What is the largest group of gamers in society today? According to Jenny Levine, a well known blogger, there are a lot more gamers than we realize, and the stereotype of the teenage boy in basement playing games alone is far from the truth.There are many young gamers—90 million them up to the age of 35.But the largest group of online gamers is now middle-aged women!
Gamers tend to be creative problem solvers or experimental learners, and they expect interaction, rewards, and customization. A new gaming console based on motion, Wii (pronounced “wee”) is greatly expanding the world of gaming.Even some physically challenged people can now play games.
How should libraries interact with gamers?They could:
Provide -support materials and services for the culture of gaming (see the Orange County Public Library website for an example).
Create Reader’s Advisories by figuring out what books gamers would like based on games they play. They should also consider non-video games—some librariess provide board games, or geocaching in the library. Others provide “open play” periods and either buy the necessary equipment or have players contribute it.
Kids love tournaments, and some libraries (the Ann Arbor Public Library, for example) have been proactive in providing an environment for game tournaments, with great success.
This afternoon’s Digital Trends track was also packed, but fortunately it was held in a larger room, so there were ample seats for everyone.It featured a trio of presentations on varying but related subjects.Marshall Breeding, familiar to many readers of Computers in Libraries, and a long-time attendee of the CIL conference (he has been to all 22 of them!), kicked it off with an interesting talk on Millennials and the Library.Generational changes have made a significant difference in library services.Here are the commonly accepted definitions of the various generations:
Born between 1925-1945:The Silent Generation
1946-1964:The Baby Boomers
1965-1980:Generation X
1981-2000:The Millennials
Millennials have an innate ability for technology and are prone to frenetic multitasking.They are comfortable with diverse types of digital media and a highly interactive style of working.They are also creative, innovative, organized, independent, and open to innovations.They may be impatient, skeptical and sometimes arrogant in relationships with others.They tend to be visual learners and do other several things at once, a phenomenon called continuous partial attention.Libraries must consider these traits when designing services for the Millennial generation.
Some collection possibilities for libraries include electronic journals and books, podcasts of lectures, video libraries of stock footage, news archives, and datasets.The best opportunity for an impact is in providing access to collections.Millennials come to libraries with expectations set by their experiences using the web.Dealing with large and complex bodies of information is nothing new to them.They have a very low tolerance for clunky and ineffective websites, and the status quo may not meet their expectations.See this amusing video on trying to find Time Magazine on a library website for an example.
Marshall has an optimistic view of the future.He feels that change is underway, and there is widespread dissatisfaction with library OPACs.Some OPACs are becoming more comprehensive information discovery environments with more powerful search capabilities and a more elegant presentation. Some common features being provided include a decoupled interface, mass export of catalog data alternative search engines, and an alternative interface.Traditional notions of the library catalog are being questioned:the catalog cannot be limited to can’t be limited to print resources, and forcing users to use different interfaces depending on the type of content is becoming less tenable.We must assume that users start their searches on the web, and make library search a destination.
Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today and CIL 2007 Blog Coordinator
CIL attendees are the “first people in the world” to hear about this report, according to
Alane Wilson, senior library market consultant for OCLC. A new membership study explored the web of social participation and cooperation on the Internet and how it may impact the library’s role in the public sphere. Its report will be “probably out by ALA in June.” After her interesting presentation in Track C on Monday, I sat down and chatted with Wilson about the study.
OCLC had Harris Interactive conduct the survey in six countries—Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States— in their own languages (unlike the earlier “Perceptions” study in 2005 that was only in English). There were over 6,163 respondents. Also different from the earlier report is that they did a separate survey of U.S. librarians (382 participated) and asked them similar questions to the main respondents to get their own views. But they also asked the librarians what they thought their patrons would answer. They also conducted 14 in-depth interviews and three 90-minute focus groups with undergrads, grads, and people from a hair salon (everyone but one was on MySpace, said Wilson).
Wilson said: “We’re not done—it’s a work in progress. A core team of 5 OCLC folks plus a consultant are working now to analyze the data, see the trends and the stories in the data, and write the report. It’s really hard.”
