What a hectic fall. I haven’t had the chance to post lately with all that has been going on. Along with my brilliant colleague, Andy Austin, I helped present a workshop in NYC on Drupal in Libraries. If you are unfamiliar with Drupal, it is an open-source content management system that allows you the freedom and flexibility to build something more than just a website.

Drupal is what I have been using this last month to build the new School Library System Game Library site that will be coming out after Thanksgiving Break. I am very excited about the new website. All the games in the game library (we made a small purchase this fall of new games to bring us close to 50 titles) will be cataloged and circulated through the website. But more importantly, they will all be tagged and searchable based on both the New York State Learning Standards and the AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner.

Even more exciting, and what has been soooo time consuming, is that all the games will be tagged at the performance indicator level for the NYS Learning Standards. That fine grained level of alignment is going to be remarkably powerful in helping connect educators with games. Be sure to check the new site after the Thanksgiving break!

I also had the pleasure of being involved with three presentations at this year’s ALA TechSource Gaming, Learning and Libraries Symposium in Chicago at the beginning of November. If you did not have the chance to attend, please consider going next year. The opportunity to come together with other librarians from a myriad of areas and library types to discuss how gaming influences and impacts library services is a rare and precious opportunity.

The last bit of news is that, along with my colleague Christopher Harris, I am going to be writing a book for ALA on modern board games and libraries. Our focus will be on the value of games as educational resources. We plan on including all the alignment work we have been doing, our selection criteria for getting started, tips for advocacy and getting programs going in your library and much more. While the alignment work lends itself to school libraries, the book should hold value for public and academic libraries as well who are looking for a resource that covers tabletop games.

Whew! I will be sure to start writing about some more great games very soon now that the storm has calmed. Keep gaming and gobble gobble gobble!