The Librarian's Guide to Gaming:

An Online Toolkit for Building Gaming

HISTORY

TOOLS AND RESOURCES

BEST PRACTICES

CALENDAR

"Embrace beta programs! Everything we did was a first-time experiment or experience for us."

~Dwight McInvaill,
Georgetown Public Library
Georgetown, SC

Digital Arts Workshops

Carvers Bay Branch Library, Carvers Bay

The Digital Arts Workshops are an opportunity for Carvers Bay Middle School students to create music, snap digital photos, develop computer graphics, and shoot and edit video.

The goals of the program are to encourage teens to register for library cards, check out books, attend cultural programs, be considerate of other library patrons and behave and dress appropriately for a public setting, while enjoying interactive video games, producing works of digital art, film, and music, and designing videogames.

Marketing

The program is promoted through posters and through outreach visits to the local middle school; getting teachers to help target high quality candidates was very useful.

Running the Program

Participants have the chance to earn Wal-Mart gift cards at the following rate: $5 for attending a class, $5 for doing work, and $5 for checking out a library item (book, video, magazine, etc.) every weekend. The program stretches over 12 weekends, allowing each young person to potentially accumulate up to $390 in gift coupons. Additionally, A 30GB iPod incentive was awarded for achieving 100% of objectives.

Participants are required to:

Have a library card in good standing.
Attend classes regularly.
Behave appropriately.
Pay attention to the instructor.
Produce good work.
Check out library materials weekly.

A permission slip requires parents to agree to provide support by providing regular transportation for their children, encouraging their children to do well, ensuring that the kids get to spend their Wal-Mart gift card on themselves, making sure that students use the library materials that they check out weekly, and allowing the Georgetown County Library and the Georgetown County Cultural Council for the Arts to utilize images of these children and any content produced by these kids or the instructor in publicity and reports related to the project.

Literacy Connections

There was reading and writing involved in many aspects of the program. Participants were encouraged and rewarded for checking out library materials on a weekly basis. This program supporting reading through the circulation of printed materials. The educational workshops supported visual, media, and technology literacy skills. Participants were reading, evaluating, and processing text and visual information in order to construct new ideas and understanding. This multimodule analysis resulted in participants creating their own products by designing videogames.

Impact

The digital arts experience project has been 50% male and 50% female. 25 middle school students participate every 6 months in 12-week digital arts classes, and 10-20 youth learn how to design videogames in each session.

Funding

Most funding came from grants, including the Frances P. Bunnelle Foundation. Over three years, Carvers Bay has spent $200,000, and in 2008, received $600,000 to expand the program countywide. The library has partnered with the high school, middle school, youth services organization, and the cultural council at various stages of this project.