The survey has yielded hundreds of pages of data and graphs.
Here are some of the trends that they saw, all confirmed this morning by keynoter Rainie:
Individual-driven content is rising—personal publishing, digital images/video, tagging, etc.
The network as community
Instant verification
The wisdom of crowds or smart mobs—page rank, recommendations, etc.
Here’s one of Wilson’s favorite survey questions—“because it surprised the heck out of me.” The question to librarians was:
In your professional opinion, do you think it should be the library’s role to build social networking sites for your community?
Overwhelmingly, librarians of all ages and from any type of library said, no or not sure. (over 80 percent) Even those who participate in some kind of online community said no–at a higher rate than those who do not. And this is one where general respondents were in sync…they too don’t think it is a role for libraries (over 90 percent).
Some other snippets of data (we’ll have to wait til this summer for more details…):
Librarians read “way, way more” than the general population—of the general community surveyed, nearly 40 percent said they read (anything) less than 5 hours a week!
In Japan 40 percent of people said they had never been to a library or library Web site!
Librarian behavior and our norms are different from the general population—this is important to keep in mind as we design services. Librarians use chat rooms and do IM less than the general pop—but we read blogs more
The general population doesn’t want others to know about their library borrowing–and librarians thought the same about their users. One implication—it’s a missed opportunity for librarians if they don’t post their library’s policies or bill of rights for patrons to see. It’s important to let them know we protect them.
“Sharing, Privacy and Trust in the Age of the Networked Community: A Report to the OCLC Membership”
Ellyssa Kroski presented her views on information design for the new Web. After showing some really busy web designs from six or seven years ago, she moved on to explain that the new web requires changes in information design that reflect the fact that the user experience is changing, there are changes in the way people consume information, and there are changes in technology.
Her three principles were that your web design should be simple, social, and provide alternative navigation.
Simple means leaving off functions and functionality to make it easy for the user. It’s a design that requires no software, no manual, and no registration. The two trends regarding social are the socialization of media and creating applications and social for social’s sake. The former requires commenting, rating & reviewing, send to a friend, share applications, subscribe, and save for later with bookmarks. Social for social’s sake is things like Facebook and Ning. Alternative navigation involves a lot of visualization and navigating by user; tag cloud; the top or most popular, emailed, searched, blogged, etc.; the zeitgeist; related information; weaving in, out and around web sites; heat maps; relationship maps; time tools; digg’s swarm information; maps; widgets; and mashups.
Her final words of advice: Evolve, be nimble, be open.
Although not as popular as the mashup or the privacy/security issues sharing the same time slot, Roberta Shaffer’s discussion this afternoon of the competencies for federal librarians drew a respectable audience, perhaps because the conference is here in the heart of the US federal government agencies. Roberta is the executive directory of the Federal Library Information Center Committee.
Roberta admitted to once missing her Metro stop on her way home from work because she was so engrossed in her favorite government document, a 2005 GAO report called 21st Century Challenges: Reexaming the Base of the Federal Government (www.gao.gov/21stcentury.html). It says, "Absent significant changes on the spending and/or revenue sides of the federal budget, long term deficits will encumber a growing share of federal resources and test the capacity of current and future generations to afford both today’s and tomorrow’s commitments. Continuing on this unsustainable path will gradually erode, if not suddenly damage, our economy, our standard of living and ultimately our national security. Incremental approaches to budgeting will need to give way to more fundamental and periodic reexaminations of the base of government, ultimately covering discretionary and mandatory programs as well as the revenue side of the budget. "
A goal of FLICC, in figuring out competencies for federal librarians, is to be a force to create consortia and harmony among federal libraries. She hopes FLICC will be a catalyst for cooperation among different levels of libraries. Today their work is limited to federal libraries, but it would be wonderful if this could be extended to other types of libraries as well. Realistically, there are so many encumbrances built in, that it’s a slow problem to change legislation to lift these restrictions. She urged attendees to join non-library associations to see how their goals align with those of librarians and pointed out that other associations frequently have more sophisticated lobbying mechanisms than library associations. FLICC is involved in setting up degree programs, mostly on the masters level. Ther first one will be with Clarion University, which will offer a graduate certificate on information intelligence and security. We need to look at the soft skills of leadership, being able to follow, results-driven management, technology understanding, and how to cope with a changing environment. Roberta believes that the GS system of job ranking and job descriptions should disappear.
