Library as Laboratory

Subtitled: Supporting Culture with Creative and Participative Digital Learning

Matt Gullett and Kelly Czarnecki from the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County/ImaginOn

PLCMC started out by creating the Computer Club with the idea of kids being able to use the library for creation, not just consumption.

The Game Lab was developed to:

• collaborate with customers, community, schools, organizations, corporations - partners currently include UNC Charlotte, Capcom, Wizards of the Coast, Youth Digital Arts Cyberschool, Library Game Lab @ Syracuse, AADL
• create access to games and interactive media creation, recreation & learning
• educate about "public good" benefits of gaming

How? Not sure yet! It's a work in progress.

Craig Davis from the Youth Digital Arts CyberSchool
1. If kids could create their own videogames, what would they be?
2. If libraries could offer videogame creation easily, would they?
3. What if a technophobic librarian could facilitate it? [This is exactly the thing that gives me a case of the heaving fantods when it's brought up in library meetings. Who's going to facilitate this program? How can anyone be trained to do this? Oh no, it's going to have to be me!! And I'm hardly a technophobe].

Some themes that are revealed:

• Participatory culture does away with age hierarchies
• Provoked to self-learning
• Collaborative Intelligence