Parent of gamer asks his son to honor the Geneva Conventions – Boing Boing
Last week, I had lunch with my friend, Hugh Spencer, a writer and designer of museum and public educational exhibitions. He told me an amazing story about his son and games, and I asked him to write it up for Boing Boing:
[...]

Mass Effect – Video Games – New York Times

In an interview on Friday, Ms. Lawrence said that since the controversy over her remarks erupted she had watched someone play the game for about two and a half hours. “I recognize that I misspoke,” she said. “I really regret saying that, and now that I’ve [...]

LibrarianInBlack: Getting staff to understand libraries and Second Life

Kathryn Greenhill has created a fabulous presentation, available on Slideshare, about the role of libraries and librarians in the Second Life online game environment. Greenhill does a great job of explaining what Second Life is and how libraries can choose to fit in to this overall [...]

Gaming in the Library
Much is happening in the world of gaming right now, and it’s not just a lot of teenage boys sitting in the basement staring at a screen for hours on end. No, gaming has tremendous potential for libraries to reach out to new users, offer new services, and help complement efforts in [...]

Is Second Life a brave new world? – 05 Mar 2007 – IT Week

You may recall the early days of the web: geeks ruled and it was full of nonsense. Anyone trying to engage with that world found it strange and intimidating. It contained a lot of good stuff, but it wasn’t easy to [...]

In The Truth About Violent Youth and Video Games – Game Revolution, Duke Ferris did research at the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Statistics and found that violence among youth has actually dropped since the advent of video games. According to his stats, in 2004 youth homicide was at the lowest levels ever recorded. [...]

Pop Goes the Library: Good News on Gaming
Very interesting links.

Boing Boing: Gamers are as good as bilinguals at solving mental problems
Gamers are as good as bilinguals at solving mental problems Video gamers may have the same mental agility as bilingual people — an ability to swap out one task and bring another online quickly, which is useful in multitasking and is linked to [...]

COMM 3344-1 :: Games for the web
Below, you will find term papers written by undergraduate students in the class “Games for the Web: Ethnography of Massively Multiplayer On-line Games.”
These students used a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods to explore sociological issues associated with massively multiplayer virtual worlds. Each student in the class [...]

The Shifted Librarian: What I Took Away from the GLS Conference

The most obvious, glaring thing is that librarians (in general) have absolutely no clue about what is going on in this area. Academia is only now starting to do more than just study it, but it’s not even on our radar. I’ve noted before that [...]

Jenny is posting a lot of notes. Not as good as being there but they’re worth reading ;->.

The Shifted Librarian: GLS01: Henry Jenkins on Pop Culture and Learning
The Shifted Librarian: GLS02: James Paul Gee on New Paradigms for Learning
The Shifted Librarian: GLS03: Second Life and User Creation

The Shifted Librarian: GLS04: Games, Learning, & Identity

The Shifted [...]

In an attempt to get my unread list in mt aggregator down to something managable, I present the inevitable link list (annotated because some librarians are born, not made).

ALA | Patriot Act Extension Debated at Closed Congressional Meeting

In a closed-door meeting May 26, the Senate Intelligence Committee failed to agree on a proposal that would [...]

Library Journal – Meet the Gamers

Why pay attention to games? For starters, games are the “medium of choice” for many Millennials, with broad participation among the 30 and under population. Although part of a web of new media, technology, and social shifts, games are the quintessential site for examining these changes. Game cultures feature participation [...]

librarian.net:way to make a good impression, librarians!

No seriously. Found this blog post from Fil, a member of the “video game community” talking about meeting some librarians at a symposium about the future of libraries.

I hate not having the ability to give items the attention they deserve.

Yes I read other sites, I’m just cleaning out some of my drafts file. There are a couple of weeks left before I go back to work. I’m still waiting for my eye to get to where I can get new glasses.
Boing Boing: Game developers’ amazing rants on the state of the industry

You have [...]

The Shifted Librarian: Gaming Google Group
Come and chat. Gamers are a loyal, passionate group who appreciate good service.

PLA Blog – Saturday, January 15, 2005
When the Santa Monica Public Library held a LAN party (linked 30 computers together so kids playing the game Counterstrike could play against one another), over 60 teens lined up outside the library an hour before the program began, eager to play

That would be so cool. Something most people [...]

Weird, I know, but true. I’ve been playing World of Warcraft since just after Thanksgiving. I got it because it looked like fun and because a couple of friends of mine had played in the beta test and were planning on getting it.
All of my friends have left town in the last couple of [...]