Talking with Eli Neiburger

In the world of gaming in libraries, Eli Neiburger, associate director of IT and product development at Ann Arbor District Library, MI, is a name to conjure with. His 2007 book, Gamers…in the LIBRARY?! The Why, What, and How of Videogame Tournaments for All Ages (ALA Editions), is essential for anyone interested in the subject.

LJ 2006 Mover & Shaker Beth Gallaway (Information Goddess Consulting) calls Neiburger "a gaming evangelist." At Ann Arbor and elsewhere across the country, he has orchestrated gaming tournaments, led workshops, moderated online forums, and worked with libraries to launch gaming programs.

He's also the producer of Ann Arbor's gtsystem (wiki.gtsystem.org), a set of free web tools for managing gaming events that is unifying tournament play among libraries in this country and around the world.

Neiburger is currently writing a book tentatively titled Did You Reboot IT?! Inside and Beyond the Library IT Culture Wars, to be published by ALA Editions in summer 2010. Follow him on Twitter: @ulotrichous.

What would you say to those apprehensive about holding tournaments at their libraries because of the effort involved?

That vision of the library as being beyond just books (but still filled with them) is critical to establish if we want to remain valuable to our communities after our place in the content delivery chain is gone and forgotten.

Tournaments at the library are just like story time, only louder and smellier. Story time works because of the leadership, expertise, skills, and [labor] of the library staff, and no one who's ever run a story time would call it easy or say it didn't require effort or preparation. Tournaments are structured activities that require leadership and effort, like any library program.

And librarians who feel they can't do all that?

It would take as much effort to learn what's needed to run a successful Pokémon tournament in two weeks as it would to learn enough about Ulysses to lead a book discussion in two weeks. That impulse—I can't do this!—is right on the money.

However, you are literally surrounded by [mostly] teenage experts who know everything they need to know and have the passion, enthusiasm, expertise, and time to make it happen.

Many library people are stuck in a 20th-century authority model, unwilling or unable to make use of the audience as a critical resource. Be the facilitator for the space, the resources, and the ground rules and help [your users] assemble their own organization.

Gamers was published two years ago. What have you learned since then that you'd include in an updated and revised edition?

The whole interlibrary play angle is a really big deal and adds so much to any event. You can link up over the Internet with another library running a similar event, keep track of wins and losses, and you've got an instant crosstown or cross-country tournament without the complexity of brackets or matchups or leaderboards.

It's the best of both worlds, and it's not an experience users can get at home. I hope to continue to grow this over the next several years and get to some critical mass, not just nationally but internationally, making use of the gtsystem.

Many critics of gaming in libraries argue we should just offer massages or DIY equipment if all that matters is getting people in the door. How do we respond?

There's really no point in engaging this view. It's intentionally divisive, and it appeals only to those who have already made up their minds.

Video games are a dominant form of content in our society. Gaming events at libraries give patrons who are interested in that dominant form of content an opportunity to explore that interest socially.

The broader the range of opportunities the library presents, the broader the range of patrons who will benefit from the library's resources.

As an IT person and a man in the gaming-in-libraries environment, what advice do you have for those of us coming from the traditional librarian stereotype of bookish female who might happen to be a gamer?

Kids [especially] see the library as an extension of school; our strength is that they're wrong, and we can prove it!

Establish a relationship that is totally nonteacherly and focus on the content. Don't forget how easy it is for teenagers to become embarrassed or how quickly they can decide that something is lame. Let them decide what they want to learn about, and they'll realize that the library is what they make of it.