 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. We broadcast the show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time, but if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We do record the show as we're doing today, and you can watch the recording later at your convenience, and I will show you at the end of today's show where you can access all of our recordings. Both the live show and the recordings are free and open for anyone to watch, so please do share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone you think might be interested in any of the topics we have on Encompass Live. For those of you not from Nebraska, the Nebraska Library Commission is the state agency for libraries, similar to other state-state libraries. So we provide services to all types of libraries, so you will find shows at Encompass Live for all types of libraries. Public, academic, K-12, corrections museums, archives, anything and everything. Really, our only criteria is it's something to do with libraries. We do book reviews, interviews, mini-training sessions, demos of services and products, all sorts of things. We sometimes have Nebraska Library Commission staff do presentations about resources or services we offer here through the Commission, but we also bring in guest speakers, and that is what we have today. Well, this morning is Ethan Nelson. Good morning, Ethan. Good morning. And he is from our lead Scott's Bluff Public Library out in western Nebraska, and he is going to talk about this board game club that he started up at their small library. This is definitely a topic that is near and dear to my heart. My husband, myself, our friends were big tabletop board gamers, so I always love to see libraries doing this and getting more people involved in the activities. So, I will hand it over to you, Ethan, to tell us all about what you did in Scott's Bluff. All righty, yeah, thanks for having me, Krista, and I'm really excited to be here and share what we did at the Scott's Bluff Public Library with introducing a board game program. So a little bit about me. I'm currently a library assistant at the lead Scott's Bluff Public Library here in western Nebraska. Right now I'm looking on my masters of library science at the University of Missouri. Yay, another librarian. Thank you so much for joining me today, and I'm really excited to talk about two of my favorite things, libraries and board games. I discovered my love of board games at college. Before college I had always kind of viewed board games as just a way to pass the time with family when there's nothing really better to do. Especially when compared to video games, most board games to me felt kind of old fashioned and boring. But when I got to college, I saw a poster for a board game group that was run by students and community members, and I thought I'd try it out. It was kind of a difficult time of transition for me when I moved across the country away from my family in hometown, and the board game group really allowed me to become part of a fun, supportive and engaging community. I think board games can provide that kind of community at libraries as well. I found that board games create a really unique social space in a world that's increasingly being dominated by technology. Most of our interactions with other people are mediated by technology in some ways. But board games allow people to interact face to face, use their creativity to collaborate and solve problems, and build an atmosphere of shared fun that's difficult to find anywhere else. So today I'd like to go over some reasons why I think board games are important. How to start a board game group at a small library. My favorite games to play at the library. Some gaming program ideas for small libraries that won't break the budget and how to make library board game programs inclusive. I'll also go over some of the resources that really helped me when I was designing our libraries. So first of all, I'd like to pose the question. Why devote the time resources and funds to start a board game group at your library. When there are so many different projects programs and events that require funding. Why do board games stand out as something for libraries to invest in. First, let's take a look at the science. There's an increasing amount of research being done on board games and their benefits. One review conducted at Penn State in 2020 reviewed 44 scientific studies on board games and this is what the paper concluded. Board games are spaces for mathematical learning, social interactions, computational thinking, and for engaging in multiple practices. Board games also enable, enable learning of various content and can motivate players to learn more about a topic. Indeed, board gameplay facilitated the understanding of complex concepts such as engineering, finance and science. Another paper from 2019 reviewed 27 studies and this is what the authors concluded. Board games and programs that use board games have positive effects on various outcomes, including educational knowledge, cognitive functions, physical activity, anxiety, ADHD symptoms and the severity of Alzheimer's disease. Additionally, board games were shown to contribute to improving these variables, enhancing the interpersonal interactions and motivation of participants and promoting learning. I knew that studies had been done and research has been done about board. I didn't know so many. The first one said 40 studies that were used for reviewed in that one. Yeah, I was really surprised when I was doing research for this presentation. Just how much, how many studies have been done on board games? That's awesome. Most of it has been pretty recent in the last few years. Good. We need up to date info, absolutely. So some of these other studies have found that board games have other positive benefits. For example, studies have shown that board games can be used as health education tools. Board games can help reduce cognitive impairment and can reduce levels of depression and playing board and card games is associated with reduced declines and cognitive function later in life. Research has also demonstrated that board games can be effective intervention aids with particular groups that have specific needs. For example, one study shown that playing board games with others can decrease the language anxiety of English as a second language students. Another study demonstrated that playing games such as go and improve the cognitive function of children with ADHD. From my personal experience, board games are great tools for fostering positive social interaction and developing communication skills. One teenage patron that regularly comes to our board game group told me that playing games helps with his anxiety and makes him feel less anxious. I think board games have the potential to help people with anxiety and depression, especially when the anxiety stems from social isolation or social anxiety. Board games could be great tools or intervention aids help treat ADHD, dementia, Alzheimer's, other mental illnesses. Board games also offer structured environments for people to interact face to face without using phones, computers