Abstract

In this session I will share the experience of developing a library journaling game designed to encourage serendipitous encounters with books not normally viewed or used by our library users. The books chosen, deliberately aimed to include experiences, practices and issues that stretched the players’ experiences and knowledge, whilst simultaneously encouraging critical reflections on connections between people, places and cultural values. The game used a creative writing approach, using the unexpected material and coincidences between narratives, to empathetically design characters who were unlike their authors.

Session and activities

My paper will unpack a number of the key research aims undertaken in the development of the library journaling game.  Starting from an action research process that situates the need to improve the diversity of material being accessed by our users, following a major weeding project, and then moving to think about themes of fun, play and games as modes of learning.  Also then considering these open playful approaches to accessing library resources for creative research in line with debates around citational justice.

Details of this material is available on my blog, developed as part of my PgCert: David Smith Teaching Librarian.

In discussion I hope the conference participants will join me in thinking around the following questions (and of course many others):

• How do we find library resources for creative outcomes, when we don’t always know what books or resources might be useful for our work?
• Can games provide the rules that allow both critical thinking and fun playful activity to coexist?
• Why is academia afraid of the idea of fun?
• Can trying to describe a character unlike yourself help activate a form of empathy that would normally be buried under the conditions of description and tabulation?