Author Archives: Laura Johnson

If you’ve been thinking about getting into gaming–or want a way to encourage teens to just look at the shelves, here’s a new game designed to encourage library interaction. “Hot Books involves players going to the library and finding books that they then “attach” to another player (in the game space on the internet.) Once a book has been attached to you, you have the option of keeping it, as part of your game profile, or physically finding the book in the library and locating within it a word to enter into the game to remove the book from your profile.
It “is a game that aims to bring life to libraries by making library patrons engage with and create relationships to books they might never imagined existed.” This game was designed by Nick Reid, and featured during the Come Out and Play Festival at New York Public Library.
“The game augments the library into a social space –where books are re-imagined into social markers that creates a new experience of exploring a library.
“Hot Books bridges a physical library with an internet social network, and the result is a game that brings a library to life while at the same time is non-disruptive, and in fact invisible, to the already fragile library environment.”
No mention of a cost, no equipment or software to buy. Could be fun to try out with the Teen Advisory Council. If you try it, let us know what you–and the players–thought.
Thanks to Jenny Levine at the Shifted Librarian for the tip.