Farewel, Farewell

As indicated by my post on the club's Facebook page I am moving into the new post of Operations Manager here at Bournemouth Library in a fortnight. I have spent the last seven years as Senior Library Assistant, over which time my work has changed drastically. During this time I have seen the move to self service machines, two major staff restructures, new staff have come and old staff gone and most relevantly for this blog we have launched the gaming club.

Gaming in libraries has seen a major renaissance in recent years, especially in terms of tabletop gaming. Of the 12 Bournemouth Libraries only one has no gaming offer* and all libraries in Poole offer gaming for either adults or children (and most offer both). International Games Day @ Your Library has an ever increasing number of participants across the world.

My new post means a whole set of new responsibilities and challenges as I will be working heavily within our specialist Music library. There are a number of exciting projects that I will be getting involved with, but one of the by products of this is that I will not have time to spend on the gaming club. It is nearly two years since the club launched and is now running successfully with only minimal staff input. As a result I will be stepping down as the main GCN contact and as the staff member with responsibility of leading the direction of the club. Lyndsey will be taking sole responsibility for the overseeing Worlds Away, which is a sensible move as she was the driving force behind setting up the club in the first place.

I'm not going to be completely leaving the Library's gaming programme though. I am taking up a position on the International Games Day @ Your Library committee advising on how to increase involvement of UK libraries within the event. I'll also be coming along to play games with you lot whenever possible.

*Using the definition of Kevin Maloney that is utilised in Scott Nicholson's Gaming in Libraries video course

Gaming Club Sessions Nov/Dec

This coming Saturday the club has access to the large meeting room so there is plenty of space for games this weekend. In December we also have the large meeting room most weeks, in fact its only the 5th Dec that we are using the second meeting room.

Why come along and try one of the many new games that are being played. (I'll try and update the list of games played soon).

We have had the interim report for the Global Gossip Game from International Games Day and I'll post details here once the final report is published.

IGD Overview

Its all over for another year! Thanks for everyone who came along to play this weekend.

Poole Chess Club had 15 children attend their weekly junior chess tuition. They run sessions every Saturday from 10-11 for beginners and 11-12 for improvers. These are open to children aged 7-11 costing £3 per week.

Worlds Away and the Wii games session had an attendance of 16. Board games played included X-Wing, Dungeons and Dragons Attack Wing, King of Tokyo and on the Wii Super Smash Bros (plus some other games I didn’t recognize). Six of those at the gaming club took also part in the Global Gossip Game, a full debrief of this by the organizers should be available later in the week.

Our Stay and Play for children and parents was very successful with 16 children and 7 parents attending over the hour and half session using games from the various Bournemouth Toy Libraries. We were asked whether this could be a regular event and will be looking into this.

Sadly we were a bit short staffed on the day and I didn't get chance to take any photos of the event.


Those of you who are regulars to the club will have noticed attendance dropping off recently from averaging just over 20 in the Spring to half that in recent weeks. Next weekend we are going to have a meeting with our volunteers to look at ways of getting some new members and increasing the numbers coming on Saturdays.

International Games Day Programme

International Games Day is finally upon us and we can reveal the line up for this Saturdays events.

10am - 12noon Junior Chess Club

Things will kick off with Poole Chess Club's junior chess session from 10-12. This will be on the 1st floor and is open to children aged 7-11, costing £3 per session. There are two sessions each week, 10-11 for beginners and 11-12 for improvers.

10am to 4pm Heritage Zone Quiz

All day we will be giving out quiz forms to find out how much you know about Bournemouth in WW1.

12noon - 4pm Worlds Away - The Bournemouth Library Gaming Club

At 12 noon Worlds Away will be offering the normal range of boardgames, cardgames, roleplaying and wargames. In addition to our normal output we will be running introductory games for wargames and roleplaying. The gaming club will be in the Large Meeting Room and will feature the online cardgame Hearthstone.

1pm - 3pm Wii Sports Tournament

From 1 we have a big screen Wii Sports Tournament for everyone in our second meeting room.

1:30pm to 2pm The Global Gossip Game

Once again we are taking part in the global gossip game. A secret message will be passed across the world via 80 libraries in 16 different countries, starting in Australia and ending in the USA 24 hours later. We will be receiving our message from The University Library Svetozar Markovic in Belgrade, Serbia and will be passing on our message to RAF Croughton Base Library near Brackley in the UK.

