Real World Skills in Online Environments

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Many librarians are probably familiar with designing programs that build developmental assets. We help build youth assets like leadership, helping others, and succeeding in school so that there is less of a chance that teens will make destructive choices such as vandalism and drugs.

You may even have heard of asset building in Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMORPGs) and Multi User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) such as World of Warcraft, Entropia Universe, Teen Second Life and more. This article in the May Harvard Business Review, Leadership’s Online Labs, talks about how real world transference can occur as a result of game play – from being leaders in online games to being leaders in the work world. Read More →

WOWhead Webcomic

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Ok I’m a webcomic fanatic. You caught me. Today I came across a strip about the MMORPG game World of Warcraft. It talks about a site called WOWhead that has information about quests, equipment, and locations in wow. Its one of the only sites with this information that isn’t run by a gold farmer.

After I read the strip I realized that libraries could stand to be more like WOWhead. Your website doesn’t have to have a flashy interface. Rather its important to have content cross organized in about 4-5 different ways. This is part of what I think library 2.0 is about.

Lately we focus on providing content where teens are at, but we can’t forget that websites we have must be easy to navigate for everyone.

On a side not I’m curious what does your library call databases so that the patrons/customers/users know what they are?