Character Defining: a library journaling game #LILAC26

The next session I will blog from the LILAC information literacy conference is Character Defining: a library journaling game about creating characters from the unexpected connections between books presented by David Smith (University of the Arts, London). The abstract is here and Smith's blog with a detailed account of the initiative (and material you can download) is at https://daspgcert.myblog.arts.ac.uk/
Smith explained that it started with the idea of the game genre solo journaling, where you are prompted to create characters and story for a role playing game, and then thinking about how this could be used to help people explore books they would not otherwise look at.
A library move had led to a weeding exrecise, but some of the books were worthwhile to read even if they hadn't been used for a while. Smith thought of making interaction with these underused books into an event - preferably fun - and thus the idea of a game. Smith mentioned Andrew Walsh's book on teaching through games and play. He was also influenced by work on serendipity and by counselling interventions that involved role play. Smith's aim was to enable people to seek out roles and stories that were not like their own, including developing conversations about decolonisation.
An exemplar game is The Last Teashop. The principles for Smith's game involved developing a character by developing the characters/stories of others in the character's life (a mentor, love interest, rival family member), so the character's story was developed through their relationship with others. These other characters were developed through random interaction with the books that had been scheduled for weeding out.
Smith acted as games master in the trial run - summing up he is certainly going to run something similar, but not exactly the same as there were logistics difficulties (books falling over), players needing more support etc. However, positives included the interaction in sharing the characters and stories, in players getting interested in some of the books and topics, and players creating a diverse, complex range of characters, locations and stories. The gaming aspect also stretched players' imagination.
An example of a follow up was a project set up for MA Publishing students "Decolonising the archive". They took a selection of books and created a scenario where Smith and another librarian roleplayed strict/misleading librarians, with fake catalogue cards and the books hidden in a cupboard. This made the students into scholars who were investing the accuracy of the records and interacting with the books. Another initiative is using the library's photobook collection as prompts for sound art projects.