2pm to 3:30pm Children's Stay and Play

In the Children's library, using toys and games from the Bournemouth Toy Libraries, we have a stay and play session for our younger visitors and their families.

International Games Day

We are near to finalising our content for this years International Games Day. Earlier today I took a phone call from Phil in Australia, who is organising the Global Gossip Game, and we should have all the details with us in the next couple of days.

If all goes well we will be offering the usual mix of boardgames and wargames for our regulars as well as introductory games for new players, junior chess tuition (via Poole Chess Club), the global gossip game, a stay and play session for children and their parents, a Wii Sports tournament, the online card game Hearthstone and a selection of traditional boardgames and card games.

I'm away at Indiecon this weekend so I won't see you this Saturday, but you'll be in Lyndsey's capable hands. I hope we'll see you all at IGD

The Long Summer

It has been some time since my last past, things get quite busy here over the Summer so no chance to procrastinate about gaming. Since my last post we have held 2 Summer Reading Challenge children's board game session with 10 children and their associated parents attending across the sessions. We played a lot of Jenga and the Mythical Maze game as well as Chess, Downfall, The aMAZEing Labyrinth and Creationary. Unlike the gaming club these sessions were very staff intensive with 2-3 staff and a volunteer on hand to show the children how to play the games. Whilst they were well received it may not be possible to run these more frequently given the amount of staff time that needed to be dedicated to them.

We are in the early planning stages for International Games Day, so far we are looking to add Chess and Minecraft to the activities on offer. Watch this space...

The new look newsletter should be on its way shortly so keep an eye out for that. If you don't get a copy check whether you are a member with one of the staff or volunteers.

Hope to see you all soon, though I won't be at the club to play anything for some time (I have a very busy September and October)

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.

The Power of Play

This post is by Phil Minchin and is cross posted from the International Games Day Blog.

Phil worked in publishing, arts production, NGO governance and campaigning, and library IT in Melbourne, Australia. There he got interested in the evolving relationships between libraries, communities, games, interactivity, systems and UI design. He now presents and consults to libraries and game companies on these issues, helping to develop games & interactivity strategies that blend the best of old and new media to support intelligent, literate engagement across the full range of modern culture  Phil coordinates the Global Gossip Game for  IGD and rang me up from Australia to ensure that everything ran smoothly, that's commitment for you.

Thanks to Phil for letting us post this here.

Darren



********************************

Play is to games what reading is to books: the underlying verb that enables the noun, but is applicable well beyond it. Reading, as a peculiar eye-based (also finger-based, and even - thanks to audiobooks - increasingly back-to-being-ear-based) subset of listening, is used for signage, notes, instructions, lists, and a ton of other chunks of information and culture besides books. Likewise, play is used for many things beyond formal games: teasing, joking, various informal contests and challenges, notional tinkering, creation, and many more. As such, it’s worth pointing out the many important aspects of life empowered by play.
Here's a list of a few key areas in which play is crucial:

