By Teresa Koltzenburg |

"It is pretty much morally unimpeachable," explained Neiburger to the approximately 130 symposium participants. "It's not something that people can make a big complaint about. [In fact], we had one comment from a parent—last season when we had a [Dance Dance Revolution] tournament—he came up to me and said, 'Do you know this is'—this was in the middle of summer—'the first time [my son] has been out of bed before eleven all summer? He got himself up and showered, and to the LIBRARY, at eleven a.m. on a weekday during the summer. Thank you—for getting him out of bed this summer!'"
Bibliobloggers Jenny Levine (The Shifted Librarian) and Chad Haefele (Hidden Peanuts) provide a run-down of the symposium's sessions on their individual blogs. (The Technorati tag is: GaminginLibraries2005).
Jenny's rundown includes sessions on:Chad's coverage of the opening keynote on December 5, 2005, starts here. The rest of his blogging on the symposium is filed/tagged on his blog under "gaming."
Many of the GLL presenters provided pointers as to what's out there in terms of 'literature' on the gaming and literacy topic—so here's a list of selected suggestions.
From OCLC's George Needham (whose presentation Michael covered here) includes:
Finally, an appropriate shout out to Jenny and those at MLS for having the vision to put together such an event and provide participants with incontrovertible evidence that gaming is a service helping the library move full force into the future. Michael says it best:
Technorati Tag: GaminginLibraries2005

- "If you don't offer them something that has value to them now, you're going to be irrelevant to them for the rest of their lives. It's not a risk we can afford to take."—Eli Neiburger, MLS Symposium on Gaming, Learning, and Libraries, December 6, 2005, Chicago, IL

"It is pretty much morally unimpeachable," explained Neiburger to the approximately 130 symposium participants. "It's not something that people can make a big complaint about. [In fact], we had one comment from a parent—last season when we had a [Dance Dance Revolution] tournament—he came up to me and said, 'Do you know this is'—this was in the middle of summer—'the first time [my son] has been out of bed before eleven all summer? He got himself up and showered, and to the LIBRARY, at eleven a.m. on a weekday during the summer. Thank you—for getting him out of bed this summer!'"
Bibliobloggers Jenny Levine (The Shifted Librarian) and Chad Haefele (Hidden Peanuts) provide a run-down of the symposium's sessions on their individual blogs. (The Technorati tag is: GaminginLibraries2005).

Many of the GLL presenters provided pointers as to what's out there in terms of 'literature' on the gaming and literacy topic—so here's a list of selected suggestions.
From OCLC's George Needham (whose presentation Michael covered here) includes:
- Stephen Abram and Judy Luther: "Born with Chip" (Library Journal, May 2004);
- John Beck & Mitchell Wade: Got Game: How the Gamer Generation Is Reshaping Business Forever (Harvard Business School Press, 2004); and
- Gaming and the Significance for Information Literacy (Video of OCLC Symposium at ALA Midwinter 2005).
- James Paul Gee: What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy (Palgrave MacMillian, 2004).
- Neil Howe & William Strauss: Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation (Vintage, 2000).
- Set Game: Daily Puzzle (www.setgame.com): Goal is to locate six sets of three from the sixteen cells by selecting cells to create a set;
- Bejeweled (www.shockwave.com/sw/content/bejeweled2): Goal is to rotate pieces up-to-down to line up at least three in a row;
- Chicktionary (www.shockwave.com/sw/content/chicktionary): Set a goal for a minimum number of words to create from the scrambled letters; and
- Runescape (www.runescape.com): Create a character and try the tutorial.
Finally, an appropriate shout out to Jenny and those at MLS for having the vision to put together such an event and provide participants with incontrovertible evidence that gaming is a service helping the library move full force into the future. Michael says it best:
- ...We should all thank Jenny Levine for having the foresight and brilliance to make this happen. She and her colleagues at the MLS (Kathryn and others) have created a very special moment in time that will define what happens next for gaming in libraries. The folks assembled here as speakers are at the top of their games and the folks listening and taking notes and blogging have a mountain of evidence and techniques to go forward.
Readers, pay close attention to gaming and libraries. The time has come.
—Michael Stephens ("On Gaming, Libraries, Librarians & the Future," Tame the Web Blog)
Technorati Tag: GaminginLibraries2005