I'm going to go ahead and get our recording started here.  Lauren Hays comes to us from the MidAmerica Nazarene University, she is an instructional and research librarian and also the codirector of the center for games and learning.  And we'll hear more about that shortly.  And also joining her is Kate McNair from the Johnson County Library, she is the team services coordinating librarian, and she serves on the YALSA board of directors.  Thank you to both of you for all your great work, and welcome to our web junction webinar, and I'm going to go ahead and have Kate get us started.  Welcome, Kate.  No, sorry, Lauren is going to get us started.
>> Thank you, Jennifer.  Kate and I are very excited to share this topic with all of you.  We've been working together for the past couple years.  Attendees should be able to use the annotation tool for us to get a quick poll.
>> I'm going to orient folks to those tools as soon as I give you the access, you should see everyone, an -- a marker on the top left corner of your screw.  Go ahead and click on that  marker, it's over in the top left corner.  And you'll see the annotation menu, annotation tools menu, open on the left side of your screen.  Once you go to the square in the middle of that option, about halfway down the menu, you can open up that little subwindow and go down to the check mark, and click on that check mark and this is a perfect slide for you to practice.  So go ahead and arm yourselves with those check marks.  Excellent.  Great to see folks finding those.  All right.  I think you've got the idea.  I'm going to pass the ball back over to Lauren, and let her move us forward.  I'll ask you, hold your check marks for a moment so we can get over to our slide and Lauren will orient you to that.  Hold your check marks.
>> Okay.  So if you could place on this slide your check mark, for each of those questions, that will help Kate and I get a sense of the audience.  The first question is, have you played a tabletop game?  The second question is, have you used the tabletop game at the library, and the third scwerks does your library circulate games?  It looks like we're all over the board here.  At least that's what I'm seeing.  I'll give you a little bit longer to keep filling that out.  I see check marks keep coming up.  Thanks so much, it looks like the majority don't circulate games, but some do.  A lot of times a lot of you have used tabletop games at your loi bring.  But not yet, so -- you still want to, and then a lot of you do play tabletop games.  Excellent.  Okay.  Thanks for that, that always helps me, I like to know my audience.  As we started thinking about tabletop games, I think it is important to first know the variety of games.  And so this acronyms was created by Scott Nicholson in his book "everyone plays at the library," this is a great book for starting a game program at your library, especially for public  libraries.  I really recommend that you read it if you adolescent yet -- haven't yet.  This is helpful to keep the different types of games in mind when making purchasing decisions.  It also helps me categorize games, what I'm considering what will be best in a different setting.  The name for each classification type, I think it's pretty descriptive, and therefore fairly  self-explanatory.  When I first came across this acronym, it helps me to see the range of games I could add to a game collection.  As you can see, there are five different types of games, strategy games, such as Monopoly or Risk, so a strategy should be used to win the game.  Narrative games, such as Dungeons & Dragons and the -- the game takes place in a story.  Action games, like Jenga or kick ball, where players have to manipulate pieces and move their own bodies.  Knowledge games, such as Trivial Pursuit or Scrabble, where players must know information.  And then social games, such as dictionary or Apples to Apples.  And these games are meant for fun and playing with friends.  And the citation for that book I mentioned is also on this slide, for those of you who might want to take note of it.  Let's talk some about 21st century skills.  Since this is a lot of the work that I have done in my center for games and learning, which I will say was actually funded in 2014 with a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.  And so what we have done is aligned a lot of our games with 21st century skills.  And so these skills have been identified as necessary for success in the 21st century.  And you can see on there the slide, the different skills, I'm going to focus in on the top four Cs of critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity, and thanks Jennifer, she's posting a link to the P-21 website in the chat for all of you that links out to more information on 21st century skills.  Of course these skills have always been important, but these skills are being promoted by many institutions, organizations, and schools as critical.  According to the P-21 partnership for 21st century learning, learning and innovation skills increasingly are being recognized as the skills that separate students who are prepared for complex life and work environments in the 21st  century, and those who are not.  A focus on creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration is essential to prepare students for the future.  So as I've already said, in my work, I primarily align games with those four Cs.  And I'll be focusing on those Cs a little bit more in the presentation.  However, there are certainly other skills, and the Imls has created a tool kit that lists all of the 21st century skills, and then of course you could also go to the website that Jennifer has posted there for you to discover more about the skills.  You might be thinking, why do this?  Why link games to 21st century skills?  And for me in my work, with the center for games and learning, it's important to align games with these skills for the following reasons.  One, align fun with a purpose.  I think fun can just be fun, but when you're writing a grant or wanting to work with community partners or trying to get administrative buy-in, sometimes fun needs to be purposeful.  Additionally, tabletop games aim to entertain, but they can do so with helpful, purposeful, and thoughtful ways.  