The Plot for a Peerless Portfolio

For my MLIS program, we have to create a portfolio. It’s a project that many students tend to leave until the last few weeks before graduation, flying into a foaming panic as they tear through a checklist of required documents and mangulate Wix templates. (Note to self: Fight for the privilege of designing my own website and put that dormant domain to use.)

Oh, but what a novel approach to graduating. I would love to fight an unintuitive website designer for the honor of putting four (non-swear) letters after my name on business cards. And here I thought defending a thesis against the program director would be the final boss of grad school. Which is the perfect segue into my idea for a portfolio that stands out.

After enduring a grueling and obligatory collections course, I started thinking about better ways of teaching the drudgery of collection development. Around the same time, I read Megan Lotts’s Advancing a Culture of Creativity in Libraries: Programming and Engagement (for fun, because I’m serious about this). Lotts brought up the importance of gamifying learning, showing through anecdotes how people retain more information and generally have a better time when fun is at the core of library programming.

“If only I’d had something fun for that beast of a course,” I thought. Then my mind went to video games. “Maybe if it were more like a game, my classmates and I would have had a better time. [beat] If only I knew how to code.”

Well, I do know how to manipulate paper, and I’ve got intermediate experience with graphic design software. So why not make a card game for librarians and shanghai pursuade a few peers and professors to collaborate?

Fortunately, Daniel Solis provided some inspiration, at least on the design front. I found his Card at Work playlist while searching for tutorials on card game design. After watching a handful of his videos, I picked up his book, pictured above. It’s like a textbook worth keeping long after the course ends—and yes, the price is worth it. (I might as well get used to shelling out college textbook levels of money for career resources anyway.)

But I should go the extra mile. Why not learn how to code? Since I’m in GameRT, why stop at just advocating for games in libraries? Why not show these professionals dev tools they can use for their classrooms or workshops? Why not have actual working games that leave impressions? Why not share the inspirational story of how I watched a streamer turn The Communist Manifesto into an anime MILF visual novel… or maybe I need to workshop that part of the story…

But this is all still fresh and apt to change, especially once other minds get involved. So, because I can’t talk about school and libraries all the time, next time I’ll show some experiments in Procreate and Affinity with Frankentoon brushes. I need to find some way to justify my impulse purchases…