ARLIS/NA 54th Annual Conference

We are living in the ludic century: an era of gamification, participatory culture, and play. Whether aware of it or not, most people engage with some kind of game – or gamified experience – every day. Video games have exceeded film and television as the most popular form of media, while the popularity of tabletop games – including role-playing games – is surging. How are information workers rising to meet the new standards for critical thinking and information literacy required to foster informed participants of these thriving and ever-present media? How can gamification tactics and participatory culture be harnessed to disrupt and expand information literacy services? How can game collections be curated and activated as new sites of research for art scholarship? Art and design libraries specifically hold a unique position of responsibility in this field as many of their users not only play - but intend to create - games. How are libraries stepping up to shape the future of this field? Hear from three information workers who have been spearheading innovative game collections, services, and research in their libraries.

The first presentation, Videoludic Literacies: How The SVA Libraries are Shaping the Future of Video Games, recounts the creation of a Retro Game Lounge at the School of Visual Arts, which marked the latest milestone in the continued development of the SVA Libraries' branch, Library West – a non-traditional library hub. This presentation will discuss how The Retro Game Lounge and its associated collections were conceived, planned, and built, with a focus on both the practical aspects and how it further realizes the communal, multimedia, and multimodal ethos of Library West.

The second presentation, LARPing in the Library: Activating Live Action Research Protocol, examines a collaboration between a librarian and art professor from Southern Methodist University who teamed up to create a research assignment that had students LARPing in the library. Students used various physical resources in the library to create a symbol and lore for their guild. This multi-session exercise disrupted students’ expectation that research in an academic setting would mirror their everyday searching behaviors.

The third presentation, "I've Experiments to Run, There is Research to be Done": The State of Video Game Collections in Academic Art Libraries addresses how academic art libraries are shaping the future of video game scholarship within the art history discipline – by virtue of what they deem relevant for entry into their collections. By identifying video game materials in the collections of research-focused academic art libraries, this presentation outlines which aspects of art historical video game research are currently supported, and which aspects of gaming's art culture are missing. Special attention is given to counterculture game creation including rom hacks and hardware mods as they have been largely absent from video game exhibitions.