LibraryCampCamp has finished

It's Monday as I write this, after the weekend of #LibraryCampCamp, a new library learning festival. Thank you so much to the Information Literacy Group of CILIP for sponsoring it, and the attendees for their engagement and participation that made it work.

We made draft zines (on reading for pleasure and on play (they do need tweaking before they could be printed / distributed!), manually tweeted, chatted about lots of interesting and library related things, tried new teaching ideas out, played games, made fire, and explored the gorgeous site.

At some point soon I'll think about whether we run it again (we collected ideas for future events!) and what that event will look like... but for now I hope people enjoy seeing some of the content we created under the links above.

Look for another iteration of the festival in 2019 if we can manage to organise something...

Permission to play research interviews

I've been thinking about the idea of "permission to play" a lot recently, putting some of those early thoughts into a paper for the HEaD conference.

More recently I've been interviewing people who use play with adults about how they use play, trying to dig a little into how they enable people to play, or help to give "permission to play" to them. I've talked to a series of fascination people (15 of them?) and it's been brilliant hearing the amazing range of things happening and the different approaches that people take. It's also wonderful how generous they've been in offering up their time to talk about these things - the play community is full of great people.

As soon as possible I'll be transcribing, analysing, and generally puzzling over all the stuff that people told me about and trying to work it into a journal article (or a short book if I think I can justify it).  I'm sure I'll present it to at least one conference as well, though not 100% sure where (except perhaps Counterplay).

So thank you to everyone I interviewed and watch out for outputs at some point in 2019!

Moar books! 2nd Edition of The Mini Book of Teaching Tips for Librarians

Another book due out at the start of September!

I created the Mini Book of Teaching Tips for Librarians as an experiment - it 60+ pages of teaching tips and ideas, most of which on one page, in a mini A6 format.

This is the 2nd edition, expanded to 100 pages long. It's due out early September, but if pre-ordered will probably arrive before then!

ISBN: 978-1911500117 - only £9.95

I've just okayed the final proofs of "The librarians' book on teaching through games and play", so it'll be appearing on bibliographic databases over the next few weeks (already on Amazon!) to pre-order. Officially out on 3rd September, pre-orders should ship pretty much straight away!

At some point after publication I'll update the free / OA first draft version so it's available online as a PDF too.

New (early release) book, The librarians’ book on teaching through games and play

I've just finished the first draft of a new book, "The librarians’ book on teaching through games and play". It contains lots of materials aimed at librarians and information professionals to use games and play in their teaching.

As an experiment, I'm releasing it in a fairly raw* state. It still needs editing, plus some content is likely to be added over the next couple of months (and some edited out!). Sections may also move around to make more sense. BUT, the content is roughly complete. So take a look please! When the final version is ready it will be released as a print book (aiming for September 2018), but I'll also update the Open Access PDF too.

Please don't save and share this version elsewhere as it will be updated before too long, share the link to this blog, or the repository page instead so people will be able to access the most up to date version!

Full text, including updated files as they become available: https://osf.io/6xhrp/

* Note: This is the “early release” PDF version – it has not yet been edited and some content may still be missing. The final versions (print and PDF) will vary from this early version. 29th June 2018.

Permission to play and the HEAd conference

I went to the HEAd conference in Valencia last week and talked about "Permission to play in Higher Education". It's something I've been thinking about a lot recently, so I'll be doing more on this over the next year or so!

I did a run through beforehand, so if you want to know (roughly) what I said (minus the pass the parcel activity!), watch the video below. I've not done subtitles yet, but the slides are also available including notes, plus the full /formal written paper too.

Video on play and libraries

I did a short presentation today in the form of a video for a lovely bunch of library staff in Lithuania - I think they'll be showing it in June. I talk a bit about play, games, gamification, and some of the playful things I've done over the last few years. If anyone fancies watching it, here you go!


I'm pondering doing a series of short (few minutes long) videos using something a bit funkier than PowerPoint - I might have a go over the summer :-)