Shawn McCann, Digital Projects Librarian at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, talked about his experiences in using games in university libraries, 10 September 2010

Franticread (Ellen Forsyth): I first heard about Shawn’s work in 2007 when he joined McMaster University Libraries as the immersive learning (gaming) librarian. This position received a lot of coverage as is was one of the roles introduced by Jeffrey G Trzeciak, the University Library at McMaster University in Canada. I am really looking forward to hearing from Shawn today.

The talk will last for about 30 minutes, with time for questions and discussion at the end. Now it is time to hand over the Shawn. Please make him welcome.

Sockmonger (Shawn McCann): Hello everyone! So, until july of this year I was the gaming librarian at McMaster [University, in Calgary,] but, I got engaged and my fiance lived in Detroit, so I decided to move back to the US. I'm now the digital projects librarian at Wayne State.

Anyway, as the gaming librarian I was charged with investigating how engaging technologies like video games, simulations, and virtual worlds are being used in higher education (in addition to duties like reference, collection development, liaison). When I started at McMaster the library was already involved in Second Life. We used Second Life to pilot some library services in virtual worlds with our focus being on reference. We did this pilot from a building we had on some space on Info Island.

We held regular reference hours in Second Life for about 1 year. The project was somewhat successful in that we did answer around 200 questions during the pilot. Most questions were related to second life though and not really the type of reference questions we would get at a physical desk. In addition, we didn't survey our patrons to see if they were actually McMaster students or faculty and my belief is that most of our traffic was from people with no affiliation to the university.

Despite this, the reference pilot did give us some experience in second life and we wanted to explore it further. We purchased our own island, "Steel City Island", and worked to create our own presence in Second Life. The questions in Second Life tended to be Second Life related. A lot of directional type questions. I found it hard to answer more detailed reference type questions in Second Life without suggesting a web site to go to.

We worked with a grad student and he built all the structures on our island. We created space to do reference, to house exhibits of our digital collections, to do presentations, to meet in small or large groups. Having this space in Second Life led to some colaboration with faculty in the multimedia department. I worked with one professor to develop an Second Life related assignment for his course in digital games. The assignment conisted of the students choosing a video game character and writing a biography for that character. The students then went into Second Life and created a 3D model of that character. I took all of their models and arranged them in some exhibit space on our island. We refered to the space as a "Sculpture Garden".

Hiemal (Liz Danforth): That is very cool.

Sockmonger (Shawn McCann): It really was. The students did a great job. Since they were multimedia students they all had 3D design experience and their models looked great; some of them got really creative. One person created a portal from the game "Portal" and when you interacted with it, it teleported you to a room where the "Companion Cube" was waiting. Anyone here every play Portal?

[As it turned out, many people had. Clearly, a triumph for science.] [Before I clicked, I was sure you were going to link the Still Alive machinima -- Liz Danforth.]

Sockmonger (Shawn McCann): Anyway, visitors to the space could browse through the models and even download the biographies the students had written about the various characters. That was probably the pinnacle of our SL experiences though. We had done some other projects like modeling learning spaces on our island, but I don't think any were as successful as the sculpture garden; we even had a ribbon cutting ceremony for the garden. Faculty from the humanities were invited and student took them on tours of the space.

I'll be honest though, I didn't enjoy working in Second Life. I found it to be clunky and unreliable. I was further disinterested in it when I found we really couldn't leverage it to our advantage at McMaster. I feel something like Second Life is a good tool for distance education, but we just weren't doing distance education at McMaster.

OK, changing directions away from Second Life now. During my time as gaming librarian I even took a stab at creating a library related game. Enlisting the help of a multimedia student I wanted to make an online, flash-based game to raise awarness of issues related to scholarly publishing. The game is called "The Cost is Wrong" and it plays like the gameshow "The Price is Right". Instead of bidding on fabulous prizes though you bid on fabulous journal subscriptions! The bidding is designed to let players (target audience is students) know about the high cost of journal subscriptions for libraries. Between bidding phases, players take part in mini-games that are also based on price is right games but use journal subscription costs in place of other "prices".