or other devices that might cause alienation and social interactions. I think that in an increasingly atomized and isolated society, people are looking for ways to connect with others and develop communities and social relations that aren't mediated by technology. While video games are great and I love video games, they tend to be played alone and most of the social interaction in online games is mediated by screens or microphones. Board games provide social spaces to make friends, develop social skills and meet new people in a relaxed environment without the anxieties and other issues that come with phones, computers and screens. I also love board games because they can cross generational, linguistic, cultural and economic divisions. If you have a group of people of different ages, cultural backgrounds, political views and even different languages, a board game can bring them all together with a shared goal and a shared set of rules. I've seen this a lot at my library's board game group, especially with older players and younger players getting together to play a game. A group of people who know nothing else about each other and learn about each other and get to know one another in a relaxed, non-threatening environment through board games. Furthermore, board games have the potential to be powerful teaching tools. Board games can either be passive or active teaching instruments. Most board games are passive teaching tools in that they do not actively try to teach lessons, but simply by playing the game, you can learn something. You could learn new words by playing Scrabble, for instance, or you could learn about logic and deduction by playing Mastermind or the Resistance. Forbidden Island is a cooperative game that can teach you how to work with others. Fall Monopoly can teach you how to negotiate while imparting some simple economic principles. And Hanabi is a great card game to help improve memory skills, logic, pattern recognition and counting skills. Other board games can actively teach lessons. For example, a children's game that I found through my research called Consequences helps teach children how to take responsibility for their actions. Another children's game called Monster Stop actively teaches kids how to control anger, fear and anxiety. There are also a ton of great educational book-based board games, such as the Peep the Cat games for kids, Meow Match, Cool Cat Math Game and Perfect Pairs, for example. There are also great teaching games for teens and adults as well. Take a game called Cytosis, a game that teaches you about cell biology. And Prime Climb is a math game that requires you to use division, multiplication, addition and subtraction to make your way around the game board. I'll include links to all these games at the end of the slides as well. Now that we've got over some of the reasons why board games are important, I'd like to describe how to start a board game program and offer some tips for starting and running a board game club at your life. As you probably know, promotion is everything for starting a new library program. Fliers, posters, press releases, newspaper stories and local TV and radio stations are great ways to get the word out. You might want to find community board game groups and reach out to them to promote the library's board game program. Schools, home school groups, local colleges, coffee shops and grocery stores are also great places to advertise. Here's a few examples of the ways I've promoted our library board game club. I went on our local TV station, I did an interview with the newspaper, I made flyers and posters to put around town, and we also went out on all our social media platforms. Once you've promoted your new club, facilitating a board game club meeting is the next and probably most important step. Now facilitating a board game group meeting is more of an art than a science. Your goal in facilitating isn't necessary to necessarily to just play games, but rather you should greet people, show them the different types of games your library has, help them pick games that are appropriate for them, teach the game to them if they need help, and make sure everyone has someone to play with. If someone is by themselves and doesn't have anyone else to play with, I'll play a game with them or try to find a group that they can join. It's helpful to have at least read the rules for most of the games you have beforehand, so that you can help teach the games to people. However, the best way to teach games is to learn them by playing them. It's much easier to teach games to people if you've already played them. It's also helpful to have a few volunteers or other staff members on hand to help teach games and play with them. This is something I've learned as our board game group has been growing. It started with about four people to eight people coming to each board game group meeting, but the last meeting we had about 34 people. And so with me running it by myself, it's getting a little hectic, so it would be helpful to have like other staff members there and other volunteers to help teach games to people. Next, I think it would be great to network with your local board game group and invite them to get involved. It would be invaluable to have several experienced board gamers to help when you start your board game. Experienced gamers can help teach games to people and can make a board game event run smoothly. You might be able to find local board games groups on Facebook and other social media. You can also network and possibly partner with local video and board game stores in your area if you haven't. This is one thing. Another thing that I've learned is that we actually have a local board game group in western Nebraska that I didn't know existed before. They actually reached out to me over Facebook and now that we've connected, I've kind of gotten them involved in our board game group as well, which is really cool to get that community involvement. Another lesson I've learned from running a board game group at a public library is that a board game group isn't necessarily about me or what games I want to play. At board game group meetings, there will be many people with vastly different preferences in the types of games they like to play. Some people only want to play chess or other people only like scrabble or card games. It's really important to be respectful of people's preferences when encouraging them to try new games or different types of games. If someone only wants to play a game like Kribbage, for example, and nobody else wants to play that game at the meeting, I'll take time to play a few rounds with that person to make sure that everyone has a good experience at the event. Next, it's also good to have a list of the library's board game collection for people to look at, especially if your library is circulating. You could also create info sheets for the board games in your collection. On the game info sheets, you can include information such as how complex the game is, how many people can play it, what types of skills the game teaches, and a short description or summary of the game. This helps people see how many games are in your