INNOLIB

Floating Collection : Sarasota, FL

Fruitville Library Open Books (Via SRQPIX)

My mom, who is super cool, works at the Fruitville Public Library within the Sarasota FL County Library system. While chatting on gmail she told me about the new Floating Collection project they launched in their library system. I had never heard of a Floating Collection and found the presentation and information they presented to the Florida Library Association interesting.

The Staff Intro Document (available here) outlines the definition and princple advantages of a Floating Collection :

The concept of floating collections relates to the idea of one system, one collection. Materials “float” freely among system libraries rather than being “owned” by a specific location. When a patron returns a circulating item, it is shelved at the location where it was returned instead of being sent back to the location from which it was checked out. Upon check in, the location is automatically updated in the library catalog to show where it now resides.
In essence, this concept of materials management eliminates the shipping and delivery of the selected floating collection. Libraries that have implemented floating collections have seen a significant decrease in
materials being shipped between libraries.

For patrons, this means that materials will be immediately ready for check out or to place holds on as they will no longer be “in transit” to the home library. In addition patrons have new materials to browse in their neighborhood branch.

The concept is fairly simple with an extremely powerful outcome. The Library System is able to keep materials in circulation much faster, refresh the materials available so the selection is always interesting for patrons and reduce costs incurred by constantly shipping items. What I find most interesting about a floating collection is that it taps the hive mind of the community. If a particular library circulates more books and has higher amount of traffic, this library will naturally grow to best serve its community. The community of Sarasota is very diverse with each branch serving a very different group. The hive mind may be further exploited when patrons of a particular branch/community begin to obtain, and continually check out, works from the circulation that have sparked interest within the community.

It seems that the Floating Collection is the first step towards USER GENERATED LIBRARIES and that is something I find absolutely inspiring. By organizing and uniting the entire collection of the Sarasota Library System these librarians will be able to leverage their materials to best serve the entire community.

Reading Garden Fruitville Public Library (Via Sasota County Library)

Course on Game Theory

Alan Feng’s lecture on the theory of war as conducted in Starcraft is part Sun Tzu, part Von Clausewitz, part Leibniz: “This course will go in-depth in the theory of how war is conducted within the confines of the game Starcraft. There will be lecture on various aspects of the game, from the viewpoint of pure theory to the more computational aspects of how exactly battles are conducted. Calculus and Differential Equations are highly recommended for full understanding of the course.”

http://academicearth.org/lectures/introduction-starcraft

Gaming in Libraries : Art House Video Games

A lot of people in class seemed to have an interest in the future of gaming in libraries. I’ve recently been kicking around some ideas on mainting and adding gaming in libraries. I have yet to see many librarians explore this dimension of video game archiving.  

Art House Video Games

The first hurdle one faces is the popular opinion many have of video games. An example of this is the opinion is found in film critic Roger Ebert, “I am prepared to believe that video games can be elegant, subtle, sophisticated, challenging and visually wonderful. But I believe the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art.” (Cited from here). This statement is the same as Goldywn’s the medium itself will objectively prevent the creation art. In addition to Ebert’s objective statement about the nature of a medium he continues his argument, “But for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic.” This statement seems in direction opposition to recent studies expounding the healthy mental benefits of gaming. Works such as Got Game and a forthcoming article in Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience about poor children and brain activity outline the undeniable impotence of video games in raising brain activity and cognizance.

The article states, “ It’s not just that these kids are poor and more likely to have health problems, but they might actually not be getting full brain development from the stressful and relatively impoverished environment associated with low socioeconomic status: fewer books, less reading, fewer games, fewer visits to museums.” These effects can be amended by playing stimulating video games. For a librarian this obviously points to the importance of collecting popular video games but many have overlooked the blossoming development of independent games. A pioneer in this developing field is Jason Roher. Roher’s came into the national spotlight with his game Passage. Passage contains no fighting, car stealing, or other platitudes associated with the modern gaming industry. The game is about life’s journey and contains a lengthy artist statement, “Of course, it’s a game, not a painting or a film, so the choices that you make as the player are crucial. There’s no “right” way to play Passage, just as there’s no right way to interpret it. However, I had specific intentions for the various mechanics and features that I included. You’ve probably figured most of these out already, but I wanted to put forth a few explanations for anyone who is interested. The “long” screen, of course, represents a lifetime. As you age in the game, your character moves closer and closer to the right edge of the screen. Upon reaching that edge, your character dies.”

Passage, and other independent video games, is more closely related to an Ingmar Bergman film than Grand Theft Auto or Dance Dance Revolution. Librarians should be aware of independently released video games. Most art house games are currently released open source and for free. Many of these games could be saved on a small flash drive, or CD, which should include the artist’s statements. This would aide in preserving the human record, especially pioneer material within this blossoming movement. The development of video games as a valid (“high art”) will develop. We, as librarians, should collect and maintain these works for the human record allowing following generations to look back at the history, playing, and researching this valuable art form.

Image from Passage

Link to Jason’s website where you can download all of his games : http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/

Blog that often covers free / open source / independent games :

http://playthisthing.com/