Second, making a connection between games and 21st century skills can create an easier connection to K-12 schools.  K-12 educators have been a supportive audience for some of the work that Kate and I have both done, and when we mention 21st century skills, K-12 features immediately make the connection that games can be useful in their classroom.  And making those partnerships is  really important, especially for those of us who work at smaller libraries.  I am at a University, but we have three librarians, so we're pretty small staff for a University, and having partnerships helps us build connections and be able to expand our work.  Third, another reason to align games with 21st century skills is that this alignment helped to make the case that the games can be used into the common core curriculum, tying that back to K-12 education.  Four, creating an alignment between 21st century skills and tabletop games to help connect us to all sorts of libraries in the region.  And connecting 21st century skills and games gives us something concrete to focus on when discussing the benefit of games, and of course lastly, players of tabletop games do use 21st century skills, in fact, tabletop games require that players use these 21st century skills in order to succeed.  So let's look at some specific examples of games and how you could potentially align games with a 21st century skill.  And so this first one, the creativity example, is it is Dixit, I'm going to talk about a few games and explain them, and I have modified what I'm going to say from the web site boardgames -- some of this isn't all my language specifically.  This game has been a huge hit with all of the teachers that I've worked with.  Dixit is similar to Apples to Apples, if you have ever played that game.  And this game is where each player must caption images and other players guess what caption goes with what picture.  It's a lot of fun, I see some people in the chat talking about it.  It's a lot of fun, and you have to be creative as you're creating those captions in order to describe the picture, but not make it so obvious that everyone will be able to guess what caption goes with what image right away.  So a communication example, Pandemic is a cooperative game, and a cooperative game, if you're not familiar with that term, is where all players play together against the game.  In this game, each player is a disease fighting specialist, trying to stop diseases from spreading.  On each turn, a player can use up to four actions to travel between cities, treat infected populouses, discover a cure, or build a research station to study a cure.  A deck of cards provides players with these abilities, but sprinkled throughout the deck are epidemics.  A second separate deck of cards controls the normal spread of the diseases.  Each player takes on a unique roll within the team and within the game.  Keeping their own role in mind, players must play in their tragedy to mesh with the other players' strengths in order to conquer the diseases.  This occurs through discussion with fellow  players, determine what is the best action to take during each player's turn.  For example, the operations expert can build research stations, which are needed to find cures, and allow for greater mobility between cities.  The scientists need only four cards of a particular disease to cure it instead of the normal five.  But the disease is spread quickly as cards are turned over throughout the game.  And if one or more disease spreads beyond recovery or too much time elapses, the players all lose.  However, if they cure the four diseases, they win.  So you can see that this could be a good example to teach communication, I see somebody in the chat mentioned forbidden island as another good option for a cooperative game, and I completely agree.  Forbidden island and Pandemic are created by the same game designer, so forbidden island is a little more accessible if you've never played a cooperative game before.  And I just am going to say forbidden desert is another example along the same line that would be a good example as well.  Forbidden island is my next slide, so you're all on the right track with that.  That's fantastic.  So I do, as I already said, believe that forbidden island is a little more accessible than Pandemic.  I think it's easier to play, but personally I really like Pandemic.  As mentioned earlier, it's important to note how many games align with multiple 21st century skills, and then players in both forbidden island and Pandemic use communication skills as well as collaboration skills.  In forbidden island, players take turns moving their pawns around the island, which is built by arranging tiles.  As the game progresses, more and more island tiles sink by being turned over and removed from play.  Players use strategies to keep the island from sinking while trying to collect treasures and items as the water level rises, it gets more difficult and players often make sacrifices, so you can see how there would need to be discussion as players must collaborate to retrieve the treasures before the island sinks.  And then a critical thinking example, so ticket to ride is a popular game and one I'm guessing you a lot of are probably familiar with.  In fact, many people call it a gateway game, and what I mean by gateway, it's a
game that's often one of the first games people play that is not a standard chance-based game such as Monopoly -- and it's currently having a renaissance.  Ticket to ride, players collect cards of various types of train cards, they then use to claim railway routes.  The longer the route the more points, additional points come to those who fulfill destination tickets, goal cards that connect distant cities.  Points can also be earned by the player who builds the longest continuous route.  Critical thinking skills must be used to determine what decisions to make at the time.  For example, players must ask themselves should I claim my destination now, or wait to build a longer route?  Should I try to focus my route along the eastern seaboard or expand farther west?  So I am now going to turn it over to Kate to start talking specifically about some public library programs.