collection and makes it easy for them to find new games to try out. This is the list of board games I made, and these are some examples of the info sheets I designed for our board game collection. Another idea I've come up with recently is to lay out all your games ordered from least complex to most complex during your board game group meetings. At one of our board game clubs, a family tried to play a really complex game called Cosmic Encounter. It looks like a simple, fun game set in outer space, but it actually takes quite a lot of time to learn the rules, especially if you've never played it before. Another time, a group of young kids took out a game called Terraforming Mars and ended up just throwing the pieces at each other, which wasn't ideal. If you know anything about Terraforming Mars, you know it's a really complicated game that takes a long time to learn and play. It's not a great choice for super energetic nine-year-old kids. So organizing the games by complexity at your board game group meetings will help people find games that are best suited for them and their individual preferences. As you can see here, I kind of organized the most complex games on one end of the table with chess, risk, and Terraforming Mars, and then put all the kind of easier games on the other. And it's also really important to have a variety of different games for people to play at your board game group meetings. I like to have a bunch of short filler games, like some card games, or just some games too, that only take a few minutes, and it's also good to have a selection of longer, more complicated games. I think it's also, I like the fact too that you've got some of the classic games like risk and whatnot that, you know, we may know and remember from our childhood. I mean, the board game industry is just booming and there are all these new games like Terraforming Mars and Azul and whatnot that you have on there. But I wonder if some people who are not as into the board game world would be comfortable with these new fancy games. But I think it's great you have some of the ones they'll recognize that they're, it's all the same, they're in there too. Yeah, that was definitely one thing we consciously thought about when we were buying all our games is that we really wanted all the classic games, like even like chess and checkers and risk, monopoly, the game of life, those types of games. So that people who aren't so familiar with the newer games won't be intimidated when they come and think that they want to play and hopefully as they come to more meetings, they'll try out some of the newer games as well. Another idea that you could have at your board game group meetings is to have a featured game or a few featured games that you teach to everyone at the meeting. So that way we could get a big group game go in or, you know, everyone would learn the game and be able to play the game together or check out the game and take it back to their families. And snacks are also great to have at board game meetings. I usually have water and coffee, as well as some smaller snacks like cookies granola bars and food snacks, just some finger food that that doesn't get too messy. Another way to attract new people to a board game club and keep them returning is to give outdoor prizes. And you don't even have to go out and buy an expensive board game for the prize, you can always just make your own. These are some examples of some mugs I made on our cricket mug press to use for door prizes. You can also find local businesses that might be willing to donate prizes. For example, a local candy company here generously donated a lot of candy for us to use as prizes for library program. I also want to emphasize that there's no one correct way to run a library board game. What works here at the Scots Bluff library may not be appropriate for your library, your community. Scots Bluff is a smaller library that serves about community of 14,000 people. So, if you're in a bigger community, you might need different types of board games or a bigger board game collection. I want to experiment with running an adults board game group and a board game group specifically for families and kids. Right now our board game program is just opened for all ages. That's another reason I really love board games and running a library board game is that you can always experiment with different ways of running and facilitating. Next, I'd like to share with you some of my favorite board games to play at library board game programs. And as Christa was saying earlier, it's a really exciting time to be interested in board games, because right now we're in a golden age of board. The board game database board game geek.com has listings for over 125,000 board games. Hundreds, if not thousands of new games are coming out every year, is there is truly a game for everyone out there. Due to the increased competition in the board game market, board game designers are constantly thinking of creative new ways to design games and implement mechanisms in their games. Given that we're in a golden age of board gaming, libraries have the opportunity to introduce people to the hobby of table talking. Libraries can really expand people's understanding of what board games can offer. The games that I'll go over next are great games to introduce new people to the hobby of game. One game that I will always evangelize to new gamers or people unfamiliar with board games is Carcassonne. In Carcassonne, based on the medieval castle in the south of France, you play as feudal lords trying to build castles, roads and monasteries. Yeah, it's just one of my favorite games. You can teach it to kids, adults. I've never had a bad experience with it. So in Carcassonne, you get points for completing castles, roads, monasteries, but watch out. Other players can foil your plans by placing one of their tiles where you want to play or by placing one of their little meeples, which is what my brother always does when I'm with him. Another game I love to play with new gamers is called Forbidden Island. Forbidden Island is a cooperative game where you and your teammates must race to collect four treasures before the island sinks. Each player has a unique role and ability, so communication and collaboration is key to winning. This is a great game because it demonstrates how board games can be collaborative and not just purely competitive. The Resistance is another game that demonstrates how board games can implement different mechanisms and various styles of gameplay. The Resistance is a social deduction game that pits a team of resistance members against a team of spies of evil dystopian government. If the Resistance team can successfully pass the required number of missions, then they win, but if the missions fail, then the spies win. Since nobody knows each other's identities, spies are encouraged to lie and pretend they are really resistance members. This is a great game for a large group, and even though it's a social deduction game, players can choose how social they want to be. There's no pressure for shy players to be especially talkative or outgoing. When I think of a game to suggest to