Laurie N. Taylor February 13th, 2008
UF’s Libraries is a great work environment, as is the Digital Library Center in particular. We’re all friendly and fun, and this week we’re having a triple birthday celebration with three people having birthdays within the week. In light of our collective birthdays, and our hard work with nearly 1.5 million pages in the Digital Collections and more loading each day (and many audio and video files that can’t be counted in pages), these pictures are for us!
There are more birthday-related pictures here.
Laurie N. Taylor January 21st, 2008
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.
Laurie N. Taylor December 26th, 2007
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth is now on YouTube. Since there’s so much in terms of historical footage and in terms of history within that footage, I’m excited to see what this will mean for museums and historical materials. The Queen is on YouTube on The Royal Channel: The Official Channel of the British Monarchy. While many official organizations - political, governmental, and other - have released videos through museums and libraries, it’s interesting to see those materials being added into the regular-user interfaces where people can stumbled across them through the official-and-popular format. Seeing historical footage like “Roses for the Rose Queen” are interesting in themselves and it will be more interesting to see what others do with them, using them for teaching, research, and hopefully new creative projects.
In thinking about the Queen on YouTube, it also seems like Queen Elizabeth is always the correct queen-size, being large and small enough for any format, like the always one and more of the royal “we”. While queen-sized on US women’s clothing is used to mean large or plus-sized, it’s often a normal woman’s size. Like the large-yet-normal-size known as queen-size, Queen Elizabeth seems to be sized appropriately for any media format. Hopefully, other public figures will learn from her appropriate-sizing and size themselves to speak through different media formats in the most appropriate and productive ways possible.
Laurie N. Taylor December 4th, 2007
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.