As COVID-19 restrictions were lifted Melissa Foley-King, a librarian at the Hamilton Branch of the Enoch-Pratt Free Library system, found herself with the best kind of problem: libraries were once again flooded with kids.
Still, that had its own kind of challenges.
“I work in a library where I have 40 to 50 kids every day after school, and we have to not only keep them safe, but find something for them to do every day,” said Foley-King. “So I'm just forever trying to… think outside the box for stuff for them to do.”
Foley-King is also a teaching assistant at the University of Baltimore where she teaches alongside Rachael Zeleny in a class called “arts and social justice.” Zeleny realized that maybe the popular escape room trend could be a perfect way to help libraries not only educate but also entertain kids. She realized that with a bit of creativity, she could have her undergraduate students build and design complete escape room kits that could go out and be kept in libraries.
“The idea behind the project is that a lot of libraries lost staffing, during the pandemic, and that kids really needed to be able to still go somewhere after school and have safe places where they can do educational things,” explained Zeleny as she prepared for class on a Thursday evening in March.
Here's how a traditional escape room works: players get locked in a room and solve a series of puzzles that lead to clues that help them get out. There’s always a storyline or a mystery to be solved before you can escape.
In this case, players aren’t actually getting locked in the library. Instead, these are portable and meant to be played by small groups of kids (or teens or adults) whenever they want.
All the components of the escape room — puzzles, props and all — get packed in a suitcase that is loaned out to the library. When you’re ready to play, you check the game out of the card catalog like any other resource. And while it requires a librarian to set up some clues and props, it doesn’t need much supervision. Some games might focus on one section of the library while others take the adventure throughout the building. They’re designed to use books most institutions have so they can be transferred around the system.
Using funding from the UBalt Honors college, everything is completely made by the students, so it's free content in a world where libraries are always clamoring for money. “Escape rooms are great, they love touching stuff and solving puzzles,” said Foley-King of the young elementary kids who visit her library.
The classroom at the University of Baltimore, where students were hard at work designing their escape rooms, was filled with a dozen or so undergraduates on a Thursday night in March. They spread themselves out sitting amongst stacks of books, and random items like lace gloves and pocket watches.
“Our escape room theme is going to be murder in the Victorian Gardens,” explained Serena Brontide, a student in the university class.
The problems start at a picnic gone awry. “Several women thought the day throughout the day began to experience the vapors, only one of them has dropped dead. So the idea is the husband has now hired a detective agency,” she says. It is the player who has to become the detective. The project designed by Brontide’s group uses both physical objects and online elements, accessed through a computer or smartphone. “[The players] will be moving between the audio and real life puzzles, things like going through the menu list of everything people had in the picnic. So finding call numbers in libraries, and going through (those) and finding hints.”
Professor Zeleny hopes the escape rooms can be an educational and healing tool for kids affected by the pandemic.
“Research was showing that during the pandemic, anxiety levels were through the roof,” she said. “Those of us who are trying to gamify education, we're trying to find alternatives to assessments, so that students could still be able to respond to that pressure of needing to finish something in time without having to have the same crippling anxiety that they would if it was a test.”
The escape rooms have already undergone demos in Zeleny’s Pennsylvania hometown and at the University. There are plans to roll out escape rooms at the Hamilton branch of the Enoch Pratt library in the early fall. They’ve also explored the idea of doing “event style” where rooms get decorated for the theme and librarians or staff take a more active role in facilitating the game.
Enoch-Pratt Free Library communications director Meghan McCorkell says youth programming is critical to building a lifetime relationship with the library– which also serves as a job center and provides other social services.
“What we have found is if we tell people, hey, social services is right across the street, this is where you can get this help, they won't go because they don't know that building. They don't trust that building. They don't trust the people in that building,” said McCorkell.
Mayor Scott’s budget proposal currently suggests cuts for the Enoch Pratt Free Library system; the proposed budget calls for $43 million for FY 2024 compared to $45.6 million in 2023. All over the country, budget cuts and book bans from far-right groups have threatened library systems.
But that’s inspiration for Zeleny’s next round of escape rooms.
“In the newest version of the course, which will be taught in the fall, it's all going to be banned books,” she said.
And if she secures some national funding, she hopes to send escape rooms to any library across the country that wants one.
