What on earth does geocaching have to do with libraries?
In response to my posts about the geocaching program at my library, I received an email this morning from a librarian who, upon sharing the geocaching presentation with another librarian, was greeted with, “What are the literacy outcomes of geocaching?” in a sort of “don’t we have better/more important things to be worrying about?” kind of way.
Her question to me was, “How do I respond to this?”
Here is my response (with a few links added for the post), with permission from the correspondee. It’s not short, but I think it’s a quick read:
Hmmm. I’m trying to think of a concise way to respond to this comment, but it sounds like there needs to be a backstory for this person to go beyond the “books == literacy” mentality. So here’s me thinking out loud; feel free to use whatever you like in here to help your response.
Geocaching teaches problem solving skills, environmental awareness and conservation, health and exercise, treading lightly on the earth, and using the internet and gadgetry (quickly becoming an everyday fixture in people’s lives). Geocaching is *information* literacy as much as it is a fun game.
At Reading Public Library, the caches placed by the Children’s Department are part and parcel with the myriad activities offered as part of our summer reading program that make it so popular that people from surrounding towns come to register for *our* summer program instead of with their home libraries (you can check out the calendar on our site and the children’s section of the site for information about our program, which changes every year).
The caches help make kids and parents aware of town forest lands they never knew existed, gets them outside on a nice day, and gets them excited to come *back* the library to announce triumphantly, “We found it!” And, if you look at the pictures of the presentation, the kids totally dig the hands-on and toy gadgetry part of it, and it changes the image of a librarian from a funny duddy to someone they think is smart, cool, and someone they can relate to.
People see articles about geocaching in the newspaper (like, say, this very recent article in the Boston Globe
), and they want to know more. What better place to go than the library, right? Alas, most people don’t even think to call the library to borrow a free book, so the likelihood of them calling us, unless we let them know we actually know something on what appears to be a very technological topic, is minimal.
All too often, libraries are focused on, and known for, one very specific type of literacy: reading, books, education. While this does meet the needs of a specific audience that shouldn’t be ignored, it pretty much ignores the rest of the constituency, which can’t possibly find a reason to go to the library in the first place. We’re a public good for all of the public, not just the neediest.
As a case in point, I have a Question up on my Facebook account right now that asks:
Be as pie in the sky as you want: What product or service would encourage you to visit and/or use your local public library (especially if you don’t use your library now)?
I’m getting answers like “space to play D&D,” “career info,” “proximity to where I am” from the elusive 25-40 year old group. Now, granted, this isn’t a very wide sampling, but one of the things you don’t see in the answers, and something I don’t often hear from non-library friends when we chat about it, is “more books”. Most of these people buy their own books, get Netflix delivered to their door or computer, download music instead of borrowing CDs, and (used to, before I entered the profession and changed their minds) think that librarians were mean and not worth talking to.
While libraries are focusing on the traditional values, the world is passing us by. The world is *far* from traditional anymore. Grandparents send email to grandkids, kids need help finding a better supplement of information on their papers than Wikipedia, and social networking sites are binding the next generation of internet users to each other for information networking,
leaving librarians who don’t get involved knee-deep in the culture (as opposed to just, say, networking with each other) out of the loop. Bringing in the 25 to 40-somethings (and their kids, if they have them), who have the motivation to make change everywhere else in their lives, might motivate action in them to save libraries, because they’ll suddenly see that there’s a public good in it for them, too.
And, besides all this, what about fun? Can’t there just be fun at the library? Fun and games are an integral part of learning, and libraries are only just now catching on with gaming in the library, and even that’s not enough. Our loud children’s room, with it’s baskets of crayons, toys and books everywhere, DDR for little kids to learn at their own pace, story times on laps and in pajamas, movie showings, and never *ever* a quiet moment, is a testament to how fun is what really brings kids to the Reading Public Library. If they just wanted books, their parents would come in without them.
If we’re going to make that successful transition from an irrelevant institution to a place people care to save, we need to stop just warehousing books and start interacting in the new information economy. Which, heaven’s forbid, might include fun.
Tags: librarianship, technology, work
