Les gave the first keynote speech of the symposium: New Landscapes for Libraries
Les teaches a LIS course: Game Culture and Technology

courses in GSLIS and across the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign to use gaming and new media

3 models

“A Box of Books” (“The B Model”)
– an information repository

the bumblebee shouldn’t be able to fly, but they do
libraries shouldn’t be flying, but they are; how do we keep a library afloat
where did the initial incentive for libraries come from and how do we keep that going?

Digital Transformations:
ebooks – since the platforms haven’t worked well, people have repurposed them for gaming
epaper – flexible; “readius” device that takes epaper and scrolls it; digital paper that is downloadable (may see this first with restaurant menus)
– will start to emulate the books we now love

Transaction Costs:

Ronald Coase argued in 1937
– if TCs are high, it pays to hire employees (organization) vs. contracting out jobs (market)
– arrangements of transaction costs shape social organization

Extrapolate that to Information Transaction Costs
copy
transport
translate
collocate
index
arrange
transcode
search/find

= each has a cost… each contributes to the cost of other activities

in the year 500, what it cost to copy information (monks writing) vs. now
as a general trend the cost of all of those information transactions is going down, to below zero in some cases
= actually goes negative in some cases, so you make money by copying information (Google as the example)

results:
napster
kazaa
bittorrent
p2p
flickr (where many of the pictures in this presentation came from)
blogs
wikis
MMOGs
copyright conflict
filtering
filtering
flame wars
open source
PLoS
ebooks

BoB Libraries???

liabilities
near-zero or below-zero Tcs drive consumers away from libraries
– movie attendance
– radio listenership
– television viewing

increasing pressure to profit from every customer “touch” (lending transaction)
– disintermediation of libraries

increase circulation via CRM
maintain symbolic status quo of mission

hooking them with something else and then pushing the book on them maintains the symbolic status quo

but libraries should maintain the stewardship of resources
fiction
paperbacks (preservation)
picturebooks
A/V & media
toys
internet
console games
MMOGs
= same debate

can libraries benefit from this new landscape?

What’s in a Library? (“The K Model”)
Willam Learned: Library as community intelligence center
university of the people
informed citizenry/availability of public knowledge

critical role of innovation for society:
assimilating the new
visiting the cutting edge
sensemaking
exploration
migrating new knowledge/experience into practice (e.g. readers’ advisory services)

World Bank Study: 2–5% of the population will become entrepeneurs, will become producers instead of consumers

Library as venue of community & cultural innovation
a place where society innovates

(Aaron comments that I probably love all this because of my interest in participatory culture. He’s right!)

can view games as a ubiquitous reflection of emerging culture
foundation of cultural mythology and transmission

example of Les’ son and Harry Potter
there’s not just “one” Harry Potter – there’s the movie version, the game version, the cover of the books version
the ways we transmit culture are happening through the games, which means we have to build a relationship between games and libraries

woman that studied apprenticeship in African tribal cultures
==> defined learning as “gaining membership in community (of practice)”
can’t learn if you don’t participate in the community
so if libraries are stirring up society in good ways, leading innovation, etc., then we have to think of libraries as fostering participation in communities

however, there are some issues with that:

the world of gaming is primarily one of open systems
– practices, environment are constantly changing (unlike the cycle of new editions of books)
– player directed content is important; narratives emerge from the actions of players
– emergent experience; you don’t know what’s going to happen until it happens
– unplanned interactions
– cultural conflict (Grand Theft Auto)
– can involve external worlds (your cellphone, GPS, play the game outside in the place – not a fixed, indoor location)

libraries depend on the stability of structure, content, and meaning; on control over quality (who assures the quality of information)
but that’s not easy to control in a world of openness
stewardship of enduring resources of culture; what’s enduring of this constantly changing melting pot?

The Primer: Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age
how do we use the library to open the world of The Primer?

How?
– could be a space of extended placeness (virtual spaces)
– multi-modal inter-acting webs of services
– immersive, persistent (web 2.0!!!!!)
– social, collective
– game models as metaphors

showed Guild Wars Information Environment
“dashboard” of information
showed same thing from World of Warcraft
can buy your own island in Second Life and leave information there

faculty at U of I bought an island in Second Life and they’re keeping information there and meeting there!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

showed video of a large, immersive “book” where the person moves their hand and the pages change (too cool!) – VR goggles
“the cave;” hand-controlled joystick that lets you walk into the book!!!
“a mobile information service” – readers’ advisory
literally walking over the page of a book
find a printing press, can make letters move onto the printing press
move into a painting of The Last Supper

an immersive, virtual environment with few clues for navigation

Gaming and Libraries: I model

– virtual place extensions (library services in other places)
– immersion in experience
– new venues for services
– competition, chance, simulation, vertigo (4 types/aspects of games) – are these things libraries need to think about exploring to let people experience innovation?

