Big Games

I'm facinated by this idea of "big games" that will happen at ALA Annual, which I am not attending. I'm trying to find out more about this concept and how we could use it to make library instruction and orientations more interesting for students. Gregory Trefry apparently did a presentation on big games in libraries and how call numbers can be used as codes, librarians as referees, and scanners and computers used as tools. Unfortunately, the slides are posted but don't have any helpful information for people who weren't at the presentation. So far, the most useful site has been Come Out & Play. They organize a big festival in NYC, which happens to be this weekend, and many of the activities are outlined in detail on this site. Now if I can just figure out how they relate to libraries and how to make them educational!

We have been contacted by the college's development office to have a small amount of time during their annual retreat to introduce them to aspects of the library we want them to know about. Two of us in the library just met with the director this morning to discuss possibilities. We are thinking about some time of scavenger hunt, but we only have them for 30 minutes, including about 10 minutes in the archives. I believe our theme will be "libraries aren't what they used to be," or something like that. It will focus on the modern library. We're trying to focus on what we think alumni and donors would be interested in, and that is difficult.

I'm going to further explore this idea of big games and see if we can find creative ideas to make this fun and to make other educational events for students fun... fun for us and for them!