Community building through a public library Minecraft Gaming Day

Abstract

Minecraft is a popular building block game ubiquitous in the cultural landscape of young people. Noticing a gap in traditional library programs for virtual games such as Minecraft, children and youth services librarians at North Melbourne Library developed a collaborative Minecraft Gaming Day between librarians and young library patrons. The Minecraft Gaming Day was a uniquely creative experience linking traditional library service provision with socialisation, identity and the building of community. It challenged the traditional programming approach for young people and creating a program with young people, allowing young people to have a role in library programming, treating them as valued community members, and giving them the ability to contribute their vision to the future of library services. The combination of digital and real play spaces gave the young community a positive, educational and active way to participate in library programming and demonstrated how young people and librarians can work together to creatively help public libraries support their communities and promote social inclusion and literacy building. This article is based on ethnographic research drawing from empirical data, including staff evaluations and a focus group conducted with five young people involved with the planning and implementation of the program.

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