Games for Libraries
hushed sensemaking games you can play around the library with your friends? chase each other’s visible AR trails of inquiry, escape the babel maze. each player covers a floor and rotates on to the next.
— Max Krieger (@maxkriegers) July 22, 2021
Pokémon Go to the stacks. but don’t get the books out of order.
“Babel club”
- The best book on a shelf/in an aisle
- The most esoteric / sci-fi sounding book
- The book with the most magical incantations
- Best phrase
- Best diagram
- Guess the title and subject of this book based on this page I'm showing you
- Guess the genre of a given shelf that you got blindfolded to go to
- Bring back something cool you have 30 minutes
Research directed prompts
Given only the dewey-floor mapping index (a brochure available in the lobby), find N books that answer:
- Assemble a list of essential knowledge for a hypothetical society (foundation/post apocalyptic) / “pick 5 books to rebuild society/on a tropical island”
- Researching to write a film with X premise
- Teaching an alien who speaks English how to pretend to be a human
Better results when you integrate multiple disciplines!
—-
- Coffee table/large format books are great to read together, wide viewing angle
- Do this stuff in groups/teams so you don’t unshelve too many books for the librarians to put back
- Focusing on textbooks might be interesting
- need to mark book slot locations to put the books back
Need to google “things to do at the library”