>> -- which I love being able to -- thanks for unmuting me.  It looks like everybody is chatting in the chat box about all the games they play.  I'm going to talk about some of the library programs we could, both in the library and outside of the library.  While I talk about  examples, feel free to throw your ideas and suggestion and experiences into the chat box as well.  So one of the great things about tabletop games is that they've been proven to be successful, libraries of all sizes, serving lots of different types of communities,  from  rural, to urban, and they span a huge number of age groups.  So we here at the Johnson County Library have a tabletop game at our Antioch location, which is a typical game night.  It's all ages, and we host one once a month, and we have a growing collection of games for the program.  They don't circulate in the library, they're only available to staff for programming needs.  And we'll talk about that a little bit later.  When we originally started the program, I think almost two years ago, most of the games were actually provided by staff members.  They just brought from their home collection for that night, which is an easy way to pilot a program, but it's not the way that we like to make a program sustainable.  I would feel bad if someone -- pieces went missing, so after we tried it out for a couple months and there was community  buy-in and excitement, we put some money towards buying collections for the game, and we've been building it over the last two years.  In the evening when the program happens, we set up the room with tables, we have games on display, we have at least two staff members there.  And it's largely a drop-in program, patrons can come at any time during the evening, but most of our regulars know they need to arrive early or right at the beginning of the program because then they have the most time to play their games, and since we let them for the most part pick what games they want to play, they get to pick their favorite ones if they're there before everybody else.  Every once in a while we have a new game we want to highlight or introduce people to, so we'll already have that ready and set up before people get in the room.  But we always have staff there that are ready to explain the game play, we might do some gamers advisory and make game suggestions for someone who wants to try something new.  We don't have a specific focus on the 21st century skills that Lauren was talking about, like through asking debriefing questions or with an appointed purpose, but we do encourage patrons to meet new people, try new things, and explore what new skills they can develop.  And this program has built over the last two years some really long-lasting relationships between staff and our patrons, and between patrons themselves.  But we haven't always been successful with our gaming program.  I wanted to point out one successful example, and then I want to tell you about one failure and missteps you can avoid.  Based on the success of our tabletop game night, we wanted to expand this program to target just teens over the summer.  I don't know what your libraries are like, but if you're from a public library like ours, summers are a little crazy.  Everybody is out of school, staff are stressed out, the buildings are packed full, we're short on time and energy, and so staff really want easy programs that they can put on without having to think too much.  So they asked for a tabletop game check that we could use to work with teams.  So we talked with lawrch, we worked with our staff who run the tabletop game night, and we put together this gaming Kitt of about 10 different games with modified directions that we sent out to staff members, and the idea was that you could set this stuff out in the library and encourage teams to play witness.  And we would have a tabletop week at each location.  It turns out this was not a great way to host this.  So first, most games take more than one player, so at the with had these sitting out and only one team showed up, they had to either just wait until somebody else came, or maybe go around the library asking for someone to play a game with them, or a staff member had to take time out of their schedule to sit down and play the game.  And second, because there was no knowledgeable staff there in the room, they had to trouble-shoot any of the problems they came across trying to learn to play the game.  So we found out that engagement was low when there was no staff in the room that are there drawing people in, there's no exact time frame for the activity.  So we scrapped the idea.  So although games may seem like a really easy kind of set and it forget it type program, to get the most out of them that you can, you need staff there in the room, and you need to treat it like an actual program, not a drop-in.
