Got Game on the Brain.

I’m late to the whole gaming and how it affects libraries thing, but I’m a total convert now and it’s something I’m going to actively track from now on. At first I thought it was just interesting, and while I did like the idea of bringing tweens and teens into the library using gaming as a social carrot, I’m gaining a totally different perspective for the way we can use the characteristics, expectations, and interplay of gaming and gamers in a “tipping point” kind of way.

The latest catalyst for this round of “gaming on my brain” is Moira Gunn’s interview with John Beck for IT Conversations. I’ve listened to the podcast of it twice in the last three days, and a couple of his points really resonate with me. In case you’re not familiar with him, Beck wrote Got Game: How the Gamer Generation Is Reshaping Business Forever, and this podcast is the first chance I’ve really had to hear him talk about all of this since Audible doesn’t carry the audiobook and I’ve never seen Beck speak in person. While listening to it, all I could think of was Brent and how much Beck totally nails him and his friends. I even made Sheree listen to the interview and she agrees with me, although we both disagree with Beck about gender differences because most of the girls we know don’t play video games much at all.

At one point in the interview, Gunn asks Beck how gamers will change the workplace, and Beck provides an example observation that in video games, there are “level bosses” that you have to beat in order to advance further in the game. So one of the things you don’t want to be in real life if you’re a gamer or the supervisor of a gamer is a “boss.” I hadn’t thought about that before, although I always hear Brent talking about bosses in a negative way. In fact, when he started playing video games years ago and he first told me he was having trouble beating the “boss,” I thought that was the name of the character he was fighting. It took me awhile to realize it was his generic term for “the big bad guy at the end of the level.” Then came the realization that it wasn’t just him using the term, it was all of his friends. Imagine his surprise when he first heard me talking about my boss in a positive way!

Beck goes on to say that in the workplace, you don’t want to be a “boss,” but rather a “strategy guide,” because that’s what gamers rely on, especially to beat the boss. And as I was listening to this, it struck me that this is an excellent description of librarians! I’ve always liked that comic drawing of a librarian sitting behind a reference desk with a sign on it that says “search engine,” but now I’ve decided that I’d rather be a “strategy guide” instead. In fact, if I could, I’d change my job title to “strategy guide.” That’s exactly how we need to market ourselves to gamers, boomers, bosses, everyone. The big question, of course, is how to do that and more and more, I think gaming offers clues for how to do that.

If you don’t really understand why this gaming stuff is important, why it will be important in the future (the not-so-distant-future), why it will affect everyone (including you) or why gamers truly are different than you or me, then this interview is a great place to start. I highly recommend you listen to it. And don’t let anybody tell you that these kids aren’t any different than we were at their age, because they’re not like us at all. I was struck by how Beck’s descriptions of gamers mirror so closely the way I talk about NetGens (aka Millennials) in my own presentations. I’m going to have to rework my stuff a bit to highlight the gamer aspect of this generation.

Oh, and if you listen to the Beck interview and get as excited and intrigued about all of this as I did, be sure to register for our upcoming Tech Summit on Gaming @ Your Library! Thanks to our Executive Director, Alice Calabrese, I get to attend the ADL Games, Learning, & Society Conference in June, after which I’m debating trying to put together a day-long symposium/discussion/whatever specifically about gaming and libraries.

[The Shifted Librarian]

8:06:21 AM    

Celebrating the Body Beautiful. The human body is intriguing in all its forms. A photo exhibit features subjects both nude and clothed, giving us a complex picture of who we are as a species and as sexual beings. Commentary by Regina Lynn. [Wired News]

7:32:05 PM    

Open Source is Worldchanging. Jon Lebkowsky: Among Open Source developers and devotees, there's been a growing awareness of its impact as a philosophy and practice that extends beyond the world of... [WorldChanging: Another World Is Here]

6:46:34 PM    

A Nation founded on Christian Ideals?. "The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses." - John Adams

"I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies." - Benjamin Franklin

"Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man" - Thomas Jefferson

"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution." - James Madison

"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon that the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and for my own part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel." - Thomas Paine

"We have abundant reason to rejoice that in this Land the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition ... In this enlightened Age and in this Land of equal liberty it is our boast, that a man's religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining and holding the highest Offices that are known in the United States." - George Washington
[What Do YOU Think? Comment on this Post!] [Testify!] [Father Dan]

5:49:46 PM    

Our city library (Allentown, PA) does pretty well in the couches, computers, and helpful staff areas. Wireless broadband, remote access, and movie screening  - not yet.

How Well Is Your Library Serving these Kids?.

