Library Land Meets Toy Nation

This past week, I had an opportunity to attend the Building our Future Toy Conference hosted by Playthings Magazine and Richard Gottlieb. This was an incredibly positive experience with about 25 people in a room taking a very honest look at the next 5 to 10 years in an industry. As someone more familiar with Library Land than Toy Nation, it was a huge honor to be invited to head to NYC to represent the ALA Gaming and Literacy grant.

Here are some quick takeaways:

• Libraries have rather a lot in common with the toy industry. Both of us are working on finding a connection between our “traditional” backgrounds and an increasingly digital future. Just as libraries have struggled with redefining the term “library” to move beyond just books, the toy industry is searching for ways to broaden the potential reach for “toys” beyond children (especially in the face of “adult toy” having other meanings). The internet doesn’t replace everything in a library just as video games and electronic toys don’t replace the need for blocks and other traditional toys. For both of our worlds this is more of a perceptual problem than anything else.
• We both need to do a better job on research. The video game industry, especially the serious games movement, have a great deal of research and prominent professors supporting their goals. Where are the studies about the power of play with analog toys or modern board games? While libraries have more studies to support our value, we are rather guilty of trying to sneak extra mileage out of minor correlations based on anecdotal evidence. I am hopeful that our system’s game library can work towards some research that will support both libraries and toys/games/play for learning.
• There was quite a bit of excitement around the table as I talked about toy libraries. A well-established model around the world, toy libraries are much less organized here. This is something I need to look into a bit more to share back with the toy group. I know, for example, that at least one of our member school libraries has a collection of toys available for borrowing. My guess is that this is more common than one might expect, but falls under that crowded heading of “Things Librarians Need to Market Better.”

Hopefully there will be much more to follow in this thread as I continue to work between the very similar worlds of libraries, toys, and board games. Really, we are all connected (and have been for quite a while) but somehow we just didn’t realize it. So, if you have some stories to share about a lending library of toys please let me know so I can share it forward.

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