The Darien Statements on the Library and Librarians

On March 26th 2009, Darien Library in the States, hosted an event called “In the Foothills: A Not-Quite-Summit on the Future of Libraries” at which participants were instructed to “come prepared to help sketch out the role librarians should play in defining the future of libraries”. The two speakers, John Berry and Kathryn Greenhill, provoked a conversation among John Blyberg, Kathryn and Cindi Trainor that began in John's office the next day and spilled out across the ensuing week.

The conversation resulted in "The Darien Statements on the Library and Librarians". Click here to view the resulting document (CC Licence). It’s meant to be grand, optimistic, obvious, and thankful to and for our users, communities, and the tireless librarians who work the front lines every day, upholding the purpose of the Library. Heres a sample:

"The Purpose of the Library

The purpose of the Library is to preserve the integrity of civilization.

The Library has a moral obligation to adhere to its purpose despite social, economic, environmental, or political influences. The purpose of the Library will never change.

The Library is infinite in its capacity to contain, connect and disseminate knowledge; librarians are human and ephemeral, therefore we must work together to ensure the Library’s permanence.

Individual libraries serve the mission of their parent institution or governing body, but the purpose of the Library overrides that mission when the two come into conflict.

Why we do things will not change, but how we do them will.

A clear understanding of the Library’s purpose, its role, and the role of librarians is essential to the preservation of the Library.

The Role of the Library

The Library:

• Provides the opportunity for personal enlightenment.
• Encourages the love of learning.
• Empowers people to fulfill their civic duty.
• Facilitates human connections.
• Preserves and provides materials.
• Expands capacity for creative expression.
• Inspires and perpetuates hope. More>>
  

I believe this document will become core to discussions on the role of libraries for years to come. Congratulations and thank you to John Blyberg, Kathryn Greenhill and Cindi Trainor for articulating so eloquently why we do what we do.


NB. The photograph above of the three whizz kids is by Michael Porter, and about 90% of the text above is taken directly from John Blyberg's blog.

Gaming and Libraries

This post has been copied entirely from the blog Citegeist, written by Cindi Trainor, Coordinator for Library Technology and Data Services at Eastern Kentucky University Libraries. I met Cindi at the Bridging Worlds Confeence in Singapore where she presented a paper entitled "Open source, crowd source : harnessing the power of the people behind our libraries". This was a session I was particularly sad to miss, but it clashed with the session by Joe Pagano on web analytics, a subject important to have a handle on when arguing for funding and justifying my existence!

The post that follows is about the virtues of gaming written by Eli Neiburger, Ann Arbor District Library, and will help inform my future thinking around gaming in libraries; which will have to be worked through in the next year or so as we plan our new Young Adult library. Jenny Levine is another uber-librarian with a strong interest in libraries and gaming so her blog is worth following too: The ShiftedLibrarian and if you click here you can read the Library Technology Report, Gaming and Libraries : Intersection of Services (pictured above) written by Jenny .

Anyway, Cindi's blog is thoughtful and a must-read I have decided, and since I can't say it better than her here is the copied post:

Eli Neiburger, Assistant Director at Ann Arbor District Library, on gaming and libraries. This presentation concentrates on learning that happens in games (not on games designed for learning).

Games

• Require advanced literacy (words and interface)
• Help users overcome achievement gaps
• teach reading comprehension
• teach skills useful in the workplace
• teach search skills
• teach that success requires risk
• teach delayed gratification
• teach perseverance with little risk of failure

Gaming events in libraries teach kids

• that the community supports them
• that the community values youth
• constructive use of their time

Gaming events in libraries teach kids (in a world where athletic ability is valued in schools more than anything)

• commitment to learning
• positive values (caing equality social justice, integrity, honesty)
• social competencies (planing & decision making, interpersonal competence, resistance skills, peaceful conflict resolution (peer pressure working for you: “shut up so we can play” rather than against you: “let’s see if we can get kicked out.”)
• positive identity: personal power, self-esteem, sense of purpose, positive view of failure

They are gaming among you: 72% of Americans play video games. more adult women than kids.

Where are people spending their money: music $21B; DVDs $23B; $24B games; books highest. media almost exactly divided, percentage-wise.

What is at stake if we don’t do this? ask a travel agent. our collections will become irrelevant if we can get veryting ever printed with an ebook; all networked information with an implant

Libraries = conversations through content. we take content that is normally consumed individually and make a social event out of it. Library is adding value to content; it’s what we’re here to do. Games are only a new format.

Good games for libraries: Wii: rock band, big brain, wii sports, super smash bros, pokemon, DDR

GTsystem.org - online tournament scoring and management tools

• includes blog, event registrations, brackes, generates leaderboards (local, regional, national)
• GTsystem wiki for rules and history
• synchronzed tournament days with online finals. winners play off each other online.

eli at eliworks dot com

Q&A: board games are really niche entertainment; video games have a larger draw