I also won't dive into my last example too deeply, because it's not something I'm super familiar with, but there are a lot of other libraries that host role-playing game nights.  If you're one of those libraries and you want to post your experience in the chat box, we would love to read about that.  The ones I've experienced are mostly for teens, I think this is probably presumably because adults have their own spaces to host game nights on their own.  But they've been really successful, especially when you talk about learning 21st century skills.  So the trails west branch of the Kansas city public library, which is another system in our metro  area, host as popular Dungeons & Dragons group for teens, and the librarians who run that group have seen their teams develop communication collaboration problem solving and leadership  skills.  And it's been really striking, in fact last year they hosted a conference where the teens ran their own panel about what their experience was like, learning it at the library and teaching it to others.  The group was originally started by staff members who were the dungeon masters and were experienced in playing D &d, they then taught the teens how to play, and now teens are the dungeon masters who welcome new teens into the group and teach them how to play, so it's a beautiful cycle that keeps moving through.  We've also begun to incorporate games into other parts of the library.  So we -- if you're looking for a small way to invite tabletop games into your library program, this is an easy way to jump in.  So our library has teen advisory groups at a couple different locations, and if you work with teens, I highly suggest having a group of teens that can help you develop programs and ideas for the library.  But often times they're coming from different schools, they may not know each other or have met before, we often get home schoolers who participate in the program, and might not have been socializing at a local public school.  And so we like to use tabletop games, especially simple and short games, as ice breakers for a meeting.  So bring your own book is one that we use all the time, because we have books everywhere in the library, so it's handy to use.  It's another game like Apples to Apples, where winners get to select their favorite quote out of a book and answer to one of the prompts on the bottom.  And that's a great way to get teens to know each thoamplet we also use creative tools, like Dixit and story queue, and this was at the suggestion for the center for games and learning.  I'm a bit after rule follower, so I'm in the library, that's kind of a given, but it took me -- telling me, you don't have to fought rules inside the games, you can modify them.  Now we use these tools like Dixit, we'll ignore the tools but we'll hand out cards and we'll use them as story starters or we'll ask teams to put them in a specific order and try to tell a story to connect them, especially in connection with some of our more creative programs, like teen literary magazine or writers groups for teens.  And I will use an example that I don't know if it's a good example or not, but I saw lots of people who said they loved Pandemic in the library.  We have also used Pandemic to hire staff members.  We actually had one job that we filled in the final two candidates had to play Pandemic with the team they would have eventually be on as part of their interview process.  That's one other way you can incorporate a game into your library.  Before we jump into kind of outreach and how to use games outside the library, Jennifer, were there any trends from the chat you wanted to share, or any questions  that have come up?
>> Yeah, there have been some great question and some folks are chiming in.  There are a couple that I'd love to hear from your experience, how long does an evening program last at your library?
>> Ours is 90 minutes.  An hour and a half.  Which it really could go longer, we recently move the library hours up, so we open earlier and close earlier, and that was especially because some games, especially when you have game enthusiasts, take an hour plus, that's beneficial, because it gives you time to do around -- do a round of practice, and play the game and be finished with it.
>> And what -- is that usually what time does that start then?
>> We play in the evening, so ours I think 6:00 or 6:30 and runs for 90 minutes.
>> Okay.  There was a question about how do you get patrons to try new games if they're shy about trying new games.  And I know your suggestion for having the teen advisory, but somebody also suggested they have a game advisory, and that they usually then start with a gateway game, or party game.  But do you have tips on how to address those folks -- I think for me sometimes the game -- I sort of feel like an outsider sometimes when I'm coming into a really solid group of gamers, so how do you sort of address that gap for folks joining in?
>> I think that's one skill I learned from Lauren at the center for games and learning, and that's to do like a practice round first.  So everybody sits down, you say, okay, this one is going slow, we're going to do one round and it's not really going to be part of the game.  But we're going to go step by step through this.  And so even experienced players and -- have a chance to teach the skills they've learned if they already know the game well, and they're then prepared for the first step, it's just going to be for learners, and then people who don't know the  game, don't have to worry, oh, no, I'm making the wrong move, and it's the first round, and I'm setting myself up for failure and the next shower going to be terrible.  You do a practice round when you erase all of that and start over again.
>> Okay.  That's really helpful.  I think I need many practice rounds.
>> Another reason why we always have staff in the room too, because they can help make that a really welcoming and inviting experience.  So a lot of times our staff members will start out playing the game, and then they might leave the game halfway through to start someone else playing a game on another table.  So they move throughout the room.
>> Excellent.  And somebody suggested that you could have an ambassador for the game who is in charge of being invited -- inviting to new players, and maybe partnering them on their first round.  So that's good.  There was a great question, and I don't know if your library has  hosted D and D programs, there was a question around how you consider the potential violence that may be -- maybe parents or financers are concerned about.  Have you had to address that?  I know there have been great responses in chat saying that there are some elements or some modules that you can approach with less violence, but have you had to touch on that in your libraries?
>> I have not.  We don't run role playing game groups at our library, so that's curious,  interestingly that's something I never have actually considered, but I do think there's lots of good ways to talk about this as a way to explore violent scenarios without being part of violence.  And there's some benefit to pretending and having this low-risk opportunity to experiment in some of those worlds.
>> That's that would be great.
>> I can jump in.  We also don't do role playing games typically at my library, but Kate and I have both had conversations with the librarian in the area who has, and they've had great success with it.  So I can't speak directly to that experience, however I do discuss some of the violence that might show up or might potentially be an issue, and wee really address it very similar to how Kate said, that thinking about from a learning environment, just because I work at a University, that's often where my brain is, is that it's good that students, young people think about choices, but in safe environments.  So these games are kind of that safe environment to help them think through choices that aren't necessarily going to be exact replicas of real life.  But where they still have to think about through experiences and decide what they're going to do.  One way to tease out some of that learning is through a debriefing experience.  So we've done some work in that, and I know that the librarians here in Kansas city who have done the D and D do a pretty successful debriefing experience.  So they can  really talk about what happened during that game experience, and so it helped the students process that, or help the teams process some of that, so that might be something that you would want to consider if you are speaking about having a game that has some violence or more content that some people might not be comfortable W having a discussion afterwards about it to help them think through what they experience and then how that relates or doesn't relate to real life.  Some of the best strategies for debriefing come from I'm going to mention Scott Nicholson again, but he wrote a really great article on debriefing and the games' experiential learning opportunities.  That would be something you could look into, but Pyogi, he has some really good debriefing protocols that might be interesting for a lot of you, Thiagi.
