Teach Yourself Twine: How to Create a Catalog Search and LC Call Number Review Game, by Jillian Sandy

My problem was this: after depending on a shelving tutorial borrowed from another institution for training purposes, suddenly the URL changed or the site no longer hosted this excellent (and free) resource. I thought I’d never have the time or the coding skills to make my tutorial. I was so wrong. I ended up creating a fun, low-stakes game that helped student employees a way to practice catalog searches and using the Library of Congress system, and I want to share with you!

The game additionally allows student employees to further explore catalog searching and to nudge them toward using the catalog to search for books--I created this game at the University of Dayton, where the default search option is UDiscover (OneSearch at many institutions), a tool we do not recommend for looking up books.

If you’d like to do something similar, here’s how: you will need to choose a free, relatively easy-to-use platform. I recommend Twine, open-source software created to build interactive stories. Though you can use this in-browser, I would recommend downloading the program for Windows, Mac, or Linux. You’ll have a lot more storage space for your game this way--important if you’d like to include adorable pictures of cats, gifs, or video to add some visual appeal.

Twine very easily lets you create a beginning and end to your game. You can also link pages to each other--for example, the pages student employees will see when they answer a question correctly or incorrectly, as well as links to the next question on their adventure.

Now for that pesky coding part of the process. You will need to do some coding to change font and image sizes, and perhaps to add images or create links (for example, when giving attribution for images). The good news: you can Google all of these things! I have very little experience with coding and managed to create this game--you can too!

One additional consideration with Twine is the use of images; first, you will need to find images that are out of the public domain, licensed by Creative Commons, or otherwise unencumbered by copyright restrictions. I found many images requiring attribution only at Vecteezy and Pixabay. I also like Unsplash for this kind of thing.

Unlike a blog or another site where you can upload images, images in Twine will need to be encoded. Again, you’re in luck--there are many sites where you can encode images for free! ou will need to turn your image into a rather lengthy line of code. I used a site called Base 64, which allows you to drag and drop images to transform into code. Below is an example of an image and the beginning of its code.

Another option in lieu of images are gifs. On sites like Giphy, the embed code is provided! All you need to do is copy and paste the embed code and the whole ordeal of encoding images can be avoided. 

When you have completed your game, you can export the file as an HTML file. This will lead to another consideration: hosting. Luckily, there are several places where you can host your Twine creation with no cost. I use Philome.la, which does require a Twitter account to sign up. If you do have an account, you will simply upload the HTML file you have created. No need to worry about the URL changing or the content suddenly disappearing! Be aware that you cannot change your game once you’ve uploaded it; if you need to make changes, you will need to edit the HTML in Twine and then re-upload as a new game (with a new URL). 

The game I created is pretty low key, requiring student employees only to complete the game and print or screenshot their “Purr-tificate of Completion.” However, the Twine Cookbook does outline the process of adding or subtracting points based on student responses (and provides some other helpful codes). Using a points system does provide an assessment tool for the game, though may feel more like a test to students than the interactive practice game I set out to make. 

In addition to training for student employees, I see the potential of this activity to be used as pre-work for library instruction sessions. Covering some search strategies ahead of time could give librarians more time to dive into information literacy concepts during class. 

If you’re feeling adventurous, play the game here: 
http://philome.la/JSandcat/searching-ud-catalog-a-roesch-library-adventure. You may need to search the UD Catalog to avoid any negative consequences from the game’s disgruntled cats: http://flyers.udayton.edu/search/X. (I've had some problems with Twine going down temporarily every now and then...but since it's free I have made do.I also have it hosted on Text Adventures here: https://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/aSyZJWezq0qdEwErOY11BQ/searching-the-ud-catalog-a-roesch-library-adventure) 


Jillian Sandy is a Visiting Research & Instruction Librarian at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. She can be reached at jssandy at smcm dot edu. Find many pictures of her cat on Instagram as jsheilas.

It's Not About Seeing, It's About Being Seen

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I've talked about how libraries and librarianship is a service oriented/people profession in the past. I've written about handling difficult patrons, pondered where the customer service/pedagogy line should be at the reference desk, why I know my customer service skills from waitressing have made me a better librarian, and about the need to keep gossiping down to a minimum while in the public eye. Some might say that I've talked about it enough already, ad nauseum really, but there's something I've been considering lately that I think needs to be discussed.

And here it is: if the library is open, the circulation desk needs always to be staffed. Period. End of story. What's that? You think this is a no brainer? I know it might seem that way, but I see empty circ desks everywhere I go. I know there are tasks to be done off desk and that it can be hard to concentrate on the desk, even when there's nobody about, but I also know that being at the desk isn't just about taking care of the people who are there. More than once, I've heard "but I can see if there's anybody there" as a defense for sitting in an office and not at the desk. I heard this even before starting my career in libraries, all the way back to a previous life when I was an assistant manager at a fast food restaurant. (For the record, I'm not saying you shouldn't go to the restroom or grab something from your desk or show a patron where something is in the stacks. I'm realistic. But if you're going to step away for a moment, make sure it really is just a moment.)

