1- Short Session Description:

While public speaking being the world’s greatest fear is a lie, it still can strike terror in the hearts of many a brave library adventurer (yes, even Bards). But gaming can help! Join two librarians, one from technical services and one from public services, who are live action role players (larpers), game masters (GMs), actors, improv-ers, and larp designers, to learn tips, tricks, and techniques drawn from these disciplines. Learn how to roll up (develop) a stage persona to slip into when presenting and guide that persona through unexpected situations using a few simple mechanics pulled from improv and american freeform larp.

2- Session Style/Format:

Skill workshop/larp

3- Takeaways: 

Attendees will leave this workshop with increased confidence in your abilities, techniques to eliminate your speaking/performing anxiety, and your very own stage name and character sheet. Techniques taught will be practiced repeatedly during the workshop and will be simple and easy to use before (and during!) most public speaking one might do. In addition to improving public speaking, attendees will see an example of how larping can be used within their own libraries for education and training.

4- Organization:

Fully formed. Two presenters will be Kate Hill and Amanda Glenn Bradley, who developed this workshop together in 2017 and have been taking it on the road to rave reviews (though not yet out of North Carolina!).

Kate Hill is the Electronic Resources Librarian at UNC Greensboro. In her other life, she also designs, edits, and runs larps both in her hometown of Durham NC and across the United States. Her games have been featured in published anthologies and run at conventions from New York to San Francisco. She also is a trained actor and in a past life, got paid to sing!

Amanda Glenn-Bradley is the User Engagement Librarian & CRAFT Studio Coordinator at UNC Asheville. Her library’s resident extroverted librarian, she has a stage and performance background complete with a minor in broadcast meteorology and a demo reel. She has participated in and GMed tabletop and online roleplaying games (everything from 2e DnD to a Palladium game based on an 80’s animated series!) since the days AOL chat rooms had dice rolling functionality built in. Her favored set of dice are mostly translucent purple except for the black-and-grey swirled d20. The purple one kept rolling critical 1’s and is now in dice jail.

5- Contact Information:

Kate Hill, kmhill@uncg.edu

Short Session Description:  Every have a great programming idea, but feel like you are alone when it comes to implementation? As the outreach and instruction librarian at a small community college, I often find myself in Leeroy's shoes. Bring a story to share, and we'll brainstorm and compare notes, as well as experiment with ways to build teams and keep your population engaged when it comes to innovative outreach. Maybe we'll even have chicken.

Session Format & Style: Discussion round table

Takeaways: participants will leave with ideas for creative outreach to faculty and students.

Organization: presenter is open to a call for presenters to collaborate!

Erin Wilburn

Programming, Outreach and Instruction Librarian

SUNY Corning Community College

ewilburn@corning-cc.edu

• Short Session Description. (~100 words)

Through my interactive make/hack/play session, I want to consider teaching sustainability through crafting, sewing, and mending by utilizing the techniques of boro mending, handweaving, and sewing reusable items. My idea is to cover boro mending techniques (mending of existing garments through decorative stitching), a basic handweaving of a coaster using scrap fabric, and sewing (by hand) a reusable tote bag. The presentation includes a little about sustainability, the amount of fabric/textile/plastic bag waste in the oceans, and full instruction in these areas.

2- Session Style/Format (e.g. lightning talks, make/hack/play session, etc.): Make/Hack/Play sessions

3- Takeaways: Describe any takeaways, skills, outcomes, and/or interactive elements! The session is designed as fully interactive, and would ideally have a headcount so that I can procure supplies for everyone (most of them will be repurposed, recycled, or otherwise second hand). Folks will go home with a mended/decorated shirt, handmade tote bag, or handwoven coaster.

4- Organization. Fully formed (i.e. you have people in mind or chosen to co-organize) or will you initiate a CFP for co-organizers/presenters? I would LOVE some co-organizers but I’m the crafty one at my institution so I would need some help. I can teach folks who are interested in helping out in advance.