how do we create these new venues to exploit these new transaction costs?

mentions Apolyton University for Civ III

advocates getting away from thinking about libraries in any kind of a traditional way
promoting knowledge, access to knowledge, citizen participation – anywhere we don’t normally think to go

audience question: the expense of creating games like “the cave”
Les: around 400 “caves” and they’re not cheap; certainly a factor for why we can’t just jump into this
what could be interesting would be game mods; exploiting communities of modders to create the kind of things we want to create

audience question: are there studies that show our imagination changes in these immersive environments
Les: used the song “California Dreaming” as an analogy; he used to be able to imagine his own vision of the song, but now he just gets the music video
possibility for exploration and discovery; ways to trigger creativity

audience question: World Bank study about entrepeneurship – are gamers becoming producers?
Les: p2p file sharing studies show that very few people actual upload files, but a large number download; statistics are roughly the same for game mod producers versus consumers; crosses more than just the World Bank study

audience question: if looking for parallels to immersion model, as a musicologist, he was part of a trend where they got the original instruments and immersed themselves into the period; similar parallel – has really reshaped their thought to what went on during that time; but by revisiting the past, it’s a wonderful learning environment
Les: traveling in time to become part of a community; see GameTap.com for bringing back nostalgic games, TCM for old movies that no one may want to watch anymore – same thing

audience question: mentioned looking at museum game metaphors, what kinds of services would you like to see libraries provide for academics like yourself?
Les: will have to think on that

audience question: we do gaming at my library, and bridging the gap between haves and have-nots seems to be a big piece of this; all types come together for the gaming, though, and become a community; do you agree this might be a new role for libraries? a melting pot with gaming as a catalyst?
Les: certainly – we’ve seen this in the past with immigrants; for whatever reason (risk aversion, economics, etc.), libraries need to make this accessibility happen

audience question: Arizona state university is trying to innovate in this area, exploring gaming – trying to build a game to teach information literacies; want their catalog and databases to be more immersive and look more like gaming; how do we begin to put these ideas into actions? what kind of skills should we be looking for in IT people, recent graduates, etc.?
Les: it’s a constant struggle at the U of I library school because most students come in with wonderful experiences of the library and they look to understand how to duplicate that; teach me the way it’s done so I can do what I saw and loved; so people trying to prepare students for 20 years down the road is difficult; how do we envision the future and discover what skills will be needed? they teach general concepts (metadata, etc.), but we don’t think far enough ahead; need to have a lot more conversations

audience question: would avatars be useful in library tutorials? interested in the dashboard concept. do you feel that the complexity of the dashboard is what people find engaging?
Les: what you saw doesn’t come with the game – it’s complexity you build while playing; you can make it less or more complex, which is how people play the game
followup: could we have some chatter like that and have learning happen?
Les: might think of games and learning as “math blaster” (high uptake and then abandoned by games); simulation (flight simulator, stocks, etc.) where intent is to learn; both of these are explicit learning, but the third model is implicit – need information navigation skills, and tons of other skills, so you have to learn that from other people to play; better think about your theory of learning so you know what you’re going to build – is learning a side effect?

audience question: I’m a programmer by accident and a librarian by profession; writing a game is not easy, so it’s no accident that only 2% generate all of this information that the rest of the world consumes; if you look at the library historically, 500 years ago we cataloged information that the world is flat, so it seems like libraries should be immersed in gaming; now realizes that it’s not wrong to collect bad information
Les: “Science and Action” book opens with 3 vignettes; Tracy Kidder’s “Soul of a New Machine” – the place to live is when information is a mess, that’s where innovation happens

audience question: was thinking of a model for the library as an IT center for the village/city
Les: yes, many people have been thinking along those lines; we buy proprietary games for circulation, but not free software; wouldn’t it be great to be able to try out software from the library; when I’m interested in a new idea, I go to the library and check out books AND software; why don’t we do this? we don’t think of software as an information resource we catalog, and we don’t have the culture, means, or resources (or even skills), but it’s another possible avenue; some corporate libraries do this, but it’s a matter of thinking openly about resources you bring in; do this with game mods?

Kathryn: director of the LBJ library said we can’t predict the future, but we can shape the narrative; could these immersive experiences do that?