The social aspects of learning are often neglected by libraries, which tend to focus their services on delivery of information to users. Effective learning, where users can act upon information to meet their goals, requires active social interaction with other members in the community.

In recognition of this need to provide social learning spaces for library users, NLB’s Public Libraries organized a series of gaming events during the year-end school holidays to bring together users from various audience groups who can engage one another in learning through gaming activities.

Collaboration is often involved in multiplayer games, which require gamers to interact with one another to plan their way to success and to defeat their opponents. Besides inculcating social skills among participants, gaming activities also promote literacy skills that are required of users to win in a game. 

In Dance Dance Revolution (DDR), for example, players must be able to read the screen to set up the game and choose a song to play. There is on-screen reading during the game play, as steps and progress are rated.

The inaugural event was held on Nov 14 2009 at Jurong Regional Library’s Verging All Teens space, which saw almost 30 teens and young adults engaging one another in video games such as Wii Bowling and Mario Kart Wii, as well as board/card games including Carcassone, Rat-at-Tat Cat and Blokus.

The role of librarians in facilitating the gaming sessions was crucial to the success of this initiative. The librarians shared interesting nuggets of information related to the games, including the origins of terms such as “turkey” in bowling. This helps to differentiate library gaming services from what is being offered at gaming arcades. Books related to the subject of the video/board games were also readily available to participants to pique their interest in gaming-related topics.

The events were supported by Microsoft Singapore, NTU Board Games Society, Singapore Cybersports and Online Gaming Association and local games retailer DexCube.

Contributed by Aaron Tan, National Library Board