Libraries at Play: RDDS featured at Game On! In the Archives

Earlier this October, Penn Libraries’ Research Data & Digital Scholarship (RDDS) joined librarians, archivists, and community members at the Free Library of Philadelphia for Game On! In the Archives. Organized in partnership with the Delaware Valley Archivists Group, the event celebrated American Archives Month by exploring how sports, games, and play are documented in and inspired by archives and special collections. Among the featured games was Shelf Shuffle, a retro library-themed video game developed by Christopher Demers Jimenez, Ph.D, who serves as RDDS’s resident AI & Machine Learning Developer.

Held at Parkway Central Library, Game On! In the Archives brought Philadelphia community members together to explore historical materials and contemporary projects from various local institutions, collectives, and initiatives. Participating organizations included Penn’s Architectural Archives at the Weitzman School of Design; the Museum for Art in Wood; the Science History Institute; the Library Company of Philadelphia; and the City of Philadelphia’s Department of Records, City Archives, among many others. Exhibits and activities ranged from games involving paper crafts, wooden toys, and movable and kinetic art to explorations of board game history and the history of baseball and tennis at Philadelphia-area colleges.

RDDS’s contribution offered visitors an opportunity to try Shelf Shuffle and encounter a different side of digital scholarship at the Penn Libraries. Originally designed for Penn’s New Student Orientation (NSO) to welcome students to campus and introduce them to RDDS’s services, the game has users play as library patrons who must return books and study with others while fending off misinformation. Retro graphics, player scoreboards, and health points give these familiar library activities the feel of a classic arcade game. The game also features real materials available to check out from the Penn Libraries’ collections, ranging from novels and manuscripts to CD-ROMs and newspapers.

One especially memorable interaction from Game On! In the Archives involved a mother who allowed her young son to try Shelf Shuffle. She explained that this was her son’s “first video game” and she appeared quite pleased that his first encounter with the genre involved, in her words, “an anti-misinformation library game.” Her reaction offered encouragement that video games—including small ones developed in a research library—could help bring conversations about information literacy into settings where learning and play overlap.

Shelf Shuffle is also featured as a stop on the Penn Libraries’ Passport to the Libraries NSO event, which continues from now through November 12, 2026. The game was produced in summer 2026 with the partial assistance of OpenAI’s ChatGPT as an opportunity for RDDS to test the limits of generative AI and explore its evolving coding capabilities. It is available online and was designed to be accessible on both desktop computers and mobile phones. The game’s retro atmosphere is complemented by chiptune music by the artist Abstraction, generously made available under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license for free and open use in the public domain.

Interested in developing a similar project? Schedule a consultation with Chris to discuss how to use AI for game development or other programming projects, whether for research, teaching, or public engagement.