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.

Games for Libraries Workshop

Just over a fortnight ago I attended a workshop in London about designing games for teaching information literacy. Information literacy is defined by CILIP (The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) as "knowing when and why you need information, where to find it, and how to evaluate, use and communicate it in an ethical manner".


A quote from Neil Gaiman on the carpet of

Gungahlin Library in Canberra

© Australian Capital Territory

Information literacy is one of the key skills for those of us who work in libraries; we don't need to know everything but we need to know how to find it. There is a great quote from Neil Gaiman "Google can bring you back 100,000 answers, a Librarian can bring you back the right one", which certainly contains more than a grain of truth.

Games and play are used extensively in education for a number of reasons. In early years education, play is central to much of the learning process; with open ended play being particularly important in procducing creative and imaginative learning for the under 5s^(1,2,3). More structured games are also used to teach a wide range of topics either through specfic educational games or indirectly via more mass market products^(4,5,6).

The aim of the workshop I attended was to design and prototype a game with the purpose of teaching a specific area of information literacy. The workshop started with each table playing short games (e.g. Bananagrams, Pass the Pigs, Zombie Dice, Flowerfall). These were used as ice breakers but we then went back to these games to analyses the game mechanics that were involved in the games at a later point in the session.

After a short presentation on some educational game design theory each table was given the task of coming up with a educational goal and some practical constraints for the design of their game. Our group decided to base our game on the CRAP checklist for resource evaluation (CRAP stands for currency, reliability, authority and purpose). We settled on writing a game based on evaluating resources displayed on cards against categories on the checklist decided by a dice or spinner. The winner of the game would be the first individual or team to collect the word CRAP with their cards.

There is a video explaining the CRAP game at the Games for Libraries blog along members of the teams explaining their prototypes. I am planning on making a version of the Dewey or Die! game for use in family boardgame afternoons we are planning for this summer's Summer Reading Challenge. I also have some improvements to our CRAP game (which I am renaming Cut the Crap).

1. Understanding young children's learning through play: building playful pedagogies by Pat Broadhead and Andy Burt
2. A child's work: the importance of fantasy play by Vivian Paley
3. Child care and development by Pamela Minett
4. Games in schools and libraries podcast by Giles Pritchard and Donald Dennis
5. Everyone plays at the library by Scott Nicholson
6. Using games to enhance learning and teaching: A beginners guide edited by Nicola Whitton and Alex Moseley

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