Creation and Implementation of a Game-Type Library Guidance Conducted Online

Abstract

The author’s research team has been conducting “Libardry” a game-type library guidance program to learn how to use university libraries. However, in the fiscal year 2020, university libraries had to be closed due to the influence of preventing the spread of the new coronavirus. Under these circumstances, many university libraries attempted to provide library guidance online. In the same way, the author’s research team tried to create a library guidance “Libardry Form” which does not rely on any paid tools or special skills. Based on the research team’s prior experiences with game-type library guidance, we conducted an exploratory study to understand the game’s impact on library learning. Concretely, for a trial survey of the features of the “Libardry Form” we recruited eleven university students during classes taught by the first author and thirty-one participants from the general public via SNS. After playing the game, we asked the participants to fill out a questionnaire. Thirty-three respondents (78.6%) preferred our game-type library guidance to the more common video-type guidance. We also asked the eleven university students who experienced the game to cooperate with us for additional pre- and post-surveys and analyzed the results of the eight valid responses we received. We found that it was difficult to recognize the influence of the “Libardry Form” on sophomore and junior students who had used university libraries before. Contrastingly, although it is not possible to generalize the results due to the small number of valid responses, the results indicate that the “Libardry Form” may improve the understanding of freshmen who have little experience using university libraries.