Millennials & Libraries

“…When asked how frequently they used their local public libraries, most reported that they didn't read books for leisure that much (but they do read lots of magazines!) and don't use their libraries that often (there were two notable exceptions -- both young women who said they used their public libraries because they loved to read but couldn't afford to buy books or magazines). When asked what would draw them into their public libraries, they all said the following:

• Wireless internet access
• Remote/electronic access to all library materials
• A more comfortable environment -- couches, coffee, and food all ranked highly
• "More staff who are helpful and who show you where stuff is" -- a direct quote
• Better marketing -- tell the public about what you've got going on!
• More choices in materials
• A movie screening room (this recommendation from an aspiring filmmaker, who was also the only panellist to indicate an interest in becoming a librarian)” [Pop Goes the Library]

[The Shifted Librarian]

3:56:53 PM    

A New Script for Searching Texts Written by Hand. Search technology for images may lead to a way to search handwritten manuscripts. By By IAN AUSTEN. [NYT > Technology]

5:56:44 AM    

Grassroots journalism...a ray of sunshine in an increasingly dark reality.

Dan Gillmor is off into the wild blue yonder of blog-based media, quitting one of the best jobs in journalism to help us all figure out this new world. He does have some high quality wingmen in Pierre Omidyar and Mitch Kapor.

Dan, you are an inspiration. Good luck, we'll be watching your progress.

[EdCone.com]

5:51:06 AM    

Date for new Harry Potter book revealed. The sixth Harry Potter book will hit the shops on July 16 next year, the publisher Bloomsbury has announced. [Telegraph News | Breaking News]

6:11:13 PM    

Why Students Struggle When Pressure Is On. Psychologists are reporting that intense exam pressure is actually more likely to impair the performance of very good students than mediocre ones. By By BENEDICT CAREY. [NYT > Health]

6:10:46 PM    

OpenOffice 2.0 Preview Available. UPDATED The OpenOffice folks are giving the world peek-plus at version 2.0, which looks pretty snazzy. Of course, the Mac OS X version is still basically missing in action. At the rate things are going, it'll never be close to ready for prime time, much less at parity with the other versions. UPDATE: More from The Inquirer. [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

6:10:14 PM    

Searching the Web for Copycats. Here's a useful application of the Google API: Copyscape, a free service that can find Web sites plagiarizing your content.

The service takes any URL as input, looking for a suspicious number of matching words on other sites. Most hits for Workbench came from sites and aggregators making legitimate use of my RSS feed.

Copyscape found several plagiarists of my book Sams Teach Yourself Java 1.1 in 24 Hours, using the first chapter as input.

The service might be too fast on the trigger: Another suspected copywronger was a person who quoted one of my jokes as his .SIG. [Workbench]

6:09:30 PM    

On Laziness. On Laziness --

"There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is in having lots to do and not doing it."
    -- Mary Wilson Little

[From Quotes of the Day - The Quotations Page.] [Frank Patrick's Focused Performance Blog]

6:06:30 PM    

Citizens Journalism Project, the Response. UPDATED I've been inundated with kind words, questions and offers of assistance since the word went out last last week that I'm going to pull together a citizens journalism project. I'm working my way through the e-mail and will try hard to get caught up by tomorrow. Hope to have a few more details by mid-week as well. UPDATE: The folks from Korea's amazing OhmyNews, one of my inspirations in this project (and covered at some length in the book), interviewed me at a conference over the weekend. [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

9:51:34 PM    

New Tool Automatically Searches Handwritten Historical Documents [Science Blog]

6:57:17 PM    

"A heavy hand and a foot for pie crust". Pie crust was one of the few things my mother admitted she couldn't do. Old New Englanders called it "a heavy hand for pastry." She said that in her case, one foot must be heavy as well.

Harold McGee to the rescue! From today's New York Times:

"The goal of pie crust is to create thin, even layers of fat and flour," he said. "That's what makes them flaky. But the usual method isn't really optimal for that."

Instead of using his fingers to rub globs of fat into flour, then dribbling in ice water, Mr. McGee starts with square chunks of cold butter and a pile of flour on a board. With a rolling pin he presses and rolls the butter into the flour, flattening it into thinner and thinner flakes. Occasionally he scrapes the mixture into a bowl and freezes it for five minutes, to keep the butter from melting. Since the gluten is not activated until the water is added, there is no worry about overworking the dough, even though the process can take some time.

Finally, to add the water Mr. McGee fetched a plant mister. "I always found it was hard to get the water evenly into the dough" he said. "So I measured how many sprays of the mister it takes to get half a cup of water — it's 150, by the way..."

McGee is promoting the new revised edition of his scientific cookbook, On Food and Cooking. I definitely want one!