5- Contact Information - Name of primary contact + email!!! Shelley Carr, scarr3@usfca.edu/ theshellery@gmail.com

1. Short Session Description: When crafting a campaign from scratch, DMs are inspired directly or indirectly by pieces of other games they’ve played and stories they’ve heard or told. In the same way, narratives told primarily with data can be greatly enriched by drawing inspiration, and the data itself, from different places. In this workshop, players will think of a story they want to tell with data. Using sample data, we will then work through the process of crafting a new dataset from differently shaped and sourced ones. All skill levels welcome, no computers needed.
2. Session Format & Style: Hands-on workshop
3. Takeaways:
   1. Primary takeaway: how to design a new dataset based on existing data to tell a story
   2. Secondary takeaway: understanding the process and implications of repurposing data
4. Organization: fully-formed
5. Contact Information: Kayla Abner, kabner@udel.edu

Every great adventuring party needs a leader. Sometimes the leader is the Fighter or Wizard who has the most power and directs the actions of the group. Other times the leader is the Rogue in the back making suggestions, giving advice and nudging events ever so subtlety (or not in some cases). Let’s get together and develop/define the leader character type, what skills do they need, does a good leader need to have a high intelligence score or an above average wisdom? Does it matter what class they are (Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, Thief)? What Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats exist in a leader’s environment? These and many other questions will be answered.

Short Session Description

Session Style/Format (e.g. lightning talks, make/hack/play session, etc.):

Interactive and Skill-building and Brains-on workshop

3- Takeaways:

Session participants will identify what skills a leader needs and develop a SWOT analysis for leadership.

4- Organization -- I will put out a CFP for panelists from public and academic libraries

5- Contact Information – Tim Daniels – tim.daniels@ung.edu

1- Short Session Description: Leading your team of inexperienced adventurers, you burst through the castle door and standing in front of you are the final beasts: training and evaluation. Most would fear these monsters but not you and your team; you’ve been preparing for this all along. Using teamwork and communication you easily defeat the beasts and are rewarded with skill points and badges, huzzah! In this session, participants will engage in discussions about how they currently evaluate and train their staff, learn how to use Dungeons and Dragons for training and evaluation, fill out their own character sheet, and participate in a D&D session lead by the presenter.

2- Session Style/Format: Group discussion/Roleplaying

3- Takeaways: Participants will leave with an understanding of how to implement D&D as a platform for training and evaluation, a completed character sheet, and access to digital materials to run their own D&D campaign.

4- Organization: Fully formed

5- Contact Information: Evan Barber (ebarb2@uis.edu)

Session Description

In this workshop, two North Carolina State University Librarians will lead attendees through hands-on activities which make use of innovative and accessible sound making and recording technologies and practices. These activities are the same as those used to promote and encourage participation in State of Sound. The first activity - Songwriting in 15 Minutes - will result in everyone in the room writing, recording, and sharing a song to State of Sound in a very short amount of time. All skill levels are appropriate and all outcomes are exciting and inspiring, mirroring the drive of State of Sound to collect work from everyone, regardless of experience. The second activity - Making Music with Music - puts attendees behind the decks in a DJ workshop, showing how records and recorded sounds are accessible instruments that can be remixed to share new ideas. Both of these activities use technologies that are available through our Libraries but which can also be accessed through smartphone apps. All technology will be provided.

Format: 

Hands on Workshop and Play Session! 

Takeaways: 

Sound recording technology has been with us since the 19th century, and in 2019 barriers to accessing this technology have largely been lifted. In fact, many of us carry full-fledged recording studios with us wherever we go and call them “phones.” The ubiquity and age of this technology, however, leads it to often being taken for granted. Understanding and practicing recording sound can lead to stories and ideas being shared to wider audiences faster, can foster creative collaborations, can showcase innovative work, and can build communities of sound makers that motivate one another to develop media communication skills.

At the end of the workshop attendees will have a greater understanding of and appreciation for accessible sound making, sharing, and recording technologies and practices. They will see how stories can be told and how creative work can be showcased using these accessible technologies. And they will see how the State of Sound model inspires community, collaboration, and creativity through sound making.

Organization:

Fully formed with two (maybe three) presenters! 

Contact Information: 

Alex Valencia: aavalenc@ncsu.edu

Jason Evans Groth: jevansg@ncsu.edu

Short Session Description: 

Educational larping has been found to "increase a student’s intrinsic motivation, enjoyment of school topics such as science, and perceived competence”¹. Because of studies like this, live action role-playing (larping) has seen an increase in use within education in the last few years. However, as many of these larps are never published, librarians who are interested in bringing such techniques into their staff training or instruction sessions have little guidance. In this workshop, award winning educational larp designers Jason Morningstar and Jessica Hammer, along with Kate Hill, a librarian larp designer, will guide attendees through the process of designing a larp based on the attendees own learning objectives.

