Community building in complex settings: exploration based on Swiss multi-library initiatives for gamifiers

Abstract

The small country of Switzerland doesn’t lack of complexity: its cultural and language differences (German, French and Italian) can cause hardships in the process of community building among professionals . The aim of our contribution is to explore the topic of community building, based on the example of two specific initiatives targeted at library professionals regarding the gamification of information literacy training. These initiatives were conducted by AGIK (the “Working group on information literacy in Swiss higher education institutions” association) . First, in 2020, AGIK organized a workshop about learning through play and its applications to information literacy . The next year, the association facilitated a game jam around the new Swiss common discovery tool “swisscovery”. About fifty librarians took part in these activities, which resulted in the production of a directory of examples of games from and for higher education libraries, a checklist of best practices for sharing games in Open Access, and three game prototypes that will be presented briefly. This example will serve as a contextualization for the main part of the workshop, where participants will explore four topics that we experienced to be key in regard to building communities in complex settings, especially for communities dedicated to innovative information literacy practices . These topics are: • Fostering creativity and innovation in information literacy training • Ensuring the existence of a safe space where differences are treasured • Enhancing collaboration to produce common tools and resources across librarians and libraries • Planning for long term sustainability of communities and resources they created Participants will dig into their own experiences to share their input . At the end of the workshop, the results of the discussions will be gathered and briefly presented. We will share the compiled output after the conference with anyone who is interested,