people as a better alternative to monopoly the game of life or risk, I immediately think of seven wonders. In seven wonders, you try to build your civilization through three different ages. You can trade or go to war with the civilizations next to you, so there are a lot of options for people who prefer different play styles. What I really love about Seven Wonders is that the gameplay is very predictable. Unlike Monopoly, for example, which is open-ended and can drag on forever, every game of Seven Wonders will be about the same length and will progress the same way. King of Tokyo is another game that I suggest as an alternative or upgrade to classic American games like Yahtzee. King of Tokyo implements the same dice rolling and risk-taking mechanisms of Yahtzee, but includes so much more gameplay and an incredibly creative and engaging theme. In King of Tokyo, you are a monster battling to take control of Tokyo. Conquering Tokyo has benefits, but also puts you at risk from attack by the other monsters. I love there's so many creative topics, game worlds coming up to things like this that you'd never think of. Yeah, when people like who aren't, haven't been exposed to these types of games or didn't know they exist, when they see them, like just that at our board game group, you know, people are just kind of really blown away like, wow, I didn't know games like this existed. And the cooperative games that is something that are newer is also a new concept that I like too, that everyone has to work together. You're not working against everyone, and you may all lose the game. The game may be you. For Midnight Island, that's one that we have too, and I love that one and it's other ones too. And we have lost, I think, to the game more than we've won. And that's okay. It was fun, but there's that whole thing that there's not going to be a winner. It's just everyone working together and maybe not, you know, the game may be smarter than you at one point. Yeah, that's why I really love cooperative games because they kind of have that different style of gameplay that introduces people like, oh, wow, games can be different than just monopoly where one person wins and everybody else loses. Yeah. Jaipur is another one of my just all-time favorite games. A lot of the time during board game events at your library, you may only have one person show up, or there may be one person left out while everyone else is playing a game. That's where Jaipur comes in. It's a two-player game that's incredibly simple to teach while having a surprising amount of depth and replayability. In Jaipur, you and your opponent are two merchants competing to become the most powerful traders in the city. On your turn, you only have two options. You can either buy or sell items, but there's a surprising amount of that involved. I love Azul because it's a bit more challenging and complicated than other games. It's still relatively easy to teach and learn. It's a great game for adults or precocious kids who would like a more challenging and strategic experience. In Azul, you play as competing artisans, creating mosaics for the Palace of Dvorah in Portugal. You gain points by laying tiles in specific patterns. Azul is a drafting game, which means you choose all the tiles you would like to place in advance before moving them onto your game board to score. Since everyone can see each other's moves, there are ample opportunities to foil the plans of your opponents. I recommend Azul as an alternative to classic abstract games because it's more strategic, has some really interesting mechanisms. It allows for different types of player interactions. And the theme and overall design of the game is just gorgeous, especially compared to games like that. The tiles are beautiful in that, yeah. I like Azul too. It can go very quickly. And I know when we played it, you kind of learn it the first time. And then almost every single time we've had new people play it, they say, let's do it again. Because it goes so quickly. I want to try again. And you play it like multiple times. And it's still new and fun. I also recommend these three card games that are great filler games or games that are pretty short that you can play in between bigger games. Or if you have a few people come up to your board game event, you can only be there for like 10 or 15 minutes. These card games are really great. Sushi Go is a simple pick and pass card game where the cards you pick give you points and can give you combos based on the previous cards you pick. Love Letter is a really fun role-based game where each card has a specific action. On your turn, you draw a card and play a card. So it's super easy to learn. And Hanabi is a card game where everyone else can see your hand, but you don't know what's in your own hand. This game is a little longer and is more complex, but it's another great cooperative game that can subvert people's expectations of what a card game can be. It teaches you a lot about logic that's actually a really fascinating game about logic and knowledge. There's even a whole area of philosophy called formal epistemology that studies situations that arise in games like Nobby. And here are three games that are great for young kids and middle school-aged kids that have been really popular at our level. The first game is Pete the Cat, The Missing Cupcakes Game. This one is good for preschoolers because it doesn't require any reading, and it has all the fun Pete the Cat characters as well as some really cute cupcake plating pieces. The next game is Dogman Attack of the Fleas. This game is super popular at my library, and we even had to buy another copy. It has all the fun Dogman characters, super silly, and has some simple rules designed for kids. And another great game for children is Monopoly Junior. And I honestly think this might be the best version of Monopoly. The rules are simple, the games are pretty short, and it's great for both kids and adults. The player tokens that come with the kids' versions are really fun and colorful too. Since this presentation is geared towards starting board game programs at small libraries, next I'd like to go over some different ideas of how to start a gaming program on a limited budget. Not every board game program has to be run the same way. Here at Scott's Bluff Public Library, we bought about 50 board games, we processed and cataloged them, and we have them available to be checked out. Then we have our monthly board game group, where we put out all the games for people to play. However, this approach can be expensive and time intensive, and not to mention board games do take up a lot of spaces on the shelves. So there are other options for implementing a library board game program or event. One budget friendly way to run a board game day or event is simply to ask patrons to bring their own favorite board games to play. This is an easy way to hold a game event at your library with no costs. You could also ask patrons to donate board games to your library's collection. Since we've started our board game program, several people have donated games that were in good enough condition to add to our collection. I also like