Session Format and Style: Skill Workshop/ Play Session

Takeaways:

At the end of this workshop, participants will understand how larp has been used in other educational settings, the basics of developing one’s own larp and how to match larp design to learning objectives. Every participant will leave with an outline of their very own larp and will be paired up with one of the workshop designers (there will eventually be more than those listed below!), who will act as a larp coach, to help them continue the process after they go back to their own library.

Organization:

The three main designers of this (who have already agreed to present) are:

Jason Morningstar is probably one of the best-known game designers in the United States. If you have played Fiasco, the best-selling indie RPG, you have played one of Jason’s games. Jason is the lead designer at Bully Pulpit games, the designer of not only Fiasco, but games that focus on education and history, such as Night Witches, a game that teaches about the lives of Russian female fighter pilots in World War II. Jason also designs larps and experiences for staff training all over the world, including Google. In addition to all of this, Jason has his MLIS from UNC Chapel Hill!

Jessica Hammer is a professor of Learning Science at Carnegie Melon University in Pittsburgh, where she specialized in using role-playing games to improve student comprehension and engagement. She also is the co-designer of the game Rossentrasse, a game that teaches about the experience of the civil disobedience among Jewish communities in Germany in the lead up to World War II. It was a finalist for best Non-Digital Game at the educational game conference Meaningful Play.

Kate Hill is the electronic resources librarian at UNC Greensboro. In her other life, she designs larps and is a larp community organizer based out of Durham North Carolina. She has developed educational larps to help librarians with public speaking and is the editor of an anthology of larps designed to teach about resistance movements throughout history.

Contact Information:

Kate Hill

University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Kmhill6@uncg.edu

1. Chen, Sande (2016) “The World According to Edu-larps: The Analog Learning Games”. Games and Learning. https://www.gamesandlearning.org/2016/02/18/the-world-according-to-edu-larps-the-analog-learning-games/

1. Short Session Description: Much like one cannot simply walk into Mordor, library staff cannot expect its outreach efforts to be successful without proper planning and consideration. Yet at the same time, library staff cannot be bogged down in the Dead Marshes of planning minutiae every time outreach opportunities present themselves. Libraries need events that are quick to create and easily scalable. Enter the pop-up event, the golden ring in the library’s vest pocket. Join us as we venture to assemble the perfect library pop-up event in the style of an engrossing role-playing card game. An unexpected journey? Perhaps. A rewarding end product worthy of a Hobbit-style party in the Shire? Most assuredly!
2. Session Style/Format – Role playing, hands-on/small group activity and discussion
3. Takeaways: Participants will be divided into small groups and play a carefully constructed card game that challenges them to work as a team to efficiently craft a coherent and interactive library pop-up event. Teams will quest to assemble key elements of an effective library pop-up including a display of relevant items, inviting tablescape, paper-based activity, giveaways, and social media marketing. Participants will leave the session not only with a host of practical tips from one another regarding pop-up planning, but also a booklet chock full of pop up ideas, best practices, and checklists that will further expedite the pop-up planning/implementation process in any library setting.
4. Organization. Fully formed
5. Contact Information – Victoria Orzechowski, vorzechowski@sciencehistory.org

1- Short Session Description. (~100 words)

Grab your tinker tools for this session about building games for libraries! In this make session you will learn the basics of game design for library instruction and training. The presenter will share examples of games created for libraries, including games she has collaborated on creating. We will spend the rest of the session brainstorming game ideas to meet your own library's learning objectives and creating a working prototype!  Participants will leave the session with a prototype for a board game or card game. Materials for creating prototypes will be provided (including dice and game pieces). 

2- Session Style/Format (e.g. lightning talks, make/hack/play session, etc.)

Make session

3- Takeaways: Describe any takeaways, skills, outcomes, and/or interactive elements!

Understanding of basics of game design for libraries. 

Interactive activity: building game prototypes and collaborating with the presenter and other attendees.

A game prototype will be taken away from the session!

4- Organization. Fully formed (i.e. you have people in mind or chosen to co-organize) or will you initiate a CFP for co-organizers/presenters?

I will be facilitating the session. Some of my colleagues may co-facilitate the game prototyping phase of the session.

5- Contact Information - Name of primary contact + email!!!

Allison Shepard - allison@utk.edu