MEET THE GAMERS. (cover story)

SOCIOLOGY of technology; VIDEO games; ELECTRONIC games; LIBRARIES & community; INFORMATION technology; COMPUTER literacy; COMPUTERS & civilization; PROBLEM solving

The article profiles computer games and computer game players. Why pay attention to games? For starters, games are the "medium of choice" for many Millennials, with broad participation among the 30 and under population. Although part of a web of new media, technology, and social shifts, games are the quintessential site for examining these changes. Game cultures promote various types of information literacy, develop information seeking habits and production practices (like writing), and require good, old-fashioned research skills, albeit using a wide spectrum of content. In short, librarians can't afford to ignore gamers. knowledge seeking and creation is common in digital spaces. Groups of people from around the world solve problems with an array of information, digital tools, resources, screen shots, and arguments. Commercial developers, doctoral students, and 16-year-olds in Nebraska play, think, and learn together. Research is a core component of game play. Gamers find and interpret data to determine where the best hunting is, for example. They also publish results through game forums (official sources) and clan forums (unofficial sources) and build spreadsheet models to compare the effectiveness of strategies. For a generation raised with the Internet, instantaneous access to both information and the social networks for which that information is relevant is the norm. How can librarians respond to this gamer world? One option is to develop a deeper understanding of emergent digital literacies and find ways to put library cultures into conversation with gaming cultures. INSET: Let's Play!.