The relationship between gaming and education, and more specifically, between gaming and libraries, is of growing interest. John Kirriemuir has a background working with digital library initiatives and is currently researching gaming environments and behavior in an educational context.
He has an article in the current D-Lib magazine talking about games and information services.
Though digital library systems and online games provide extremely different services, there is much that the development community of each could learn from the other. Both types of “always on” service, used by millions of people, involve simultaneous participation by many distributed online people, accessing and affecting large quantities of data. Technical, interface, and communication attributes from online games are of relevance to the developers of online information and commercial services. Some tools, developed for games, are being used by such services. It will be interesting to see whether there will be a further take-up, or cross-pollination, of concepts, technologies and ideas between these sectors. [Parallel Worlds: Online Games and Digital Information Services]
