Playing games and growing trees … not sucking lemons

We like to bring an element of active learning, including fun and games, into our information literacy teaching when we can, whether that is using crosswords, treasure hunts, or light hearted videos, but we hadn’t before brought games, along with the technology and social nature of web 2.0, into the core of the library. We’re currently changing this and have introduced a social, online game based around using the library resources.

There are many applications which turn everyday tasks into chances to win points, badges and other virtual rewards, and share them with your social networks. Location based networks typify this idea, with networks such as Foursquare (http://foursquare.com) allowing you to ‘check in’ to various locations, to share that activity with friends, become ‘Mayor’ of a location or win badges for different types of activity. A more extreme version of this ‘gamification’ of everyday activity is Epic Win (http://www.rexbox.co.uk/epicwin/), which allows you to create a ‘to do’ list and play that list as though it is a game, gaining rewards for completing each task.

Lemon Tree takes these ideas of virtual rewards and inbuilt social networks and turns common interactions with the library into a game. Users are able to link Lemon Tree to their library record, winning points and badges by activities such as taking books out, leaving comments on books, attending library inductions and accessing our information skills materials. They build their own social network within Lemon Tree, but the system also links to existing networks such as Twitter and Facebook.

The rewards users can gain through Lemon tree are developing as we see what works and what our users enjoy. We are particularly interested in engaging those people who we know come into our library, but borrow very few books and rarely access our electronic resources.