The game ends with the "Bookshelf Blowout" where players have to choose a bunch of items that they think add up to the cost of a particularly expensive journal. For example the journal Brain Research costs around $32,000 US for a yearly subscription. Players can grab prizes (like a car, a tv, a vacation, a computer, etc.) that they think would have costs totaling the cost of a subscription for Brain Research.

It looks nice too for a library game. Between each bidding round there were little educational blurbs about scholarly publishing and open access. Kind of "Did you know?" type blurbs. (I hope that makes sense. It's easier to see then for me to describe)

Merrily: Did it work?
Stefwynn: Was the game popular?
Sockmonger (Shawn McCann): Well, we were going to pilot the game during open access week this year, but I'm no longer at McMaster, so I'm not sure what they're going to do. Only a few students and librarians have played it as beta testers.
Hiemal (Liz Danforth): No old colleague will send you update? That's a shame.

Sockmonger (Shawn McCann): The last major game related project I worked on at McMaster was the development of a New Media Centre that included a gaming room referred to as the "Multimedia Theatre". The gaming room has 4 sections: 1 PC gaming area with 3 PCs, 1 Larger section with comfortable seating for 4-6 people, 2 smaller areas with seating for 2-3 people. The 3 non-PC gaming areas with all have large LCD TVs with Xbox360s, Wiis, PS3s and we are hoping to add more "vintage" gaming consoles in the future. To go along with the gaming room they're building a game collection that is mostly focused on the current generation of consoles.

Hiemal (Liz Danforth): No ultra-vintage tabletop?
Sockmonger (Shawn McCann): Nope, no tabletop.
Merrily: Why no tabletop?
Sockmonger (Shawn McCann): The space was really designed around the needs of faculty in the multimedia and software engineering departments and they don't do anything with tabletop games.
Hiemal (Liz Danforth): That makes a kind of sense, then. Electronics first, games second.

Sockmonger (Shawn McCann): The space isn't just for gaming. It is also to provide students with a place to work on multimedia projects like movies, or podcasts. The space just opened this week and already they have 16 faculty members that want to teach in the space and use the tech there. So it really is meeting a need. Previous to the space opening there wasn't a place on campus for students to do that kind of work; unless they were in the multimedia program which has its own lab. But, they're going to use the space for programming like game nights.

Stefwynn: Do you think public libraries should also have multi media labs for communities to use?
Sockmonger (Shawn McCann): I do think public libraries should offer that kind of space. I think multimedia editing isn't as scary as it once was and you don't need a really robust system to work on movies/sound anymore. Heck, i just saw a web site called Jaycut that allows you to do basic movie editing online.

Anyway, that's a quick rundown of some of the projects I've been involved in as the gaming librarian. Questions?

Nairarbil (Sean Riley): When you created your Price is Right style game, what was your budget? What resources are available for such things?
Sockmonger (Shawn McCann): I was lucky enough to get an intern for the summer to help work on it. otherwise it was just my time.
Nairarbil (Sean Riley): How did you source graphics and sound?
Franticread (Ellen Forsyth): And how much of your time was it?
Sockmonger (Shawn McCann): The student I had was from multimedia and he did the graphics and sound from scratch. As for my time spent on the game...maybe 20% of my time for the year.

Stefwynn: Do you think someone will build a 'game engine' for libraries to make their own games (eg. info lit or local studies or library tour)?
Sockmonger (Shawn McCann): You could build info lit games right now, utilizing the mod tools that come with various games. I know a group at Calgary was developing an information literacy game utilizing the Half Life engine. They call the Half-Life mod "Benevolent Blue"; I'm not sure they released it yet. Modding has been becoming easier an easier too, it's just a matter of time.
Nairarbil (Sean Riley): Wow. I'd love to see that. Thanks for that answer.

Stefwynn: If libraries are building their own games should they expect them to have a 'use by' date?
Sockmonger (Shawn McCann): Hmm Stef, good question. Not sure that I have an answer.

Merrily: So what's your next big project?
Hiemal (Liz Danforth): I imagine getting married looms large on the agenda, if you moved to be with your fiancee.
Sockmonger (Shawn McCann): As for my next project, well I'm not doing anything game related. The digital projects I work on at Wayne State are large image collections. Yes, getting married is the next big project. We're actually getting married on halloween and the two of us are dressing as zombies.

