Auckland Libraries has just launched its first online game, City of Souls – an interactive zombie adventure for ages 14 and over.
Written by my colleague Danielle Carter using the free Twine game design software, City of Souls takes place in the same universe as both our Tupu Youth Library zombie siege and the recent Apocalypse Z interactive theatre event in Auckland’s CBD.
I alluded to my busy Auckland week in Friday’s post announcing my New Zealand Book Domino Challenge – for which the prize is cake, so if you are a Kiwi librarian and feeling adventurous, please join in.
Last Saturday saw Auckland Libraries take their services into the city’s comic stores for Free Comic Book Day, as part of my project to expand librarianship beyond the walls of individual institutions into the wider community.
I was then interviewed by the erudite and wonderfully geeky Emmet O’Cuana for his podcast The Momus Report, with the discussion ranging widely from the educational value of pop culture to the Kierkegaardian implications of the 1978 movie Star Crash.
This week also included a visit to Auckland Libraries from Tracie Mauro of Parkes, NSW – a daring and innovative librarian whose work appeared on Monday’s Library as Incubator Project. Tracie and I travelled the Far North District in New Zealand, exploring library services and programmes in rural areas far from my usual Auckland beat.
Yesterday I was quoted in the New Zealand Herald, in a satisfyingly positive article which recognises that the 21st century library is about so much more than just shelves…and I also took some time out for a trip to the Christchurch vs. Auckland roller derby match, which reminded me of this neat guest post on roller derby and librarianship from Melbourne’s Jordi Kerr.
If you’ll excuse me all, it’s Sunday evening, so I will now go for a lie down…
Lots of adventures to report this week, but it will all have to wait until Monday.
For now, I want to repeat a challenge I’ve set New Zealand’s librarians on Twitter.
A couple of years ago, the amazing Arizona retail chain Bookmans made a promotional video with an elaborate sequence of book dominoes.
I’m lucky enough to work for Auckland Libraries, the largest public library system in Australasia. Their strategy document Te Kauroa – Future Directions posits libraries as “your space of imagination, learning, and connection.” A public institution whose value in connecting us all to the sum total of human culture and knowledge goes beyond books on shelves into the realms of play, performance, and interactive digital outreach.
Bookmans, in Arizona, do wonderful community outreach work which puts many libraries around the world to shame, with some especially inspiring youth programmes. I interviewed Bookmans staff about their work last year.
That book domino video captures the blend of charm, creativity and outright cheek which I think lies at the heart of the best public libraries – so I challenged Kiwi librarians on Twitter to do as well as Bookmans, or go one further, and post the results on YouTube.
I’ll personally bake a cake for the first librarian in New Zealand who, in my judgment, matches or outdoes Bookmans’ stirling online effort.
“Libraries need to understand literacy in the broadest sense – exploring all of the senses in the way kids and teens relate to the diverse services they have to offer.”
Librarians in Auckland ventured into comic book stores to celebrate Star Wars Day and Free Comic Book Day by issuing memberships and loaning items from their collections. More soon, but in the meantime here’s Twitter coverage via Storify.
[View the story “Auckland Libraries goes mobile for Star Wars Day/Free Comic Book Day” on Storify]
A local politician in Marlborough, New Zealand, has suggested ditching the district’s libraries in favour of distributing e-readers to residents.
Although Kiwi librarians are attempting to push back with the Twitter hashtag #morethanbooks, responses have tended to focus on the fact that libraries use e-books too, and include other items like music in their collections as well.
The simple truth is, libraries aren’t about books on shelves, or compact discs, or even e-readers. Those are tools, mere means to an end.
Libraries are about helping the public to explore the world of knowledge and culture on their own terms. That might mean performance art in British libraries, bringing books to life through gaming in Toronto, or holding teen zombie battles in Auckland.
A library isn’t just a storage space for books on shelves – it’s also a place where musicians perform; where computer software is written; where teens get to wrestle a zombie-bitten police officer to the ground while debating the ethics of surviving a disaster scenario.
Yet one local politician has said “Why not replace libraries with e-readers?” and Kiwi librarians are on the defensive, letting their enemies set the terms of the debate. Read more
Last Friday in Tupu Youth Library, South Auckland, I ran an interactive live-action zombie event for teens on their school holidays.
The ‘survivors’, aged from 12 to 18, found themselves besieged in a meeting room while zombies feasted on hapless victims outside. Teens made barricades from furniture, used library resources to plan their escape from South Auckland, and faced special challenges including detecting potential zombie victims and even wrestling with a zombified police officer!
See the Tupu Zombies on New Zealand’s TV3 News and find more coverage at New Zealand’s Stuff.co.nz website.
This week you can find me talking about libraries, literacy, and immersive play on Corin Haines’ Library Chat podcast.
Corin is head of digital services with my current employers at Auckland Libraries in New Zealand, where I’ve been encouraging youth librarians to embrace play, performance, and forms of literacy which needn’t involve books on shelves.
One of the first things I did on arrival in Auckland is arrange for the library to purchase a number of Nerf guns – toys which shoot foam darts – with the aim of encouraging librarians to create activities which combined literacy with more boisterous forms of action and adventure.
The message I’ve been trying to get across is that roleplay and activities which immerse you in a story are just as valid for libraries as anything involving books on shelves.
UNESCO’s Missions of the Public Library don’t even use the word ‘book’ once – but they do mention providing access to cultural expressions of all performing arts, stimulating the imagination and creativity of children and young people, and providing opportunities for personal creative development – alongside reading!
Corin has been, to his credit, an early adopter of the Nerf gun in Auckland – that’s him in the final frame of this YouTube video, which shows staff getting to grips with the toys:
But Corin did ponder the moral implications in a blog post on gunplay and libraries at his own website, concerned that we were encouraging children to celebrate violence through this kind of activity.
This is the kind of problem that keeps a decent librarian awake at night – especially in the light of recent news from the US.
When creating Heroes and Villains activities for the school holidays, how scary should we dare to go?
Should we be allowing kids to identify with explicitly villainous figures? (Somewhere in my mum’s house there is a photo of me dressed as Darth Vader – but I alternated that costume with Spider-man pyjamas and my favourite hero outfit, Batman).
If kids use play to make sense of the world, do we have the right – or the power – to stop them thinking through violence and its consequences using play?
In the light of recent events, I’ll be following up on these questions after a pause for contemplation and acknowledgement of the tragedy in Massachusetts.
In the meantime, you can hear Corin and I chat about literacy and immersive play over at Library Chat.
Forgive the shameless self-promotion, but I’ve just been featured in the latest edition of Australian Books & Publishing, speaking about community outreach, daring to be different, and why rural Australia proved one of the most exciting places to create children’s and youth events for libraries.
It’s a subscriber-only link, but there is the option to sign up for a free trial.
You can read my profile piece in Australian Books & Publishing Online.
matt finch / mechanical dolphin 