The thing is, staffing the desk is not about you (or another member of the library staff) seeing the customer/patron/community member. Well... it's not JUST about that. It's also about you being seen by the customer. Think about it this way: if you don't have an urgent question, are you really going to go hunt someone down? Or are you just going to assume that nobody is available and skip asking all together and not even approach the desk? Would you expect more from someone in your community? We need to do more than *be* available. We also need to appear available.

To my way of thinking, appearances count, hugely. Perception *is* reality for our customer base/community.

Or am I completely off the mark?

Managing Change by Daniel Messer

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be. ~Isaac Asimov

Listen...

I've been doing this for a long time now, kid. I know, I know... You're young and freshly polished. You're out of school and you are ready to kick ass and chew bubblegum and you absolutely cannot wait until we run out of bubblegum. You want to affect change. You've got ideas, and you know what, some of them are actually pretty good. But I want to stop you for a second and give you some advice from a guy who’s been in the field since you were crawling. I grant you, I'm not young nor am I polished, but each blemish was earned and maybe I can save you a few of them. See, this change thing you want to do, that's something we should talk about, okay?

Look around. Take a good look around at your library. I'm going to tell you right now that, even with tight budgets and cheap administrators, half of this stuff won't be here in ten years. It's going to look different. Sure, maybe not all that different to the untrained eye, but stick around. Ten years from now, you won't know what hit this place. Now, I've got another little secret to share with you. Ready?

How you handle that change is going to define you, your career, and your approach to your life as a librarian.

First, let's get things clear. I work in circulation, a department which my first circ boss referred to as, “The Bastard Child of the Library.” I don't have an MLIS, and there's a good reason for that. If I get one, they'll take me out of circ, and that's not acceptable to me. I love the movement and the flow, and there's just as much of a flow through a good circ department as there is down a winding mountain stream. There's one thing that keeps me in this department and made me a supervisor: I can handle change. You want to go places; you better learn to do it too.

I know. You're not only going handle change, you're going to make it happen. That's lovely, and good luck, but there's something you need to realize. Things are going to change that you have no control over and that you won't like. When I first started out we worked on computers, sure. They were clunky dumb terminals attached to massive servers. Our interface didn't need a mouse and the colors left much to be desired, as everything was green on a black CRT monitor. We used to check things in and out using a little pen that had a funny red light on the front of it. You actually had to touch the book. You had to swipe the pen back and forth, sometimes several times, just to read that new-fangled barcode.

Now, I've got two flat panel monitors sitting on my desk. They're attached to a computer far more powerful than those old servers. Next to that is an iPad and my laptop. Those too are also more powerful than those old servers. Hell, kid, the cell phone in my pocket outperforms those ancient beasts. I'm in charge of keeping four self-check-out machines running along with a self-check-in system that sorts library materials into nine bins. Patrons can check stuff in and out using lasers, but they don't have to. Actually, the machines use radio waves, scanning an RFID tag without ever touching the item. All in all, I need to keep an eye on half a million dollars of equipment and do my best to keep it running.

I didn't ask for any of that. Neither did the other people who work in circ.

As a matter of fact, some of the folks in circ were a little scared of it all. They were concerned that these new computers and machines were going to put them out of a job. I wasn't worried about that; I was worried about how I was going to train all these people. See, part of that flow that I talked about involves not only working with your technology, but also making it work for you. Whenever a new doo-dad or widget was presented to my department, the first thing I did was sit down and read the instructions. You know, you can learn a lot about something if you just read the directions. Then I started asking questions, and then I started talking to others who already had the widget and asked them questions.

You do that, and you become an expert pretty quickly. When your supervisors start referring and deferring to you for information and knowledge on the widget, then you know you're doing something right.

So here's my point - You're going to experience changes that are unexpected, unwanted, and even unwarranted. Embrace it. Things are not likely to go back to "how things were" because, kid, "how things were" was just a brief period between the last change and this one. Don't just adapt to change. Adapting isn't enough. Embrace it. Anything new that even looks semi-important? Become as familiar with it as possible. Read the manuals; get online; talk to people. You're a librarian, dammit. You know how to find information, and you better do just that.

Not only will your expertise make your job easier and better, you'll find an interesting side-effect. Expertise has a real habit of moving you up and out of your current job and into a better one. That, my friend, is when you truly become an agent of change.

Daniel Messer is a public library circulation supervisor, at Queen Creek Branch Library, who specializes in customer service and library technology and automation. He maintains a broad background in computer technologies like operating systems, mobile operating systems, web development, blogging platforms, integrated library systems, and digital media production. Moreover, he works to apply these various technologies to the field of library circulation. He blogs at Not All Bits.