>> That's great.  And just a couple of other things that have come up, and I know you're going to touch on some of these, and I'm also going to post -- the link to today's event has a number of other resources, many of them on WebJunction, a whole different articles written by john Papas, who has reviews of games for all ages, so I saw the question about games for younger kids.  He has really comprehensive information around different ages, different types of games.  And then I love that people are mentioning the international games week coming up, so that will be another great opportunity.  And go ahead and keep plugging links and suggestions in chat like I said, we'll be pulling those and adding those to the event page.  And then also someone said oh, the chat is so great, love the conversation, it would be great to continue afterwards.  There is a Facebook group run by the Ala gaming round table, so be sure and check that out, it's a private group, but go ahead and join, and there's lots of folks there that can continue the conversation with you and answer questions.  So just a little plug for them as well.
>> I'll talk a little bit about how we use games in outreach.  That's primarily where my job lies, is outreach to our schools and our detention centers and corrections institutions.  So I'll actually start with those examples.  We partner with our department of corrections to provide library servicers to our juvenile detention center, our adolescent center for treatment, which is a 20-day drug and alcohol treatment facility, and our evening reporting center, which is a diversion group for teens on probation.  And a few years ago we all collaborated with the center for games and learning, and Lauren, to introduce tabletop games into their facilities.  So they had used games in the past, mostly as ways to pass the inordinate amounts of time they have in those buildings, but with the help from the center for games and learning the staff developed an eye for how to infuse those with 21st century skills.  They began using them as ways to start conversations or to discuss difficult topics or encourage dialogue during challenging times, so for instance when I go into those facilities sometimes we might use story cues as a way to introduce ourselves, and we pick one of the images on the story cue and you have to tell a story about a time in your life that relates to that image, or I know our evening reporting center that works with teens on probation uses a building game using oddly shaped wooden blocks, and as you play you have to stack more and more, and they use it very much with what Lauren was talking about around debriefing.  So maybe this also kind of goes towards that question about violence in games, they spent a lot of time after they play the game, because it doesn't take a lot of time to play, they spend almost as much time debriefing as they do playing.  So they talk about what was the most challenging part, did you get really frustrated when you land on a specific piece, how do you deal with frustration if your -- if the tower that you're building falls apart?  Did that make you want to give up?  All those questions that are skills that the students and those programs are really working to build, and so the games are another way to work towards that, that kind of is a little fun as Lauren brought up in the beginning, adds some fun and engagement to the process, but through that debriefing adds the skill development at the end.  We also bring in other elements with our library services  that complement what they're doing, so all summer long we went in every couple weeks and we would do 3d scans of the residents of the juvenile detention center, and the drug and alcohol treatment center, and we would do a printout of 3d bust of them that was maybe a half an inch tall that they would use as their own game piece.
So when they're playing games, they had a piece of themselves they were playing with.  We've also found that partnering with schools in K-12 educators, that a lot of them are already using games in the classroom.  So life is on here because although I don't know this is a  particularly great example of a thrilling engaging tabletop game, a lot of our schools are  using life, especially the life skills classes, one school in particular talked to us about how the teacher every semester has the students play this game, and talk through it.  And so we have about five public school districts in the area that Lauren and I serve, and over a dozen private and parochial schools.  And a lot of them are already using tabletop games to explore things like budget and financing, as well as to teach content in social studies or science classes.  So we're really fortunate to have Lauren in the center for games and learning in Kansas city, she connects with the teachers in our community to tell them how they might be able to use those games to teach content or teach 21st century skills, and a lot of them, once they hear that, that is the key word to get in.  What I love is her suggestion for the teacher using the game of life, instead of just using this game, which I personally find to be very unrealistic about what actually life actually entails, Lauren suggested that instead of having teams play it, they could actually have a class project where they modify the game, actually represent more of what life actually has in it.  So your cell phone was on roaming during your whole road trip, now you owe sprint $500, or your younges kid got a scholarship, you save $12,000 this year.she talked with a social study teacher about using content-based games for crick lamb review and teaching concepts, and we've talked with Tempers about hosting global game jams, which we'll talk about in another slide, to both test and learn systems.  So one great thing the center for games and learning has that we do not is a collection of games, which we'll talk about too.  And one thing they do that's really great is that Lauren has multiple copies of some of their popular titles, which would wo allow someone in a classroom to have several groups playing the same game at once.  As opposed to if you only had one copy, you would have to have a full classroom play or you'd have to have different people playing different games.  So they make all of their collections available to the public, and then she also includes instructions online and in the games as well.  Jennifer, was there anything while I was talking in the chat boxes of other examples from schools about how they use games?
