Gamification and libraries: Deconstruction of the approach

The author argues that the national practice of library sphere gamification is in the arrearages of the global one. Based on eLIBRARY and Springer databases (2 and 652 articles on library gamification, correspondingly), the author concludes on insufficient knowledge of the subject, narrowed down to occasional recreational events. He suggests five key elements of library “reassembly”: 1) to acknowledge the ties of gamification digitalization AI with their individualized trajectories; 2) both the activities and the library as a social gamification object (in the focus of political studies) make the objects of gamification; 3) the libraries may and should by oriented toward socialization, cultural continuity and intellectual development; 4) today societys everyday life is gamified and the libraries should participate; 5) Russian libraries are gamified fragmentarily, they miss, among others, gamification political potential for social institution transformation. In the national practice, contrast to foreign cases (e. g. Biblion Project by New York Public Library), the gaming mechanisms are not integrated consistently which weakens the role of the libraries as a soft force and cultural reproduction agent. The scientific novelty of the article is that gamification is explored not as a leisure practice but rather as an instrument of library institutional transformation in the context of digitalization and as a soft force. The author recommends that the libraries should be reoriented through regulative changes and AI integration to strengthen them as platforms of social adaptation in the digital era.

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