to keep some donated games that aren't in great condition to bring out if we need more games at a board game. Donated games are also great to keep around for replacement costs. Another fun and budget friendly way to put on a board game event is to create board games using your library's craft supplies or maker spaces. I read an article recently called the missing piece libraries use board games to encourage critical thinking in young people in the American libraries. And this article described how the San Francisco public library use their libraries maker space to hold board game designing programs aimed at aimed at children and teens. I thought this program was really cool because it not only promoted the library's resources and maker spaces, but the kids were encouraged to design educational board games. Teens in the program designed and created a board game similar to Monopoly called life in San Francisco, luck loss game that explored inequalities and social problems in the city. A similar program was conducted at Arizona State University called play in the making where children designed educational board games. One board game that the children created in the program was about the negative effects of junk food. I think these programs demonstrate how board games can be educational tools, also allowing kids and teens to explore different important issues and problems in society. Libraries could also market their maker spaces to amateur and professional board game designers. I think it's a great opportunity because someone could relatively easily design and produce their own board games with a laser cutter 3D printer, cricket maker, and other maker space. So I do have a question, actually, because you said that you know this is officially a title of your show about making board game clubs for small libraries. You said you did purchase 40 or 50 some odd games. Where, how about getting funding? Where did you, you know, being a small library is having smaller budgets. Yeah, so I believe the funding we had was. I'm not quite sure where that came from I think it might be through grants, but out of the fundraising. We do we get fundraising from memorials that people donate to the library. We get a lot of different types of grants and I know, yeah, because I know we did. I mean, I'll, you know, full disclosure that was kind of a leading question because here at the Nebraska Library, give out grants to libraries and we did give actually libraries some board game grants this year. The library in Nebraska actually did that from us. They've got a grant to do a board game collection in their library so definitely look for that one. I just want to encourage people to look for creative places that you know this is a library improvement grant which is for programs and services of all types. So, you know, get creative and look and see if there are grants available that you could use to set up one of these if you don't have the funding you know right there. If you don't have funding like right at the moment, you know, you can always use some of these other ideas like, you know, patrons want to donate some board games and start like a reflection or you could, you know, start some community events where people bring their own games. If there's a lot of interest that could also be helpful in writing grants and getting funds to start your board game program. And all that research back up on your grant applications that you mentioned the beginning definitely. And so I also think that life size board games are also a great way to start a board game program or see if there's interest for board games at your library. Life size games are a great way to engage teens and kids and are really only limited by your creativity. Unfortunately, most traditional board games are pretty sedentary and don't let you move around very much. Life size games allow kids and teens to move around and get some exercise and teens can even use their creativity to help design the games. You can design a life size game on a pretty limited budget and he might even be able to make it entirely out of supplies at your own library, such as cardboard boxes. Some examples of life size games could be a live clue game in the library, a life size game of life, live Jumanji, life size chess, and even life size hungry hungry hippos. There's also a great encompass live recording about creating life size games called how to break up board interactive events for all ages that I'd highly recommend checking out. The presenters from the McLean County Public Library in Livermore, Kentucky described how they created life size board games on a limited budget. There's also a really good book called 52 Ready to Use Gaming Programs for Libraries published by ALA that has a lot of really creative ideas for life size board game programs. Another idea for a board game program is to hold a board game convention at your library. As board games have increased in popularity, board game conventions have become more prevalent because they allow board game enthusiasts to discover new games, find out about upcoming games, meet fellow gamers and game designers, and try out different games. There are many different ways to hold a convention. You could simply put on a day long or multi day long event where you invite patrons to come play games in your meeting room, and you could offer to teach games and talk about the different games you have. Another way to hold a convention would be to invite amateur and professional game designers to come to your library for a predetermined amount of time to show off their games. You might want to even do some sleuthing around your community. You might be surprised by how many local or amateur game designers are in your area. This is one thing that really surprised me about how many local game designers are in the Scots Bluff in western Nebraska area as I've connected with our board game group and other local board gamers around here. You might even be able to attract larger professional designers and you can kind of consider it similar to inviting an author to come talk about their book. Whether whatever type of convention you plan on holding, be sure to reach out to your local board game group if you have one and invite them to get involved. You might even be able to find a local experienced gamer who could give a talk or presentation about board games at your convention. Now that we've discussed some different ideas for library board game programs, next I'd like to talk about how to make library gaming programs as inclusive as possible for all library users. This is something I've been thinking about a lot recently as our board game program has been growing and expanding. One way to make library board game game collections more inclusive is to include games for people who have special needs or who may not be able to play traditional games. One game I found in my research is called Call to Mind Communication Game. This is a game specifically designed for people with Alzheimer's disease or dementia. This game allows people with dementia to have fun while strengthening their memories and telling stories. However, some games designed for