>> I didn't see any come through.  Lauren, I don't know if you noticed any.
>> I didn't notice any, no.
>> I'm not sure how many educators we have in the room.  That's also another great tool, if you partner with your schools to offer them that ability to check out the games as well.
>> Always.  Always eager for more collaboration with the schools.
>> Yes.  So there's other ways that we have thought about moving forward.  Lauren and I have, with combining games and public libraries and school libraries.  So we've talked about the global game jam, which happens every year in January, where community members are challenged to team up together and over I think it's like 26 hours, something like that, make a game of their own.  So we've talked about doing that either as a library program, where we run up to challenges about keeping the library open overnight, or working with a school maybe on a specific topic to develop a game jam.  We use games like Dixit and other creative games already to spark writing and creativity in our teens, similar to elementary, you see the cover of our arts magazine, but I want to continue to explore how we can use games to spark creativity and also collaboration between creators, both through elementary and our writers' conference.  We also want to explore how they can become the background plot or structure for a novel.  We're going to talk next about collection.  Were there any questions we could answer before we jump into collection development?
>> I think it's a great opportunity to shift.  We actually had someone share a link to their collection, and it's great to know that folks have them out there.  So feel free to keep sharing those links.  And Brian said they are -- their game library has been around for 10 years, and they focus on educational use and they have curriculum, and tags, and instructions, so thanks for sharing Brian and hopefully some others will chime in with links and that's what this is all about, is not reinventing the wheel, but leveraging what you all have already created.  So thanks for that.
>> This is Lauren, Brian, who posted that, I know hoe has done a lot of amazing work up in upstate New York, and so an extra plug for his link and all that he's done.  So thanks so much for being here, Brian.  We have talked before.
>> I'm going to let Lauren talk a little bit about the two types of collection development, and I'll talk about some examples of public collection and staff collections.
>> Thanks, Kate.  So when I think about collection development, I think about it in two ways.  I think about for recreation first, I really do think games are fun, and I really don't want to get games that no one wants to play, no matter how educational they are, if they're not fun, I don't think they're going to serve their purpose.  So I read a lot of reviews, look at what is on the site boardgamegeek.com, what has been tagged as being the good game, I looked also at the awards, the Kinder for young children's games, so those are really good awards to look at.  For those of you who maybe aren't as familiar with games, that would be similar to looking at the Caldecott or newberry for a book.  But those would be the game awards.  And so also in addition to recreation, I think about educational support.  So I do think about those 21st century skills, what games align with them, making sure I have a range of games?  My collection that support 21st century skills.  I also have discussions with teachers, both at my University but also in the K-12 area about what they might be interested in doing, and then trying to find a game that helps them answer a problem, or solve something that they're trying to do in their classes, and I also think about some discipline specific games, a game like maybe time line, I know that sometimes that game is really easy to play, but it is definitely discipline specific for history, and so thinking about what games might align there for specific content is useful as well.  And then I'm going to turn it back over to Kate to talk about the next column.
>> There's two types of collections that I've seen at least most in public libraries, and those are either a public collection, which can be Zurich lating, or it can be something only used in the library.  There are lots of libraries that have public circulating game collections, one that I think is particularly good would be the buck county free library, which is john Papas' library, and he has great guide that will answer a lot of questions about how to develop a circulating library of games.  But the size of the collection isn't really what matters, a lot of their -- some libraries only have 20 games they circulate and check out to patrons, some may have upwards of 200.  Most of them collect popular titles, they start with just a couple and expand over time.  But every library that collects games that I've looked into at least always connects them to library programming.  No one I can find just had games in their collection, and didn't also host tabletop game nights or use them with kids, teens, adults, and schools, whatever the group -- the case may be.  So just like any other collection, supporting it with a library programming is part of the key to engage the community.  Some of the really great tools I've seen people use in public recirculating collections, though it's to develop a collection development policy, so as Lauren talked about with deciding what is popular, what is fun, what kind of materials are you collecting, just like you would for any other collection you are developing, developing relationships with your local board game vendors or stores if you're lucky enough to live in a community that has a board game store, it would be great resources for you to -- our local board game store gives USA great deal on the board games we buy from them, because they want more board games in the community.  We're so lucky to have those.   Finding community members who are interested in helping, and then also Lauren has this, and I think a lot of other libraries have this too, including directions inside the board games that circulate, that might simplify the game or ways to modify them to make them easy and jump into.  So making sure people understand how to use the collection that you're providing them, our library uses staff collections, so those are noncirculating, they're for staff use only we use for programming, sometimes internal for staff development or job interviews.  So these are managed for us by our youth services staff.  We have a couple of library systems in the Kansas city metro area that have staff circulating selections that are generally managed by the youth services staff.  We have a clerk who helps take care of that collection for us.  We support that with specifically with training for our staff to teach them both how to teach games, and also to develop some of that gamers advisory skills in them.  Most of our games are purchased by the library, but in doing gaming programming, we've also developed great relationships with members of the community.