• Innovation – There is tremendous value in a systematic grinding-through of possibility spaces, but the fact remains that play is a phenomenal way to apply the power of the brain to exploring new ideas. It’s telling that computers, which excel in the first kind of problem-solving, are still taking longer than human brains (at least those with an aptitude for this sort of thing) to solve questions of protein-folding, RNA-shaping and similar activities. Regardless, in an economy increasingly driven by innovation, play is only becoming more important as a life skill.
• Freedom – The essence of play is a pocket of possibility-space which may be shaped and limited by external constraints, but produces a place and time in which unconstrained action according to one’s nature is possible. (Even a formal game may have rules, but if there’s no room for individual decisions and/or skill, i.e. for a player to actually play it, it’s not much of a game!) In political-economic contexts, this quality reads an awful lot like “freedom”. This isn’t a coincidence.
• Health (including happiness) – Just on first principles, it should be obvious that play – activity that expresses and exercises one’s nature, determined by internal impulses rather than external ones – will tend to be conducive to health and general wellbeing. And there’s a ton of research to support this. At the most obvious level, physical play (fun exercise) tends to be good for physical health. Mental play sharpens memory, focus, perception, comprehension, and decision-making, hence the profusion of “brain-training games” (and see again the talk linked earlier, Your Brain on Video Games). Setting meaningful challenges for ourselves, whether through a formal game/program like Superbetter or informally, not only helps us overcome particular obstacles but trains us to expect that obstacles in general can and will be overcome. Social play (such as Werewolf) uses and expands on our connection to others.
• Learning – This is obvious from the links to innovation – which could partly be defined as “learning things nobody else yet knows”! – but if anything this is the primary purpose of play (and the fact that it’s good for our health is because learning things is healthy, is what our organism is naturally disposed to do). This is so much the case that (as I mention in the post on innovation) the quote I used for the Global Gossip Game in 2013, “play is training for the unexpected”, was not from educational theorists but from mammalian biologists Špinka, Newberry and Bekoff. Clearly the drive to learn and experiment is ingrained in us at a bodily level… hence, again, the links to health!
• Promoting activity – I’m talking here not just about physical activity, but the assumption that thought and analysis will lead to concrete action: play isn’t just about comprehending the systems with which the game’s creator has presented you, it’s about you doing something with them. That leads to better thinking and better acting, as well as more productive uses of both.
• Inclusion and community-building – In addition to being a way to foster community connectedness, play is a way for people to explore difficult issues such as discriminatory beliefs and the ways that they shape behaviour (which in turn feeds back into beliefs), and also to spend time with other folks and learn about them as actual individuals rather than instances of a stereotype, both in relative safety and comfort.

Any one of these associations would qualify play as pretty important, even by the narrow, numerical criteria which govern so much of our key decision making (except perhaps freedom, because it’s too hard to quantify). More holistic, humanistic values can only increase the value placed on play as something deeply rooted in the best of the human experience.

To be clear, I am not saying that frivolity should reign supreme and that work doesn’t matter. I’m trying to break the false opposition of play and work (they may be very much in tension in some respects, but play is ultimately a form of self-imposed, more-or-less self-directed work; the best work feels like playing; and the best workers are those who work in that playful, motivated, engaged way), the false association of play and frivolity (one can play seriously, and grimly grind away at something completely frivolous, and these are not the same thing), and the false assumption that frivolity is inherently unworthy. (See this post on fun.)

Play is central to our humanity. It has produced many of the best parts of our collective and individual experiences, and enabled us to find solutions to (and, failing that, temporary escapes from) many of the worst. For us to continue to treat it as an inferior part of culture, when it is in varying forms and ways a central part of all culture, is a mistake we should not continue to make.

Phil Minchin

Coming Soon...

Another week rolls by and yet another successful session. We have hit 70 individuals having attended the club and have reached 32 official members (if your not yet a member ask a volunteer or member of staff for a membership form). The average number of people attending is steadily increasing, the average for the 2nd quarter of last year was 6 and our average for April and May this year currently stands at 23. We are reaching the limit of the space available, especially when the large room is not available, and Lyndsey and I are going to have to chat to see how best to accommodate the increasing numbers.


By Mette Aumala

Used under a Creative Commons License

Scheduled for later in the week we have a new guest blogger, Piers, who has written a game report for last Saturdays Call of Cthulhu game and a I have written post detailing the progress with my Mordant army.

The session on the 17th May represents the anniversary of our first Saturday afternoon session of the gaming club. I won't be with you for this momentous event (I'm going to be in North Wales) but I'm sure you'll all manage to have fun without me.

Looking further ahead, the coordinator for our WW1 commemorations has suggested we think about games with a Great War theme that we could add to the clubs growing list of games. I think Wings of War would fit nicely but anyone have any other suggestions? The American Libraries Association in partnership with the Australian Libraries and Information Association and Nordic Games Day* have just launched International Games Day 2014. I hope we can run something even bigger and better than last years event.

This years Summer Reading Challenge is the Mythical Maze and I'm looking at ways to add some gaming content into the activities that we run here. For those of you who don't know the Challenge is aimed at maintaining literacy skills amongst school children by preventing their reading dipping during the summer holidays. I hope to attend a training course in writing games for increasing information literacy in the middle of June and to bring some of those ideas from that course into both our Summer Reading Challenge activities and to making some new games for the club.

