NEWS: Hey Librarians: Less Book Clubs, More LAN Parties

Bwahaha

I have a dyslexic younger brother who never finished high school and never developed his reading and writing skills much at all until I set him up with the Star Wars Galaxies beta. Then because the social aspect of the game necessitated communication to get ahead his skills in those areas dramatically improved.

Dismissing "video games" are child's play is a huge mistake that is going to get worse with time when VR is more developed and "video games" become interactive multimedia art (like the one David Lynch tried to develop years ago: Woodcutters From Fiery Ships. Video games are among the most advanced applications on the home PC market what with their AIs, physics' modeling engines, anisotropic filtering, etc.

It's also my opinion that reaching people using the avenues developed most powerful general tool in the history of mankind that is has been and currently revolutionizing almost every economic sector is probably wise as well.

classic

Ooookay, then. I'm young. I'm pretty in-touch with youth culture. And guess what? I'm a librarian!

And you know who else are librarians? Comic book geeks, zinesters, bleeding-heart liberals, tattooed weirdos (like me!), bloggers, gamers, and all sorts of other free-thinking, creative, (r)evolutionary people.


And you know what we've discovered?? A vast new truth: Libraries are not about books!

Amazing, but true! Libraries are about education AND entertainment. Libraries are about intellectual freedom and skill enhancement. Libraries are about life-long learning.

Does that mean books? Sure, of course it does! But it ALSO means *GASP* video games, and audiobooks, and DDR competitions where kids can dance off against librarians, and DVDS, and CDs, and MP3s, and magazines, and graphic novels, and even zines!

But you know what? Most of the digital natives out there, and apparently, the author of this article as well, seem to think that libraries are about books alone, and that librarians are all ancient, forbidding crones who can't tell HTML from HP Lovecraft.


Next time you want to write an article like this, Dictionary Girl, try doing a little bit of old-fashioned research and looking into all the new initiatives going on in the library world. You might be surprised by just how "hep" and "the cat's pajamas" many librarians really are.

<MADNESS> Cthulu walks the earth. Unspeakable horror! </MADNESS>

"real world" what the hell are you talking about?
I've been living in a quasi virtual Final Fantasy realm for years.

kek

Woahhhh there.

Maybe my sarcasm meter was running a little off; I don't know, I'm no FearTheReaper. But I would just like to go on record as saying that I was kidding in that passage you quoted. One of the whole points of my article was that blatant attempts to "be hip with the kids" are annoying to me because they are born under the assumption that, for example, librarians have no current means to connect with those they are trying to help. Perhaps that's true of some people, but obviously it's a pretty broad generalization, and I have friends who work at the library who are definitely not out-of-touch grandmas but can still probably be effective at their jobs without making everything into a video game analogy.

That's all. Sorry if it came across wrong.

I really do think you have a lot of good ideas and applications here, that would be really cool if we were talking about public libraries. Especially the safe-environment-after-hours LAN parties. The problem here is that what the ALA was focusing on are college libraries. You would think that it would not be so much college librarians' problem to get uninterested freshmen into reading, or keep them in a safe environment after hours?

Though a LAN party might be better than a frat party.

What you don't seem to be understanding, Dictionary Girl, is that it's not about "blatant attempts to be hip with the kids;" it's about demonstrating to the kids that libraries--and even librarians!-- are ALREADY hip! A lot of people don;t know that we are, you know. We have a ridiculously strong, pervasive stereotype to fight against...the librarian as bun-wearing, bespectacled, tweed-skirted, pearl-wearing, 60-something frigid spinster, and the library as dusty, dead-silent, dull-as-dirt temple of dead knowledge. Anything and everything we can do to get people through the freaking door is something we should at least consider! My original points still stand here. Some librarians are young and hip, and libraries are not dusty book vaults!

And YES, all of these initiatives still apply to academic libraries! I've known FAR too many undergrads who've never stepped foot inside the library unless they got caught in the rain or got lost...and why? They think they can just use Google for everything...and anytime they have to use a book, they're much more likely to go to B&N or Borders first...and all because of the negative stereotypes that swirl around the library.

Again, it's not about "getting uninterested freshman into reading," it's about getting those freshman into THE LIBRARY itself, by making the library a fun and interesting place to be...that oh by the way, is also useful.


I still think that before you go around heaping sarcasm upon initiatives put forth by an organization that only has good works in mind, you should do a little bit of research and try to understand just why it is that the organization feels the need to even put together such an initiative, and understand all the factors at play. Criticizing librarians en masse for trying to help people... just because you've decided you disapprove of the way they're going about doing so...is just not cool.