Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Minecraft in public libraries for teens and young adults @lgreenpd

Apparently Minecraft is appearing in lots of public libraries.

After Peter Green extended the curiosity of a colleague(?) to twitter I caught his blogged sharing of the three examples that were tweeted back: Minecraft bringing teens into the public library.

I suspected there would be quite a few more, and I wondered whether anyone has contributed case studies or analyses to the traditional professional literature. As Peter hasn't yet updated or received comments I went searching. EBSCO's LISTA offered articles that made glancing mentions, but nothing more. The blogosphere (new professional literature) was more productive, offering three perspectives for Peter's question on whether it will draw teens to the library:

On the YALSA blog, Jessica Schneider's helpfully detailed discussion of her program mentions that it was "a hit, with about 14 teens attending":

http://yalsa.ala.org/blog/2013/04/04/connect-create-collaboratecraft-a-teen-tech-week-post-mortem-minecraft-in-the-library/

YALSA » Connect, Create, Collaborate…Craft! A Teen Tech Week Post Mortem: Minecraft in the Library via kwout

Back in 2011, NYPL's New Canaan Library's building competition in Minecraft apparently attracted a younger crowd; Gretchen Kolderup reported in her blog--again with wonderfully shared detail. (thank 8-Bit Library for the pointer)

http://www.librarified.net/2011/06/16/a-minecraft-building-competition-at-my-library/

Librarified » A Minecraft building competition @ my library via kwout

When Brenda Hough wrote about Silver Lake, Kansas' Minecraft offerings at techsoup for libraries, they were attracting mostly 'middle school students' apparently because the library set up with MinecraftEdu:

http://techsoupforlibraries.org/blog/minecraft-at-the-library

Minecraft at the Library | TechSoup for Libraries via kwout

Google listed a bunch more public libraries offering some sort of Minecrafting activity. Gathering them to add to Peter's list, could I gather an A-Z?:


Originally published at my experimental self-hosted Wordpress where it achieved 4219 views. Copied here 2020-12-23 as part of my Wordpress→Blogger journey

Original post received 5 comments, and 1 pingback which I will append here: (but if any of you want me to delete yours from this republished version, please tell me)

Nicole Antal said:
10 July 2013 at 1:08 pm
I will gladly share the numbers of kids/increase of library use after a minecraft competition with you. Thanks for including us in your list 🙂 Baxter Memorial Library

Debbie Sternklar said:
15 October 2013 at 1:59 pm
Did the kids only print their pictures on paper, or send you screen shots digitally? I’m trying to have Tweens show off their creations on our big screen somehow. Files saved on thumb drives, loaded onto our laptop attached to LCD Projector? Think it will work, ideas anyone?

Gus Tsekenis said:
11 July 2013 at 7:05 am
Thanks for including the Astoria Library on your list as well! We’re trying to recreate our 100+ year old Carnegie building as our Minecraft “build” this summer. Beats dodging zombies in a torch lit cave 🙂

gus tsekenis said:
02 August 2013 at 7:21 am
Here’s some pics from our project – build a virtual library on a shared minecraft server. The first was destroyed by a 40 foot waterfall – the second was destroyed by fire. It was very dramatic 🙂 https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.678941095453334.1073741826.118854318128684&type=1

1 Ping/Trackback


Head Tale - Minecraft Mania!said:
27 March 2014 at 3:04 pm

[…] Libraries are getting in on the action too and finding Minecraft is a great way to connect with otherwise hard to reach teens and other young people (I know it’s a huge hit in my branch – I often see as many people playing it as browsing Facebook which is saying something!) […]
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