At yesterday’s R U A nOOB: Bridging the Gap Between Boomers and Gamers program, we used the following quiz to see where audience members fell as Library Boomers, Gamers, or “in the Gap.”

Boomer/Gamer Library Quotient Test
1. Give yourself a point if you can remember working in a library (or visiting a library as a patron) where the librarians were smoking in the library building.  Give yourself two more points if they were smoking in the stacks or at the circ desk.

2. Give yourself a point if you’ve had a patron at the circ desk ask you for help finding a book by showing you the title of the book on the card they’ve torn out of your card catalog. Subtract one point if you’ve never worked in a library with a physical card catalog.

3. Give yourself a point if you worked in a library whose AV dept consisted of 16mm films and filmstrips.  Give yourself two points if you used the heat-splicer to repair 16 mm films.

4. Give yourself a point if you’ve worked in a library where women were required to wear skirts or dresses – no slacks.  Subtract one point if you find use of the word “slacks” to be humorous and/or archaic.

5. Give yourself a point if you’ve typed up an ILL request on a three-part-carbon-paper ALA ILL form.  Give yourself two points if you sent out ILL requests on a teletype machine.

6. Give yourself a point if you worked in a library where the professional staff actually debated whether or not to add videotapes to the library’s collection.  Give yourself two more points if they debated whether to buy paperbacks.  Subtract one point if, when you were in grade school, you checked out videotapes from your public library.

7. Give yourself a point if your childhood public library wouldn’t let you check out books from the adult dept until you were 11 years old or unless your parents checked it out for you.  Give yourself two points if the adult book you desperately wanted to check out was Valley of the Dolls or anything by Philip Roth.  Subtract one point if you read Catcher in the Rye when you were 11 years old or younger.

8. Subtract one point if you cannot remember a time in your life when there were no video games.  Add one point if you have never voluntarily been inside a video arcade at the mall (or for East Lansing locals – add a point if you’ve never been to Pinball Pete’s).

9. Give yourself a point if you’ve never been to Second Life. Subtract two points if you have an avatar in Second Life. Give yourself back one of those points if your avatar still walks into walls and falls off of buildings while you’re trying to maneuver through Second Life.

10. Subtract one point if you’ve ever rescued the princess in Super Mario Brothers.  Subtract two points if you’ve stayed up half the night trying to reach the next level in your computer game.

How did you score?  Our non-scientific poll indicates:
Five or more points – Boomer
One to four points – In the gap
Zero or fewer points – Gamer
[Note: our “genuine videogame geek” speaker, Eli Neiburger, scored a -8.]

Any suggestions for additional questions for the quiz?