An Analysis on the Gamification Development Path of Library Open Data

Abstract

[Purpose/Significance] In the information age, galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GlAMs) began to digitize, classify, process and organize their collections, generating network data resources with different degrees of availability, and then opening up the data to the public in various forms. However, the current utilization of libraries' open data is at a low level, resulting in a large amount of data being developed and available online, but rarely accessed and used. In order to improve the social awareness and utilization of open data, international colleagues' experience shows that the gamification development of government open data can promote data reuse. Therefore, this paper presents the method of open data gamification development, trying to activate the vitality of open data and improve the utilization of open data in libraries. [Method/Process] First, through consulting the training materials of Shanghai Library's open data over the years, the introduction of award-winning works, watching the video introduction of some award-winning works, and experiencing some award-winning works in person, this paper analyzes the actual situation of the award-winning projects of the Shanghai Library Open Data Competition. The winning game works in the competition can be roughly divided into three categories: text adventure, role-playing, and knowledge breakthrough. By comparing and analyzing three specific typical cases, the paper summarizes the experience and method of gamification design presented by the current open data in libraries. [Results/Conclusions] Combining the four elements of digital games' mechanics, story, aesthetics, and technology, the gamification development paths of library open data are constructed: 1) to select appropriate narrative tools according to the types of open data, and express the connotation of open data in the form of stories; 2) to personalize its play mechanism according to the characteristics of open data; 3) to display the cultural connotation of open data through the artistic visual presentation; 4) combined with open data content, advanced technology is adopted to improve the experience of players. The method of gamification development of library open data proposed by this paper aims to provide ideas and references for improving the efficiency of library open data development and utilization, so that libraries can not only improve the utilization rate of open data but also make the public better understand and use open data. In addition, due to the limited length of this paper, there is no in-depth research on how to apply the gamification development path proposed in this paper to practice. Moreover, due to the characteristics of large capacity, and diverse levels of granularity, dispersion, and isolation of open data, various problems will inevitably be encountered in the actual development process. Therefore, future research will explore the specific implementation strategies of open data gamification development in combination with the actual situation.

Keywords

• library|open data|gamification|culture creativity|data utilization|development path