Success, we have an idea!

In 2016 my demigorgon loving friend, Michael Hawks, and I decided to embark on an epic quest together. We decided to throw caution to the wind and write/record a proposal for the New Librarians Symposium 2018 aka NLS8. After brainstorming (and procrastinating) we came up with our concept, to somehow mash Dungeons and Dragons with our experiences working at QUT Law Library. And thus the first kernels for our workshop, Librarians and Dragons was born!

Librarians and Dragons is a transferable skills workshop. We did incorporate Role Play Games like Dungeons and Dragons into it as well as Escape Room and Build Your Own Adventure concepts and mashed it with transferable skills within the GLAMR industry. We could both relate to using our transferable skills to get our jobs at QUT Law Library and after looking at the ALIA Employment Trend Report we could see that not so many new graduate librarians were working within our industry. So we thought, why not use our own experiences and show students and new graduates all the amazing skills they have already and how they can apply them in a library setting, well a haunted library setting, but same same…

Inspiration for overcoming our nerves as first time presenters!

We took our workshop to NLS8 and had a blast presenting it. Although it took a few power poses and inspiration from RuPaul’s Drag Race to get over our nerves but in the end #librariansanddragons was #supereffective! Since NLS8 we have had such positive feedback and have presented it a few more times, including at QUT Library for library staff and as part of Game of Libraries with the charismatic Dr Matt Finch to some of our regional library colleagues, and a mini version at the 2017 ALIA Qld Mini Conference.

Our very own logo #librariansanddragons

We are now launching our very own website for Librarians and Dragons #exciting! Here you can read more about the workshop, download our presentation and get a sneak peek at our characters, designed by the incredible Lewis Crooks. We want to continue to show GLAMR students, new graduates (and existing GLAMR professionals) that they have amazing skills already to start/progress/move their GLAMR career. So if you would like to play Librarians and Dragons with us, let us know! You can find us on Twitter at @maddymedlycott and @mikeyh177. And yes, we are willing to travel to play library games with you 😀