CiL 2008 Keynote: Libraries as Happiness Engines

Speaker: Elizabeth Lane Lawley, Rochester Institute of Technology

Libraries are an emotional center of a community that make people happy. The elements of happiness include: satisfying work to do, the experience of being good at something, time spent with people we like, and a chance to be a part of something bigger. Libraries will survive if we remain in the happiness business.

Virtuality is a way of beating an unhappy life. People go into virtual world to escape a lack of happiness in their real life. And, there is a blurring of the boundaries between virtual worlds and real worlds as players make connections in both that bleed over into the other.

“The grind” is a process that gamers go through in order to move forward or advance in levels. Players do tasks in game repeatedly until their goals are achieved. Lawley thinks of the grind as being a meditative activity, due in part to the repetitive nature of it. Why can’t we convey this to our potential readers? We can correlate the reward of working through a game to the reward of reading a book through to the end.

Tupperware parties are an example of real world games, with competition and rewards. Salespeople will work hard to move up levels and be recognized for their work. Another real world game that is popular in public libraries is Super Sleuth, which gives daily clues that kids research to find the answer every week. Summer reading programs are also like games, and they make reading a challenge that kids want to do in order to reach a point goal to win a prize.

Chore Wars is an online game that blurs the line between real and virtual worlds. Parents post job tasks with point values, and kids earn those points by doing the chores. In the business world, Seriosity’s Attent is a game that causes players to evaluate the value of email message sent and received. Social Genius takes casual game concepts and applies them to enterprise problems/solutions, basically by making players learn the names and faces of other people in their organization and forcing them to keep their online photos and bios up-to-date.

Passively Multiplayer Online Gaming gives points to players for visiting websites, among other things. Missions become annotated pathfinders that reward players for surfing websites that have some sort of relevancy to each other. It makes the process of going to websites fun instead of tedious.

Games can serve as gateway drugs, like Guitar Hero. [side note: I heard recently about someone modifying a real guitar to use the strum bar and buttons used on the Guitar Hero guitar.]

Online rebound is what happens when we go from virtual to real and back again, like LAN parties, Moo cards (“We love the web, but you can’t put it in your pocket.”), and Etsy (hand-crafted items sold online). Virtual does not take the tangible away. You want to retain a connection to the real world. Libraries are taking advantage of this online rebound by creating spaces where people can be together physically while also being online.

How does your library make people feel happy? How does it pull them into something bigger than themselves that makes them feel playful and productive at the same time?

chocho

I learned a new card game.

oh, no!I learned a new card game last night called chocho. It is simple and a lot of fun. First, take an equal number of sets of four cards from a regular poker deck as there are players. Shuffle the cards and distribute them all to each player so that everyone begins with four cards. The dealer indicates clockwise or counter-clockwise play and calls the start. Everyone then passes a single card in that direction around the table and continues to do so until someone collects a set of four of the same cards. That person yells “chocho” and slams their hand down in the middle of the table. Everyone else follows suit and the person with their hand on top of the pile is the “chocho.” They then have to wear the “chocho” hat and become the next dealer. Play continues in this manner until everyone has had enough. There is very little strategy to the game, which makes it great mindless entertainment.

ALA Midwinter wiki

Coolness. ALA Midwinter has a wiki! I’ve already added one item about Seattle. For some reason, this wiki is the tipping point that has allowed me to become excited and looking forward to Midwinter. I haven’t looked forward to an ALA conference since my first and only one in 2002. I guess I finally drank … Continue reading “ALA Midwinter wiki”

Coolness. ALA Midwinter has a wiki! I’ve already added one item about Seattle. For some reason, this wiki is the tipping point that has allowed me to become excited and looking forward to Midwinter. I haven’t looked forward to an ALA conference since my first and only one in 2002. I guess I finally drank the koolaid.

sudoku is fun!

Mental challenges for people on the go.

cover of Sudoku Puzzles To GoThe greatest advantage Sudoku Puzzles To Go has over similar game books is that it is spiral bound. Nothing about a puzzle book irritates me more than a tight paper binding, particularly if it is so cheap that the paper is warped when you try to open it flat. (*cough*Scholastic*cough*) Barbara Schulak has self-published this spiral bound gem via Lulu.com, where she has a new Sudoku puzzle book that is a bit more challenging.

I have been hearing a buzz about Sudoku for the past year, which immediately made me resistant to its allure. The descriptions I heard and the strange looking grids printed in newspapers made it seem much more confusing and complicated than it is. In fact, given my undergraduate degree in mathematics and general love of solving number puzzles, I should have been immediately drawn to Sudoku. Instead, it took one little (conveniently spiral bound) Sudoku puzzle book to attract my attention long enough to learn the rules and start playing. I’m hooked.

Sudoku Puzzles To Go is a perfect introduction for the confused like myself. Schulak introduces the book with a clear and concise explanation of the rules of Sudoku. The book is laid out so that very easy 9×9 grids come first, with increasing difficulty as one works one’s way towards the end. The last ten puzzles are 16×16 grids, which leads in nicely to Schulack’s latest Lulu publication, 16 x 16 Sudoku Puzzles To Go. The book includes solutions to all of the puzzles, which comes in handy when one is stuck.

With 250 grids, Sudoku Puzzles To Go makes a great travel companion on long flights, cross-country road trips, or your daily public transportation commute to work. Solving Sudoku puzzles while driving, biking, or walking is not recommended.

la la la linoleum!

Awesome! I was looking for the lyrics to the “L Song” and I found a YouTube video of the original performance. I have the song on an LP called Bert’s Blockbusters, but I’ve never seen it in the context of the show.

Awesome! I was looking for the lyrics to the “L Song” and I found a YouTube video of the original performance. I have the song on an LP called Bert’s Blockbusters, but I’ve never seen it in the context of the show.

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