That's it for now. I'll see you all when I get back off my gallivanting (I'll have visited North Wales, London, Buckinghamshire and Salisbury by the time I'm back at the club).

* anyone think its a bit rubbish there is no UK presence in this list

Merry Xmas Everybody

Yet another bumper turn out on Saturday and as it approaches the end of the year we can look back at the success of the club over 2013.

I think it was probably early this year or late last year that Lyndsey and a former colleague of ours first came up with the idea of running a gaming club at the library. They had already spoken to Medi (Library Service Manager) about the idea and had received positive feedback. I jumped on board as I had thought about running a club at the library before but hadn't got any further than that. I had a bit of experience of running gaming events from my time, about a decade ago, as Secretary of Bath Uni's LRP society.

Before anything got off the ground our colleague left for pastures new leaving Lyndsey and I to launch the club as part of the library's World Book Night celebrations. We'd spoken to a few people about the club before the launch and word had filtered through to Patrick at GW and on the day of the launch I ended up chatting to him about Mordheim and some of the other older games they made.. Making the link with GW was crucial as from this we ended up with our wonderful volunteers who have been the key in creating a successful club.

Shortly after starting we joined the GCN and as a result are advertised both on their and the GW website. In November we were one of a handful of UK libraries taking part in International Games Day.

Our first sessions had a mere 4 attendees but as word got around our numbers have increased and we now have a high of 20 people at any one session. Over the course of the year we have welcomed 51 different people to the club of which 19 have joined as members and another half a dozen or so have been attending regularly but haven't joined the club. Slightly over 30 different games have been played at the club and there is a list of around 30 other games that members have expressed an interest in playing. This blog has had over 1000 visits, despite the fact that it seems impossible to find via Google.

 

Have a great Xmas everyone (and New Year if I don't make it along next weekend). Next week I'll post up some of our plans for the club for the coming year, onwards and upwards!

The results are in!

Two sets of results to inform you of, the Global Gossip Game that a small number of you participated in during International Games Day and the painting competition last weekend.


International Games Day 2013, Global Gossip Game Map

We were one of 74 libraries taking part in the Global Gossip Game; which took place in 17 countries over 7 continents, by 840 players in 6 languages, sending a message 94,423.15 miles. The original message at Geelong West Library was "Play is training for the unexpected", taken from the title of a research paper by biologists Marek Spinka, Ruth C. Newbury and Marc Bekoff*. By the time the message reached us as "The Secret of the Dark" it had been passed onto 273 people and had changed 161 times. When the message reached the USA it was split ways and the final 5 messages were "I Love The World", "Clouds Travel Around the World" Glow, Glow Peanut Butter Jelly, "Ian Needs Help" and "Zombie". The full details of the game can be found at their blog.

The second result is that of the painting competition, which were pretty close. The open category was won by David with his Empire Pistolier on Pegasus and the speed painting was tied between Ben's Imperial Guard and George's Ork. Sadly, there can be only one winner, so the judges (i.e. my) decision is to award George the speed painting prize. David and George you can collect your prizes, a £5 book token, at next weeks session (I'm not likely to be there so ask for them at the main desk on floor 1).

Miniature © Games Workshop 2003. All rights reserved. Used without permission

Miniature painted by David. Photo by Darren Edwards





* In a bizarre coincidence I'm pretty sure I read this paper whilst studying Biology as an undergraduate. Evolutionary theory and sociobiology where my specialisms at the time and I definitely cited papers by these authors in some of my work.

The Best Session Yet?

What a great turnout for Saturdays session on International Games Day we hit a total of 20 attendees (thats 3 more than our previous high attendance) and at least 10 more people were playing with the games that were left downstairs on the first floor. We are already thinking about how to do things better for next years IGD and have had contact with Poole Chess club who may be using the library for one of their weekly sessions in the future.

International Games Day at Bournemouth Library. Photo by Darren Edwards

In total we had eleven different games played on Saturday, which in order of number people playing  was Jenga, Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game, 7 Wonders, 5ive Straight, Ticket to Ride: Europe, Blokus, Judge Dredd Miniatures Game, Advanced Connect Four, Warhamer Fantasy Battle, Uno, Draughts.