---

In recent news, PR blogger and newlywed Steve Rubel says that 15 bloggers were hired to do "product placements" for various companies. FWIW, I'm not that kind of blogger. When I blog about books (or boots) it's for fun, not profit.

---

[Betsy Devine: Funny Ha-Ha or Funny Peculiar?]

6:05:29 PM    

Science Geek Gifts for All. Banish underwear from your gift-giving list this year! Your smarty-pants friends and relatives aren't as hard to buy for as you might think. The web is full of brain-gratifying gift ideas. By Kristen Philipkoski. [Wired News]

7:22:58 PM    

A Gift of Reading. The day after Thanksgiving is the semi-official kickoff of the holiday shopping season. I hope you'll consider saving a bit of your budget for some folks who need help from the rest of us. One program I'd like to recommend again, as I do at this time every year, is the "Gift of Reading" sponsored by the Mercury News and Kids in Common. Reading is such a basic part of a productive life, and this book drive is a worthy way to get books into the hands of children who will gobble up words, given the chance, the way we all gobble up our Thanksgiving turkeys and trimmings. For many of these children, the books will be their only holiday gifts this year. So Gift of Reading is looking for new or like-new volumes, and asks that you not wrap them so the books can be sorted by age group. A cash donation is also welcome. You can find much more information on the program's website. Or call +1 (408) 882-0900, extension 11, or send e-mail to communityrelation@mercurynews.com. Please help out if you can. (Image via NASA) [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

7:19:53 PM    

Gary Price on "impeccably maintained" web directories. [Scripting News]

7:13:27 PM    

Oliver Willis has a branding campaign for the Democrats underway at his blog.

Here's a sample:

Go, Oliver.

[EdCone.com]

1:00:11 PM    

Hear, hear...have you seen Microsoft's offering? Have you vomited yet?...

Adaptive Path: Making A Better CMS. Jeffrey Veen. The experience cemented a theory of mine: Most open source content management software is useless. The only thing worse is every commercial CMS I've used. But it doesn't have to be that way. This whole category of software desperately needs to be redesigned with writers, editors, designers, and site owners in mind. [Tomalak's Realm]

7:39:28 PM    

Just finished a business class today in which a very smart professor lamented that in 18 months, Google will have been over-run by Microsoft. Can we prevent this?...

Google Scholar.

This should be useful - Google Scholar: " Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web."

[elearnspace]

7:37:30 PM    

Okay, here's what we did right...

• Mom bought nursing home insurance. No telling how good it will be, but at least it's there.
• Mom picked out the assisted living facility she wanted to go to before she needed it.
• Both Mom and Dad saved for many years.
• Both Mom and Dad worked at paying jobs for many years, so they both have a pension and social security income now. It's higher than most. The good elder care facilities talk to us. If Mom had stayed home, they'd only have half as much. (They actually need about 4 times as much, but this is better than it might have been.) All five of us (kids) are fine, by the way...nobody lost out because Mom got paid.

Here's what we did wrong:

• We didn't get the nursing home insurance earlier. Dad had a stroke in his late 50's. No one will insure him now.
• We didn't pick an assisted living facility with gradually increasing care levels. They're about to be thrown out of "assisted living" at $3400/month to a full-blown nursing home at a cost of $15,000/month. Neither of them need that yet, but we may have to pay it, and then watch the government run their lives after their savings run out. Intermediate care facilities and full service end of life facilities exist. Find them. Get on their waiting lists. (The best one I found has a 2-year wait.)
• We didn't protect their money by putting it in a trust. You want an elder care lawyer for this, not a run of the mill lawyer, and go to one who doesn't take a percentage of their total assets.

7:38:20 PM    

Using a New Language in Africa to Save Dying Ones. Linguists see the computer as one important way of saving hundreds of languages in Africa, some spoken only be a few dozen elders. By By MARC LACEY. [NYT > Technology]

7:21:35 PM    

Liberal Arts Libraries Support Open Access Publishing.

Fifty-one liberal arts college libraries have become institutional members of Public Library of Science (PLoS), a non-profit organization dedicated to making scientific and medical literature a public resource. The libraries are members of the Oberlin Group, an informal community of liberal arts colleges and libraries dedicated to promoting science education (for more on the Oberlin Group, see this brief history by Ray English and Will Bridegam).

Joining PLoS promotes the growth of open access publishing by allowing authors from member institutions to publish in PLoS journals at reduced or no cost. Publication fees are a significant barrier to open access publishing of science, technical, and medical journals, and PLoS has sought to lower this barrier to entry.

For more on the announcement see the press release forwarded by Peter Suber, available at the extended link below:

[commons-blog]

4:32:42 AM