Digital Library Center Blog | UF

UF students, faculty, and staff are invited to the Library Tech Expo, hosted by the InfoCommons @ West, which will take place on Wednesday, August 27, from 10-2 in the InfoCommons @ West (3rd floor of LW).  We will be showcasing various tech trends offered by our libraries, including Bioactive (a library video game), InfoZombies and other library YouTube videos, RefWorks, Ask-a-Librarian, and much more!  We will also be offering Guitar Hero during this time for students to play while they view our new tech trends.  Snacks will be provided.

On Monday morning, Val Davis (from the University of Florida Marston Science Library) and I presented on “Bioactive: A Library Game” (currently online here) that several UF librarians made as an alternative to the standard 40 minute library intro tutorial to increase student engagement with the actual work of learning about using library resources.

Bioactive was originally designed in Inform and it’s now moved to a web quest design, which is an even greater simplificiation from the earlier text-based Inform format. The simplicity of the design is for sustainability and ease of maintenance, but it’s more importantly used to ensure that the interface doesn’t get in the way of the learning objectives.

Our presentation was incredibly fun thanks to the wonderful crowd, and great set up from all of STS and especially Margaret Mellinger and Barbara MacApline. We were not only lucky in the great setup for our own presentation, but we also got to see Felice Frankel’s presentation. Frankel presented on her work in scientific photography, capturing the beauty and scientific information in her photographs and then using scientific photography to aid in working toward creating a visual scientific language for scientific literacy. Frankel also spoke on how many images have become too computer-focused in many senses, and this is true. Her photographs are computational, like good flowcharts and paralleling much of the current thought on computational modeling and representation (UF’s own Paul Fishwick’s work on aesthetic computing; Ian Bogost’s work on procedural rhetoric and situational/contextual modeling for interaction/testing; James Paul Gee’s work on situational learning in games; and many others). Even with all of this wonderful work, often the computer as artifice/interface seems to encourage the wrong inds of computation where computationally cleaned/corrected is favored over computationally modeled/accurately presented. Frankel’s work is especially excellent because it offers the visual equivalent of what a sound bite should be–even a glimpse and viewers are hooked into wanting to see and know more. Frankel mentioned a number of sites that showcase her work and methodology, including PicturingtoLearn.org and ImageAndMeaning.org.

Frankel also mentioned her interest in capturing the images for a book on the “science of cooking” and I can’t wait for her to do it! So much of gaming and new media is about the appropriate design of the interface to conceal and reveal the underlying structure to generate interest and to pull players/users in at a set pace. Frankel’s work pulls viewers in through its sheer beauty and then each images teaches how to look by making us want to continue looking and understanding what we’re seeing. These ways of seeing relate to aesthetics that communicate as well as the use of metaphor, with metaphor as a reduction/abstraction of information that still remains true to the integrity of the information and the image, the need for the transparency of the interface or the exposing of the interface to show context while editing noise (unnecessary/confusing information), and all to develop images that speak to multiple viewpoints and the modeled system as a method/view. Frankel’s work essentially exposes variables in play and combining this with the additional motivation of making/playing with something tasty through cooking is brilliant. The hands-on play using concepts best known from computing within real world style crafts continues to grow rapidly in popularity, including the knitting/hacking with sites like Ravelry (thanks to Merrie Davidson for pointing this out in our Library 2.0 meetings, otherwise I wouldn’t have known to read up on Ravelry and I could have missed the story on the success of Ravelry community funding drive) and on more traditionally tech-oriented sites like O’Reilly launching Makezine and on yet other sites like Boing Boing that are technologically agnostic in their fusions of hack/make cultures.

I’m too tired and jet-lagged to write more now, but the STS session was wonderful and I’m already looking forward to the next one!

The second annual ALA TechSource Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium will take place on November 2-4, 2008, in Oak Brook, IL (a western suburb of Chicago). The website has preliminary information about registration, the location, keynote speakers, and the Call for Presenters. The call is for all libraries doing innovative work with gaming and games studies in relation to libraries. The deadline is June 15, 2008, and they’ll respond by July 1–this sounds like a great conference, with an upcoming deadline, so don’t miss it!

Augment or alternative reality games combine the digital and the physical to create innovative and interactive games. Notable examples could include geocaching games, and games where players decode information on websites to find information on other websites, call or email the “decrypted” phone numbers or email addresses, or any one of many other activities based on the information learned from the digital site. The real play of ARGs comes through in the back-and-forth from digital to non-digital and in the gaming communities these types of games create. While I’m familiar with ARGs from game studies, it seems like some library and archival materials almost invoke the concept with as oddities that seem to need to be used in some way.