Don't forget we have our miniature painting competition is next weekend, we will have some kind of exciting prize for the winners and will be roping some of our colleagues in to judge the competition.

Miniature Painting Competition

International Games Day is tomorrow and we are nearly set for the biggest event the club has yet run. The entrance display is complete, the rules for the boardgames have been photocopied, cards for the Round Bournemouth Game scanned and printed, emails sent to Ekerö library in Sweden and phone calls taken from Scandicci library in Italy and from the Global Gossip Game coordinator in Australia! The giant snakes and ladders game arrived in the post tray this afternoon as well. I hope your all as excited about it as we are here at Bournemouth Library.

Just look at how many other libraries are taking part around the globe.



The events are coming thick and fast and next week we are going to hold our painting competition. There are going to be two different contests, the Open category and the Individual Model category. The rules can be found below.

1. You must be a Worlds Away member to enter (i.e. you need to have filled in a membership form)
2. Only one entry per category per person.
3. Any model or group of models may be used into the Open category as a single entry e.g. a tank would be just a suitable as a squad of troopers or a single model. These can be in any scale and for any game you like.
4. Any single model in 28mm (or similar) scale may be used as an entry in the Individual model category. These models can be for any game you like.
5. All models used must be painted by the Worlds Away member entering the competition. Models for the Open category can be painted before the session but models for the Individual Model category must be painted at the library during the club session on the 23rd

International Games Day - 16th November

The time has come for us to announce what we will be offering for International Games Day and we are pretty excited about what we have to offer. We will be running games throughout the library not just in the meeting room and have a selection of traditional board and card games as well as the more  esoteric games that we love at the club.

Up in the meeting room we will have our normal tables set up for wargames (Warhammer Fantasy and 40K, Judge Dredd and X Wing) and roleplay games. In the Heritage Zone we will have a copy of the Round Bournemouth Game, which dates from 1969 and forms a part of Bournemouth Libraries' Local Heritage collection and also the game of train empires, Ticket to Ride: Europe.

Downstairs in the Teen Zone there will be a table set up for playing Subbuteo. Then in the Children's Zone we will have giant Snakes and Ladders and Ludo for the youngsters and in the main library we will have Chess, Draughts, Backgammon and packs of cards for the public to use. We'll probably end up with some of our regular favourites as well so expect some Munchkin, 7 Wonders or Settlers of Catan to make an appearance.

Between 2 and 3pm we will be taking part in the Global Gossip Game, will you pass on the Secret?

Let's make sure the rest of Bournemouth realises how much fun there is in games and maybe we'll get a few members as a result.

Events for November and December

12 intrepid gamers braved the rain on Saturday to play some 40K, Carcassonne, Munchkin and Word Thief. We've now welcomed 42 individuals through our doors and we have 17 official members in the club. If you haven't picked up a membership form yet just ask me or Lyndsey (or one of the volunteers).

This weekend we have our Halloween Special be prepared for a selection of spooky games.

Then 16th November is International Games Day. We aim to introduce you to as many different games as possible, so we'll be running lots of short games, from WH40K using kill team rules, to quick board and card games. More details to follow including a full list of the games we will be offering.

The at the end of November we will be hosting our painting competition, again further details will be announced soon.

The Saturday before Christmas we'll be having our Christmas party and then the week after we'll all be trying out the new stuff we've received as presents (including those tasteful Xmas socks you're bound to be given!)


Munchkin. Photo by Darren Edwards

PS. One of you left your gloves last week, they are in our office at the Library.

October and November Events

It was nice to see some more new faces on Saturday, hope to see you all again soon. The new longer session allowed us to run a whole host of board and card games (including 7 Wonders, Rubik's Magic strategy game and Wordspot), another Dr Who roleplaying game and two games of Warhammer 40K. The forces of the Tau and Dark Eldar fought to a bloody draw but I managed to notch up a victory against the forces of Chaos with David's Tryanids.

This coming Saturday we will be in the smaller meeting room as a course is running in the larger room. The week after (19th Oct) I will be bringing a selection of boardgames to play and cake as I will be yet another year older. On the 2nd November we will run a Halloween special and on 16th November we will be running something as part of International Games Day @ Your Library.