At 11:15 this morning, Jessamyn West gave a peppy talk about the Firefox browswer and all the neat things it can do. She really seemed to be having a good time, and so did her audience.
If you don’t know Firefox, you can check it out easily because it’s a free and open source browser. It’s mature, too, having been out of beta for more than 2 years and in vers 2 for 6 months.
Jessamyn demonstrated lots of cool things you can do to customize Firefox, like choosing different skins (themes), assigning icons to your favorite things ("I’m a sucker for these cute little buttons" she revealed), and changing the size of all your icons and fonts for easier reading.There are also tons of add-ons to play with.
The first session I attended this morning had something in common with the keynote — a room overflowing with people! So I moved down the hall into a room where the same session was being projected. That room was full too, but at least I found a nice spot to sit on the floor.
All of these people were there to hear David King talking about Planning & Implementing Library 2.0. One thing he said repeatedly was to make sure you have a reason to make your MySpace page, blog, wiki, or other 2.0 application. Knowing exactly why you’re doing it and who you’re doing it for will automatically guide your planning and content decisions.
"Goals are good," he emphasized, because they make you choose which direction to go in. Sound advice! Maybe that’s why so many people piled in to see David’s presentation.
We hope our scheduled Tues am keynote speaker, Liz Lawley, is feeling better and not under a foot of snow in Rochster. However, we are very excited that our new Tues am keynote speaker, Andy Carvin, will talk about engaging your audience/community using Web 2.0 tools. Andy has a great history and some wonderful stories to share with the CIL audience. See you in the morning! Jane Dysart, Conference Program Chair
It was a full house for Meredith Farkas’ session on social software this morning.
Farkas, author of a new book recently published by Information Today, Social Software in Libraries, defined social software in terms of several of its capabilities. Her talk also focused on the ways libraries can use social software:
Social software democratizes communications and promotes online collaboration. Conversations are changed, and it’s no longer necessary to join a listserv. Now you can comment on blogs and link directly to other blogs. You can also track who is commenting on your comments.
Communication can occur in real time, and this can be exploited by libraries. Instant messaging (IM) is extremely widely used by university students; what if the library could be on an IM "Buddy List"? This opens up many possibilities.
You can take advantage of the wisdom of crowds and see what other people have found interesting. By means of a wiki, you can also collect knowledge and use it in your marketing.
Social software systems are transparent. For example, student evaluation forms were formerly filled out in print and given to faculty. One wondered if the forms ever had an impact. Now, rating sites like Rate My Professors are visible by anyone, so they have a much more powerful impact.
Personalizaton becomes easy: you can make your own newspaper with news only of interest to you, and using podcasting, you can create your own "radio station".
Social software platforms are portable. Now that Blackberry devices, iPods, etc. are widely used, why not deliver content from the library to these.
Farkas then showed a number of fascinating sites illustrating innovative uses that libraries have made of social software. She helpfully provided a link to them all on her website that she has created, so you can have a look at them there if you’re interested.
Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today and CIL 2007 Blog Coordinator
As other ITI bloggers have noted, this year CIL has a record turnout. The good part of that is the large number of people with whom to network, communicate, collaborate, and otherwise act 2.0-ish. The bad part is there weren’t enough chairs in the main conference room for the keynote speech by Lee Rainie. Never fear, technology to the rescue (well, sort of). The Hyatt is streaming Rainie’s speech into a secondary room next door to the main room. The sound is a bit low, but you can still hear him. The problem is that the videographer (if that’s the correct name) is only aiming his camera at the speaker; he’s not moving the camera to grab a shot of his slides as well. Rainie does a really good job of explaining what’s on his slides, even when they’re screen shots, but it would be nice to see them. Hopefully by tomorrow’s keynote that little glitch will be fixed.
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