The image above is an example from the USX National Defense Program, Identification Card Listings - 1940’s Series (Source: UE/Labor 91:6, Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh.). The University of Pittsburgh Library’s website explains the origin of these ID cards:

In the 1940’s, workers at US Steel’s National Works (sometimes known as the Tube Works) in McKeesport, were photographed for identification cards, which also provide social data on individual workers. The Archives Service Center is hereby making available a name index to its collection of these cards, numbering more than 10,000 in all, approximately 25% of which contain the abovementioned thumb-nail sized photographs. The social data on the cards have thus far been used for a variety of scholarly research projects: e.g. for a study and oral history on women crane operators at the National Works during WWII and for a book on Jews of Hungarian background who worked there. By combining cards belonging to members of a given, defined group, one can form conclusions about the connections between race/ethnicity and job classification or promotion, or about the geographic origins of selected groups.

The card almost calls out to be used in a game that requires additional research, making it perfect fodder or inspiration for an ARG. With so many related materials on the University of Pittsburgh Library’s site, and with material from places like the Typographical Union,
I’m amazed this hasn’t yet figured into an ARG already. Of course maybe it has, but I just haven’t found it yet. At any rate, wondrous materials like this seem to hide or simply sit waiting in all libraries and museums. Given their historical significance, ability to inspire, and usability for projects like ARGs, it’s hopefully only a matter of time until we all stumble across them through a game or an internet search.

UF’s Libraries are testing different methods and uses of the library-buildings as third spaces (the not home and not work, where you go for social time and a break from the confines of home&work). This Thursday we’re testing Guitar Hero in Library West (third floor from 12-2pm). We’ve also set up a game section of our website for events like this and for game-like approaches to traditional library services. It’s fun for us to hone our skills and develop new ones through connecting games and the library, and games are an easy way to break traditional assumptions on what should and should not be in a library.

This event is also great because it was requested by a student, who’s now helping with the planning and set up process. He wanted to do it because he felt Guitar Hero was awesome and he wanted to share. This acceptance of the library as-place and as-information-point is an important shift, and the next steps should be only more fun and more exciting. As more information goes online, new approaches to information (access, spaces, connections) will also require a heavy emphasis on ways to play with and rethink information.

Looking for a few more Monopoly game images led me to vast railroad images, so the archives I’ve seen might be better for a railroad style game first or alongside a Monopoly style game. These are just some of the great Florida railroad images. A railroad game based on Florida would have so many possibilities because of the abundance of archival materials, so the question would be how to structure it.

Most railroad games are strategy, building different railroads to make money or to defeat rival businesses. To really use the historical materials, a railroad game set in Florida would need to follow the history, so a strategy game would be less useful. An adventure game, like The Last Express, which could use the archival materials for the setting and the actual history within the narrative would be a better way to use the materials. Otherwise, the game could end up being just a “Florida Railroad Tycoon” like a Gator- Simpsons- Anything-Monopoly game that changed the style, but not the structure and that would be a lot of work for not much return for this sort of project. Right now, I’m thinking an “Early Florida and the Railroad” adventure game would be the best choice, but I’ll plan more as I find more materials.

Monopoly is a great game for gaming history and for game studies because of its history as the Landlord’s Game which protested ultra-capitalism and because of its structure–a simple theme that changes in appearance with fairly standard rules, but also house rules (often related to landing on Free Parking). An interesting project would be to try and reconstruct a typical Monopoly game using historical objects. The image with this post could be a great starting point for a new Florida Monopoly based on historical Florida images. The game could be a simple re-skinning. Computer skins refer to the interface or object appearance, so Firefox can be skinned to look like Apple’s Safari web browser; it’s like redecorating a room without changing the structure, new colors, but no new function/objects. Or, a more interesting option would be to create a new game based on the appearance and function of the historical elements. The postcard image could be used in an agriculture game as a bonus card “free service for equipment” or “good maintenance means savings” or it could be used in an office space game as a demerit card “perceived sexism in advertising leads to product boycott” or as a general play card in a game on women’s fashion in the 1950s where it means everyone has to buy or have hats. As I find more items that would work, I’ll add them to my in-progress collection of a Florida History Monopoly Game. Has anyone else seen anything similar using library or museum archives? More ideas would be great!

This is just a quick update with a couple more images. The telegram might be better for an adventure game or a more Clue-like board game, but it’s a great image/artifact.

I’m not sure what type of game could include fox hunting, but it seems oddly appropriate.

This could be a small business or part of a street in a Florida or Gainesville Monopoly. It could also be part of a shopping game with the clothes on display.