So we've actually had really nice and brand-new coups of games donated to the library that we've been able to add to this collection.
And we hope as we continue to build it and use it for programming, eventually we'll be able to create a public recirculating game collection.  So I'm going to let Lauren talk a little bit about how circulate games at MidAmerica Nazarene University, and I'll tell you some of the challenges that we're coming up against as we look at planning a circulating collection.
>> Thanks, Kate.  So when we decided to circulate our games, there were lots of things to consider.  I mentioned that we're a fairly small staff here, and knew that circulating games would be quite a big addition to our workload.  So we needed to figure out ways to minimize that work as much as possible.  And so first I'll say the checkout period, we decided the games could be checked out for two weeks, it seemed long enough that patrons could play them but short enough that maybe hopefully they wouldn't get lost if they were checked on the any longer than that.  We did as Kate already mentioned, put a contents list on the -- inside of the front cover so the inside of the box.  I feel this has been very successful in helping the games come back with all of their pieces.  We have lost a lot fewer pieces actually than I was expecting.  And so I think it's helped, because we always mention when the patrons check out the game, just take a second, look at the contents list, make sure all the pieces are back before you return it.  And so I do think our patrons are doing just that.  If pieces do get lost, I will say that we have found that some game publishers will send us a missing piece or two for free, which has been very nice.  But one thing we also did was we went ahead and purchased just some extra dice to have on hand, some extra game pieces that I believe we purchased from amazon, and then some blank cards that we could quickly maybe change or modify a little bit to add in to the game if a piece that did go missing that we were not able to replace, but again, it was only one piece, so we didn't want to take the game off the shelf or maybe make the patrons pay for that.  We tried to astlied as much as possible.  So those are what we have done.  And I guess I didn't mention the counting game pieces, so I am grateful for the student workers that I have at my library, and they actually do count all the game pieces when games are returned, so that we know if it -- pieces have gone missing.  I realize not all of you are going to have staff or students that might be able to help with that, some of the libraries I've worked with do have volunteers, and so they have assigned some volunteers to help with counting the game pieces.  Before I turn it back over to Kate to talk about what they've done with circulation, are there any questions that I might be able to answer?  I have missed anything, Jennifer?
>> There were a couple questions, one when you mentioned the two-week circulation, how does that compare with the circulation of your other library items?
>> That's a great question.  We let books be checked out for 30 days.
>> Oh, wow, okay.  Let's see.  There were -- this is obviously sort of a sometimes blocker, there was someone said that the staff is worried about damage and missing pieces, so being able to address that with them, you've provided great tips on how to approach that.  And I know as you mentioned, john, I think has covered that as well, but lots of great suggestions coming through for chat as well.  And you're right, there are plenty much volunteers that I know the folks that you bring in to the gaming programming I think would also be interested in helping to keep track of your collections too, you could even have a group of volunteers help manage the collection, I would think, as well.
>> M-hmm.  Certainly.  So I know Kate is going to talk about why her library decided not to circulate games, and what they've done instead.  That might help people think about other ways they could have libraries and maybe not check them out to patrons.
>> So we sadly have not yet been able to figure out a way for us to circulate games in the library.  We're a suburban library system with 13 branches, and we're building our 14th right now, so one of our challenges is that with any small special collection, when you have -- we have a floating collection, so it's spread over all of our branches, and if you only have 20 games and it's spread over 13 branches, that means maybe there's only one game in each library.  So we've had challenges trying to figure out if we're going to start a new collection it's going to be expensive for us to build it, but not only will it be expensive in money, it will be very expensive in staff time, and I saw a lot of people in the chat commenting on this and Lauren also addressed it too.  The time is not just to check in every piece of material and go through the list of items that should be in the box and make sure you have everything, but then also to find replacement pieces, make the system whole again, and for it to travel through our circulation system is going to be a very time expensive process for us.  So these are things that we're thinking through, in the meantime we have selections that staff check out that we send to different libraries.  We also will allow teams to check them out, anybody, but most are teenagers, people can check them out at the desk and play them in the library, so a noncirculating game.  And that's one way we make them accessible without having them leave the building and have to worry too much about circulation, because generally if they're using them in the library, if they lose a piece you can find it again.  But Lauren has suggestions about blank cards, and I saw some people talking about 3d printing, like noncopyrighted game pieces is a great idea.  So there's lots of different and more innovative ways to replace pieces in games than you might think.  I think we have a couple of row sources which I can let Lauren tell you about, and we have time for questions at the end.  We're almost at the end.