therapeutic purposes are often pretty expensive like Call to Mind is currently around $100 on Amazon. But even though you can still find other games that aren't specifically designed for therapeutic purposes and they can still be great games for differently abled patrons. One of these games is Quirkle, which is similar to classic dominoes, but it uses big play pieces with bright colorful shapes on them, which makes it a good game for people with physical or visual impairments. Another similar game is Big Letter Bananagrams. In Bananagrams, you race to build words using a pile of letter tiles. Big Letter Bananagrams uses large tiles which are easier to handle and read. Likewise, from a cub, larger numbers edition, a game we have in our collection has large tiles with bright colors for contrast that are easy to pick up and read. For patrons who may be blind or visually impaired, some companies make special grail, tactile, and low vision versions of games. Examples include a grail version of Bananagrams, grail and low vision monopoly, tactile Sudoku, and tactile Connect4. There are a lot of great resources out there for information and guides on board games for people with specific impairments. BoardGameGeek.com is a great resource for blogs, guides, and a community of board gamers dedicated to making the hobby of board gaming as inclusive as possible. Here's a really thorough guide I found on board games for people with color blindness, for example. There are also a lot of games designed as educational or therapeutic tools specifically for children with special needs. For example, the game Stop, Relax, Think helps impulsive children learn motor control skills and express their feelings, as well as learn relaxation skills and problem solving skills. Another similar game called Monster Stomp helps children understand and overcome fear and anxiety. There are also a lot of kids games that, while not specifically designed for special needs children, are still great games for children with special needs. For example, Count Your Chickens is a cooperative counting game that doesn't require any reading. Other games like Funny Bunny, Hoot Owl Hoot, and Zingo Bingo are also great games that have very simple rules, are bright and colorful, have fun play pieces, and require little or no reading. They also promote counting and pattern recognition skills, communication and teamwork, and problem solving. I put links to all these games at the end of the slides if you're interested in learning more about them. Another way to make sure your board game program is inclusive is to make sure that the board games in your library's collection have copies of rules and languages other than English, especially if a large percentage of your library's patron base do not speak English as their first language. It's usually pretty easy to find copies of rules and other languages online for most games. I might want to look into buying copies of games in other languages as well if you have a significant population of patrons who speak a language other than English. But most games, and especially abstract games, don't have much written language on the game boards and pieces. So usually a copy of the rules and the other language or languages will suffice. I'm glad you brought that up because somebody actually had asked a question about that that I was going to ask. They said that we have a large non-English speaking population in our town and they wanted to know if you had any recommendations for games. Now you mentioned there was having them in other languages or at least the instructions in other languages, but they wanted to know, do you have recommendations for games that are not language dependent? What do you think would be good ones to get started with for non-English speaking? Yeah, that's a really good question. I think the game I mentioned, Quirkle is really good because there's no, it's just abstract pieces and I think most abstract games that don't have any writing on them would be great. Sure. Think of what other ones we would have been good for that. No, I think Carcassonne would be great with the rules and the other language. Yeah, anything that you said that those tiles and carcassonne are just pictures, roads and fields and towns and you don't need to read anything to know what they are, their drawings. Yeah, so anything that doesn't have words written on the board or on the pieces, yeah. Yeah, and I honestly think most board games that come out don't have a lot of writing on the pieces, so if you can, or on the game board, so you can end up copying the rule in the other language that might be sufficient. There just might be some games like Terraforming Mars or Monopoly or Cosmic Encounter that have a lot of cards with writing on them. Right, you want to avoid those definitely. Yeah, and if there is a lot of interest in those types of those heavier games, you might want to look into buying that game in the other language. And so before we end, I'd like to share some of the resources that really helped me when I was designing our board game program. First of all, there's a really excellent website called board in the library that I can't recommend enough. One of the most comprehensive sources out there for library board offers board game reviews geared towards libraries or game info sheets and sample mark records articles on collection maintenance and an amazing guide for starting and running your first first board game night library. I'd also recommend checking out the book gaming programs for all ages at the library, a practical guide for librarians by Tom Bruno. There's another really good book on library board game programs called Everyone Plays at the Library by Scott Nicholson. And I'd also highly recommend checking out 52 Ready to Use Gaming Programs for Libraries published by ALA. This book has a lot of really unique and non-traditional gaming program ideas for every budget. And lastly, I'd also recommend checking out that other encompassed live recording I mentioned earlier called How to Break Up Board Interactive Events for All Ages. This is a really great video because it shows how one small library with a limited budget created life-size board games and other interactive books. I've also included the information for all those resources here. And you can see that some of those books are available to request from the Nebraska Library Commission's online catalog. And also included all the references for those scientific papers I cited earlier. Also added the links to some of the games I talked about throughout my presentation. And I'll mention to everyone who's seeing these slides, don't try to write all this down. We will have the slides available for you after the show with the recording. So you'll have access to all of this and all the links to everything that's in here. So thank you again for listening to my presentation and I hope you found it informative and helpful. And if you have any questions about board games at your library or board games in general, please feel free to reach out in contact. I'd be more than happy to talk with you about board games, about libraries, or about anything