attracts people who would not necessarily utilise the library. Essentially to provide a club that has a social value with increased footfall, borrowing and any educational benefits as an added bonus. During these family games afternoon staff (primarily me) will be selecting the games available such that they fit in with the themes of the Summer Reading Challenge and with specific learning goals e.g. Once Upon a Time for storytelling skills, The aMAZEing Labyrinth for spatial manipulation/non-verbal reasoning. The aim with these activities is to be fun and educational. To highlight the library as the prime place for informal education, a place to learn things and a place to have fun, which is not what always come to mind for many people.

We are also aiming for a distinctly different age group. The gaming club is aimed at adults and older teenagers, whereas these board game afternoons are aimed at children from age 5 and their parents. We shall see how successful these are and then look at the potential for widening our provision of gaming experiences.