Comments on: Gamify Your Library Fines

By: eli

eli — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 01:09:59 +0000

We’re two weeks into our fully gamified summer game. This stuff works! Don’t waste it trying to get people to adhere to circ rules, use it to encourage service discovery, community contribution and social metadata. See a player’s public page here:

http://play.aadl.org/summergame/player/594

By: Brian Herzog

Brian Herzog — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 15:35:24 +0000

@Dave: I do like your model – anything fun and interesting is worth a shot. I think whatever it is needs to be simple to understand and implement – or, we could implement multiple rewards models, for that matter: one for younger people and gamers for who a complex rewards system is fairly intuitive anyway, and a more basic one that is more obvious. In any case, I think something like this would be a change welcomed by many patrons.

By: Dave Puplett

Dave Puplett — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 10:04:17 +0000

Fascinating – I had a similar idea a few weeks ago, along the same lines – give people incentives to play by the rules:

http://puplett.blogspot.com/2011/03/why-bring-your-books-back-on-time.html

I really think this could work!

By: Brian Herzog

Brian Herzog — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 12:39:38 +0000

@Meela: I think the reward could be just about anything your patrons would value – we accept purchase requests all the time, but maybe getting their name on a bookplate would be an incentive.

@Julius: That’s great – please let me know how it goes.

By: Julius Dondi

Julius Dondi — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 11:58:38 +0000

hate it or like it, this idea seems good.Why not try it in our local libraries here in Kenya! Rewarding compliance to set conditions is the best method of eradicating non-compliance.Therefore Library users who fully comply with library rules and regulations should be rewarded to ward-off tendency of non compliance in our libraries.I am sure no single library is happy dealing with cases after cases of disregard to library Rules and Regulations despite the fact that it is a source of revenue for most libraries in Kenya today.For me at Gusii Institute of Technology I want to try-out Gamification as a twin method of curtailing non compliance as well as rewarding compliance to Set Rules and Regulations in the library

By: Meela

Meela — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 05:17:52 +0000

I love this! I always slow down when you get those roadwork signs that say “thankyou” when you are under the speed limit.

How about giving away the chance to select a purchase for the library?

By: Friday Reads – Birthday Edition « Matt Phillips

Friday Reads – Birthday Edition « Matt Phillips — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 14:44:26 +0000

[...] Swiss Army Librarian » Gamify Your Library Fines [...]

By: Brian Herzog

Brian Herzog — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 12:04:32 +0000

@Tom: thank you. I like your idea of posting by letters – and I’m happy to have made the list.

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 22:09:18 +0000

Great idea for rewarding good behavior. I posted a small blog about it for one of my G entries in the a-z April blogging challenge, thanks for the post.

By: Brian Herzog

Brian Herzog — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 19:41:25 +0000

@Victoria: I agree that overdue fines would have to generate a huge amount of revenue to justify the negative experience associated with them – both patrons and staff. We also have a donation jar on the counter, and many people who bring things back late “fine” themselves with a donation, which just works so much better.