OLAC Inc. - Coffee Talk Cataloging Tabletop Role Playing Games: Leveling Up Their Description & Discovery

Coffee Talk: Cataloging Tabletop Role Playing Games: Leveling Up Their Description & Discovery

Day: Wednesday, November 20, 2024, 2:30-3:30pm CST (3:30-4:30pm EST)

Registration: October 30 - November 18, 2024

Tabletop role playing games (TTRPGs) are a growing presence in the collections and programming of public and academic libraries alike. However, as Taylor Skelton Smith’s recent article “A Dicey Situation” examines, current major controlled vocabularies often provide insufficient and inaccurate description, to the detriment of a TTRPG’s discoverability. Using Smith’s article as a starting point, Mackenzie Johnson and Diane Robson will combine their respective tabletop games expertise, Diane’s recent experience cataloging TTRPGs, and Mackenzie’s scholarly enthusiasm to bring some of the unique attributes of TTRPGs to catalogers’ attention, and discuss potential solutions for cataloging them more effectively.

Mackenzie Johnson is the Cataloguing Librarian at the University of Saskatchewan. The topic of cataloguing tabletop games is arguably his greatest professional and scholarly passion. He is a founding member and the current chair of the ALA Games and Gaming Round Table’s Metadata Committee, and this past summer he co-presented a session about tabletop games cataloguing during Gen Con Trade Day, as part of Gen Con, the largest tabletop gaming convention in North America.

Diane Robson is the Games and Education Librarian at the University of North Texas. She manages collection development, cataloging, and outreach related to video games, tabletop games, and game related equipment. As the subject librarian for this field of study, she liaises with faculty and students who wish to use games for scholarship, research, or instruction. Scholarly contributions include publications and presentations on game collection management, tabletop game cataloging, and outreach.