else. I think that wraps up my presentation. And if you have any questions, I'd be more than happy to chat with you and answer your questions to the best of my ability. Yeah, awesome. Great. Thank you so much, Ethan. This was great. I think there's a lot of good tips about doing board games. I think this is something that many libraries are getting involved in, obviously. But it is, you know, where do you start? Because as you said, we are in a golden age of board games and there are just so many. It can be overwhelming. So I think having the recommendations for where to get started is very helpful. Thank you so much for that. We do have a question or two here that I am going to mention and we're going to do, but if anyone does any questions, go ahead and type into your questions section. You go to Webinar Interface, anything you want to know more about, anything you want to ask Ethan about, anything you want to, you know, ask about from a previous slide, go ahead. We do have a thanks for the ideas also from Jenny who had asked about the recommendations for games for people who don't speak English. So thank you for that. So you also have a request for you in the beginning, you mentioned you showed that you had a PDF of your library's flyer, your board game flyer for promoting that. Is that something you can share like somewhere we can either if you can post somewhere or if there's a link to somewhere of it or you can send to me and just to give people an idea of what they can do for promotion. Yeah, yeah, I can send that link to you. And also if you want to look up on Facebook, look up the lead Scots Bluff public library, you'll see all that poster will be a flyer beyond there and you can see some of the different promotion that I've done for it. Awesome. Yeah, definitely. We'll link to that too. So I'm also interested in and I know this is a lot bigger that binder you have all those one sheets for each game. If is that something that is like save somewhere or somewhere that it could be accessed or if people wanted to they could reach out to you for I don't know what would be the easiest way to look like a pretty fat binder of sheets. I do have all the like PDF file of all those files saved so yeah yeah I could definitely share that or post that somewhere, someone was interested in looking. Yeah, again a Google Drive or something like publicly shareable if if you're you know it because it looks like some pretty basic you know the short you know here's what this game is about which I think is what a lot of people need because you don't want to play a game and it looks like a cool concept or cool topic like I love Mars I love space. Let's try this terraforming Mars game then you might want to know a little more about it before you jump head first. Awesome. Alright, so got some more questions here. Ah, okay. Do you have any ideas for getting folks to join a game with others that they don't know. I guess getting strangers to play games together. Like how do you I guess that's being like a social director or Yeah, yeah, that's definitely one of the parts of facilitating a board game group meeting and that's kind of why I saying it's definitely more of an arc and a science sometimes. You know, at every, pretty much every one of our board game groups meeting we have a different group of people. So, sometimes people come in with their own groups and they're, they kind of tell they only want to play with among themselves or they come in as a family they just want to play a game with as their family, but I kind of like to try to, you know, get people to come into a big group, because I think that's really one of the best parts about board games and board game programs is that you can get a big group of people that don't know each other and then get them to play a game and kind of get to know one each other, one another. So some of the things I've done, I've just kind of watched when people are playing games and if I see that, you know, people are kind of finishing up with one of their games I'll go over and ask, Hey, do you want to join in a board game group or joining a big group or a different game we have a few other people that I'd like to play and so I just kind of ask around at the board game group and at the meetings and see if people are interested and try to get a larger game together and a lot of times people can be pretty shy and like, it's just kind of striking that balance you don't want to be like forceful left go play this game, you want to, you know, kind of ask them and maybe show them the game that you want to play and kind of tell them about it. Kind of tell them about it and the rules and everything that might be more interesting. It's, it's, it just dawned on me it can kind of be kind of like readers advisory, where you're out. Okay, what is this person's interest interests what are they interested in. And you have to say so this game is about this do you know what kind of topics do you like. And this game is about this and these people are going to play it so I know you like to read that kind of book so maybe you'd like to try and join in this and it's going to it's going to be the same kind of like your reference interview of like, let me talk to the person and find out what they're interested in how comfortable they are with doing something new or with other people and kind of leading them to what you think they might like, knowing all the games you have available. I've gone to and I've gone to like game stores and played board games people or with large groups of my friends or various groups of friends that play board games and some of the people I know and some I don't. And there's always new, you know, you always invited to a new group or something. But most people, many people are very friendly and want to teach you a new game. So I think you mentioned that you started this yourself, and then, you know, got so big, it'd be nice to have some more help or volunteers. And so maybe having some particular people who you know are big into the board gaming or getting to going to having the board gaming groups that are in your community come to the library or going to the board gaming stores and having them come. And so I think it's nice to have facilitators to because people who are really passionate, but a particular game, really want to, you know, share it with someone else and teach them and get them, you know, the new people to be passionate and love it as much as they do. I know I've been, I've been, I've experienced that myself where I just sat with some strangers and like, I don't know, show me and like, oh it's this this this now you do that and it's great here figure that out and then they kind of do it themselves. That's a, I hadn't consciously made the connection between like readers advisory and advising about board games, but I think that's a really great point that, you know, some people like they will not play a game with hidden identities or they will know they hate games where there are games like a trader, oil the plants and other people so yeah it's just a kind of a learning process of how to tell people about what the games entail, finding out what kind of