National Library and Information Technicians' Symposium, 13-15 November 2019 Melbourne: Discover, Diversify, Dive In
This presentation (PowerPoint slides) accompanied the symposium workshop on planning and implementing escape rooms in public libraries.
Session description: Google ‘escape rooms’ in Melbourne and you get multiple hits for various companies offering an escape room experience. They cover themes of prison breaks to vampires to haunted houses and everything else in between. If you can think it, there probably is an escape room using that theme. There is no doubt they are popular. But can they be implemented in a library? After all, an escape room is usually a single or even multiple rooms all set up with clues and puzzles for the participants to work their way through to the exit. Given they're usually custom built rooms that are more or less a permanent fixture of the building they are in, is it even possible to do this in a public library?
Using experience in running a Harry Potter themed escape room at Casey Cardinia Libraries, the process to creating and running an escape room (Harry Potter themed or otherwise) within the library setting will be discussed. We will go through the steps from initial planning to implementation, and examples from the CCL escape room will be presented. Participants will be given the opportunity to try out some of the clues as well start the process of creating an escape room with the group, from initial concept to realisation.