>> So this is our resource list.  This is something he's involved in, so let's put in a plug for that one, my center for games and learning is down there, and I'll put the direct website, thanks, Jennifer, for sharing that, but yeah, we are -- I am at -- Mnu.edu/games.  And I think Kate if I want to take to the question slide, or if we could leave it here and say we'll take questions now.
>> Yeah.  You guys have done a great job of touching on many of them.  The last slide in terms of collections definitely surfaced a lot of the nitty gritty, so keep those questions coming, we've got a little time here.  So Lauren, you did respond that people can renew games.  Can they renew them once or twice?
>> We didn't change our policy for that, so we allow two renewals for materials.  So they can renew them twice.
>> Excellent.  And do you charge for missing pieces?
>> So how we have handled it is it's the same policy as if a book came back missing.  We decided not to rewrite our policy.  That being said, if I'm able to get a piece for free, we won't charge the patron.  Just because I don't think that we should have to if we can -- and my colleagues have agreed with that, and if I also have a piece, an extra piece in our collection, and we can put in the game, we won't charge, but if the game would be no longer playable, because of something that has gone missing or we can't replace it in some way, yes, we do charge the patron.
>> Excellent.  And then do you have -- I know you're at a University, do you all charge late fees?
>> No, we don't charge late fees.  And that was a decision -- I think it can go either way.  We tried not to make any exceptions for this collection.
>> That's a good discussion to have.  Certainly something to work through as a library.  And there are other folks chiming in with their own experiences.  Can you talk a little bit more, Lauren, I know the center is a little bit of a different thing, so -- I think people may be could benefit from knowing that your program is -- your interest is supporting those in the community whether it's libraries or other educators to really develop their gaming program.  So Lauren's program is a little bit different, but it's the kind of thing, if your by bring as they  suggested -- if your library wanted to partner with other educators in your community you could look at expanding your collection as a way to loan to those educators.  So your model is a little different if you want to talk a little bit more about that, and I know -- I did hear folks chiming in on -- in terms of other conferences, and you all -- do you have a conference that folks might be interested in attending?
>> Yeah.  So just a little bit about the center, and I'll make this brief because I know we're close to the top of the hour, so we were funded by the institute of game and library services to start the center for games and learning in 2014, so it's been going for about three years now.  And with those funds we were able to purchase quite a few board games, and also build some curriculum and work a lot with educators and other librarians in our area to really grow the gaming community where we are.  And I think it's been a great opportunity.  For two years we did run a games and learning conference, we didn't host it this year, that doesn't mean we won't host it again.  Woe just decided to take a step back and work on other projects.  And then relook at where we wanted to go strategically here on the.  So we have done a lot of things, and it has been a lot of fun to think about ways that we can support other libraries in their gaming initiative.
>> Excellent.  That's so exciting.  And wonderful.  All right.  We are just about at the top of the hour, and I love to see the -- as folks are getting into the nitty gritty, that's awesome.  Don't forget that the Ala gaming round table has a Facebook group, I'll be sure and highlight it again on the event page.  I'll add all these great links that you've brought to the conversation and it's so great to have other game -- library game aficionados in the group, and keep your great work, and check back in, and let the league of gaming librarians know as well, and, yes, somebody's already approving them, I know they would -- I knew today would increase their Michael Porter, so definite -- membership, so stay connected there.  A special thanks to Lauren and Kate for bringing your great work to a WebJunction webinar, and we are so excited to hear all of the things you've got going on, and certainly lots of inspiration to apply to our libraries.  And thanks to our captioner, and a reminder that yes, today's session is being recorded and the captions and the chat will all be available for you to refer to.  I will send you an email later today, once everything is up and posted on that event page, and I'll send you a certificate for attending today within the week.  And I'll also send you as you leave to a very short survey.  We love to gather your feedback on our events, and we'll provide that to our presenters as well, so please take the time as you leave to complete that.  So excellent.  Thank you all so much, again to Kate and Lauren.  Everyone have a fantastic rest of your day.