different types of people enjoy. Yeah, I have a friend like that who she loves board games and gaming but she hates the ones where you have to kind of, because there are games where you do like you said someone's a trader or you're trying to stab the other people in the back type thing. And that's the point of it and for some people it's fun, and they laugh it off and for some people not so much so yeah figured out yeah. We got to thank you so much for all the great ideas let's have fun. I have a question here which is an interesting question and I was thinking about this too when you showed the one, the picture of the games and the snacks that you had out. What kind of snacks do you recommend that aren't messy and get all over the games. How do you, how do you do that. Yeah, this is definitely library events we all know is a great enticement to bring people in. But when you're just sitting watching an event is different from interacting with the stuff like in a board game. Yeah, yes, this is definitely something I know a learning experience with because I think on that picture I had some muffins and muffins probably aren't great because you know your fingers or at least all the board game pieces and stuff so I usually just stick with like some pretty simple granola bars. You know, maybe those little gummy snacks and stuff like that or some small cookies work out pretty good. Dryers like snacks like pretzels or things not like they don't have a lot of powdery stuff on them, like Doritos. No, you're going to get that all over your hands and then you're going to get that all over the card piece cards or game. All right, it's a little after 11am central time here. We could watch it wrap up want to choose anybody have any desperate last minute questions you want to ask of Ethan while we're here. Go ahead and get type in we will we are going to get cut off just because we've hit 11 o'clock. Answer any questions that you might have. And while we are waiting to see if we get any other questions I'm going to actually pull presenter control back to my screen. I'm going to show you. There it is. So here's the set for today's show. Our main and compass live page here. If you use your search engine of choice to just search for and compass live the name of our show is the only thing you'll kind of find named that on the internet so nobody else is allowed to use it. I believe our main page or archive page. And I did mention our archive. These are upcoming shows and here is our archives here. So you can watch any of our previous shows. And even did mention that one let's see boredom. You do a search you're hot. I didn't know if we had any other shows that mentioned boredom and their titles or. So this is that session we have here the recording and their presentation is also available here. So if you wanted to watch that recording. Or look through their presentation slides for that session that Ethan recommended you can go right there for that. We also have just you I did this at first. Lots of other sessions that do mentioned board games. Running a game jam. Engagement with soft skills using board games and library so there's lots of other sessions that we've done as well on different aspects are coming at it from a different point of view. So, take a look at any other things that we have here on our archives. As you can see here we do have our full show archives or just the most recent 12 months, if you want to. That is because this is the full show archives for Encompass Live from when we first started the show. And I'm not going to go all the way to the bottom because it's really long. But we started Encompass Live in January 2009. So we have all of our show archives going back to the beginning over 10 years worth of them. And so just pay attention to the original broadcast date of any show. Some things some topics may stand the test of time still be good valid useful info. Some things may be old out become old and outdated. Services and resources may have changed drastically links might be broken some things may not even exist anymore, 10 years ago. We will always keep everything on here. We as librarians we do this we keep one of our things that we do sometimes keep things for archival purposes, as long as we have somewhere to host all of our shows they will always be here available for you. Oh, we do have a recommendation here. Stephanie says that they have at their library. We have a Friday game day during the summer, which is popular with the local kids 26 of kids attended recently. And a popular games that is simple is race for the treasure. Do you know that one. Oh, I've never heard of that. I'll have to see what that one is about race for the treasure. It's really cool for new ideas for games. We also have a really fun one for little kids called the ladybug game and it's, it's really cool because it was actually designed by like a first grade year old kid. So it's a really fun one to cool. All right. All right, so I think we will, yeah, finish wrapping things up for today anybody have any else you want to any questions any other suggestions go ahead and type in your question section there. Here's our upcoming shows we also do have a Facebook page for encompass live if you like to use Facebook. Our page is like we remind people of upcoming shows here's a reminder login today show, promoting about our speakers. Here's when last week's recording was available. So if you do like to use Facebook, give us a like over there. We also have a hashtag we use on Twitter and Instagram and comp live. So look for that hashtag for any the same kind of announcements out elsewhere. And so I think that wrap it up for today's show. Thank you so much Ethan for sharing everything you've done there out in Scott's bluff I think it's awesome. Obviously very successful program at your small library out there. And I hope keeps going strong. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Absolutely and thank you everybody for being with you this morning I hope you'll learn something and maybe I'll start some of your own board game collections. Next week. It is the last Wednesday of the month, which means it is pretty sweet tech day. Pretty sweet tech is our monthly episode of encompass live where Amanda sweet, our technology innovation library and comes in the show to talk to us about something techie related. We have other shows that techie related to but if you are the tech person or into that kind of thing you definitely want to keep an eye on her shows. Next, next week she has Brian pitchman is coming on the evolve project and he's got this new 40 day challenge that for team strengthening and leadership and I don't know much about it myself so we'll find out next week. Sign up for that and neighbor other upcoming shows we have. And I do have a couple of May shows booked and I'm finalizing some other ones now so keep an eye on our schedule and you see those other May dates and even into June, getting started getting filled in here with our summer topics. So, please do sign up for any other shows watch our archives, and hopefully we'll see you on a future episode of encompass live. Thanks Ethan. Have a good day.