Every Library Needs a Gaming Librarian!

Rewriting job descriptions? Looking at your organizational chart? Offering gaming in your library? Don’t miss:

http://ulatmac.wordpress.com/2006/09/18/8/

You see, there’s this guy whose name is Robert Gagne and he’s considered one of the “stars” of instructional design. Back in 1965 he published something called The Conditions of Learning. In it created a nine step process. This process has become known in the world of education as “Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction”. They are:

Gain the learner’s attention

Inform learners of objectives

Stimulate recall of prior learning

Present the content

Provide learning guidance

Elicit performance (practice)

Assess performance

Enhance retention and transfer to the job.

World of Warcraft does all of these. Not only does it do them, it does them well! It does it in an attractive setting; uses “cool technology”; encourages peer teaching and mentoring; and – more importantly – it’s just plain fun.

Jeff Trzeciak, McMaster University Librarian, spells out his desire to have a librarian that understands gaming and the implications in how gamers interact with systems. Couldn’t libraries have similar affordances? he asks some enticing questions:

What if we could harness the technology behind World of Warcraft for use in libraries? What if we could create library systems that were more like World of Warcraft and less like Pong? Have we even created the Pong version yet?

I want a gaming librarian!

What about your library? Are you game?