Merrily: What would you like to see other places doing with gaming? I.E. your local public library?
Sockmonger (Shawn McCann): I love to see libraries using gaming for outreach; game nights, circulating game collections... Good way to get teens into the libraries, I’d imagine. Anything else?

Nairarbil (Sean Riley): Hypothetical: Imagine you could make a big budget, gaming related university library project. What would you do?
Sockmonger (Shawn McCann): I would focus on info literacy, specifically evaluation of information. I would try to base a lot of it on inquiry and I think I would approach it like an old school adventure game.

Stefwynn: Does 'game thinking' influence the way you approach other aspects of library work?
Sockmonger (Shawn McCann): I don't know if game thinking changes the way I approach things, but I definitely always think about how I can make our libary more engaging; especially instruction. I've gone so far as to turn my instruction session into games of Jeopardy, where the student play along with their "clickers". (Classroom response systems.)

Merrily: You've talked about info lit for students. What would you change regarding info lit for the academics? If anything ... or are they too "serious" for that?
Sockmonger (Shawn McCann): Right now I'd say our focus for Academics it to get them to buy into our institutional repository system, but I haven't thought about how we could accomplish that through gaming.
Franticread (Ellen Forsyth): Well - there could be a ranking system - for mix of quality and quantity?
Merrily: If not gaming specifically, but just in innovative non-traditional methods?
Sockmonger (Shawn McCann): Well, they sure do like to compete.
Franticread (Ellen Forsyth): There is an OCR project here with newpapers where the people asked for ranking so they could see who had done the most corrections. So if you can do it with newspapers - some academics may respond - who knows?

Franticread (Ellen Forsyth): So any more questions? So...if not... Please join with me in thanking Shawn McCann - it was great to hear about all that has been happening!
Sockmonger (Shawn McCann): I had a lot of fun. Thanks for inviting me.

Franticread (Ellen Forsyth): Before everyone logs off - there are a few announcements - Heimal?
Hiemal (Liz Danforth): This is Liz Danforth, games blogger for LJ and general troublemaker. I wanted to let you all know that Marion Public Library (Indiana, I think) is doing a library-based Scavenger Hunt in WoW. Local time for them is Saturday week, the 18th; on the Aerie Peak server, which is where Michael Porter's “Libraries and Librarians” guild lives. It'll be both Horde and alliance. It is also on Facebook.. If it goes well, it may get rolled out nationwide (US, anyway) for National Gaming Day. I was enthralled by the idea.
Stefwynn: Will horde and alliance players work together or is that added degree of difficulty?
Catalogue: Is there a toon level requirement?
Hiemal (Liz Danforth): No, it's separated into 3 levels, so 1-80 can play. We may do it a couple or three times. If you are free this Saturday, in fact, we're doing the playtest of it; but no telling how it'll go!
Franticread (Ellen Forsyth): What time Saturday and what level toon would be needed?
Hiemal (Liz Danforth): 2-3pm is the official game in 10 days. I think the same for the playtest.
Merrily: Would they be happy if a bunch of us joined in? Or would they rather not?
Hiemal (Liz Danforth): Yes I think they would like to have people on for it! I'll be there on Alliance as Recalled. The more the merrier.
Franticread (Ellen Forsyth): It sounds an exciting project and hopefully some of us will be able to get there to try it out as well.

Franticread (Ellen Forsyth): I just have a bit of information about the next talk. The next talk coming up will be Craig Anderson 8 October, who will talk about World of Warcraft and Second Life in educational contexts. Craig is well known for his work in this area. He Anderson blogs at Librarian in real life, and you can follow him on twitter: He tweets as @libraryguy.

On the wiki you can see future talks planned on games and libraries, please suggest others speakers you would like to hear from as well. Future events will be posted on the events page on the Games and Libraries Wiki. It really great to be able to thank Shawn/Sock for his talk today - it was exciting to hear what some university libraries are doing!

Another version of the transcript is available from Demented Kitty's blog (thanks)