Making the Library Relevant

In thinking more about this topic of gaming and libraries, and in reading the comments I have received so far, I've come up with a few ideas. Granted, libraries' computers are a scarce resource, usually in high demand. I asked the director of the public library in my town, Rochester Hills Public Library, what their policy is about using the computers for gaming. She said that there is a time limit on computer use, but other than that, they do not have a problem with people playing games on them. The computers are there for everyone to use, and they are paid for by the public through taxes, so the library is not going to tell its customers what they can and cannot do while they have their 30 minutes (or whatever it is) at a public computer.

That said, because the computers are in such high demand at most public libraries, it isn't really feasible to have a gaming get-together to bring patrons in, if those games are going to be played on computers. There are many, many games, however, that do not require computers. Ever heard of PlayStation? GameCube? Well, some public libraries are already using these consoles in a big way.

Although I wasn't aware of it when I started this blog, the public library in my town has a gaming day once a month. The last time I was at the library, I noticed some signs about it, and I asked to meet the person in charge of the program. Her name is Megan Johnson, and she is the teen services librarian at RHPL. She started this program about a year ago, and it has been an enormous success. Last Saturday was one of the scheduled gaming days, so I dropped by the library to check it out.

RHPL is a beautiful, well designed facility. They have a very large room for meetings and presentations, which they also use for their gaming days and used book sales. This room is well away from the collections areas, so it does not matter if the event going on there is noisy. And gaming day is certainly noisy. Megan had four consoles (two GameCubes, a PS2, and an Xbox) set up, and about 50 kids were either playing or waiting patiently while watching the kids actually playing. Megan told me that this was a smallish crowd for her; she usually gets 75 to 100 kids. She attributed the lower attendance to the bad weather on Saturday. The games being played while I was there were Mario Kart, Guitar Hero, and Karaoke Revolution. The consoles were connected to projectors, so that actual televisions were not needed; the additional advantage to the projectors was that the picture was very large and projected right onto a white wall. The lights were off in the room, so the images really popped.

The way Megan sets it up is that each kid gets a chance to play. With Mario Kart, it's one race among four players, and the winner of each race gets to play again. With Guitar Hero and Karaoke Revolution, the play time is the length of one song. The kids can then join the line for the next console if they want, or they can go to the end of the line for the console they just played on. I was surprised at how patient the kids were, but they were really getting into watching the other kids play. Megan said that it's a lot of fun for them to be in a big group like that. Although many of these kids probably have one (or more) of these consoles at home, most probably don't have a room big enough to have 50 friends over to play with. She said that the kids police each other and themselves pretty well, but she does usually have a library page at the front to make sure that no one is bullying anyone else and that everyone is taking turns like they should. She also said that she's had a few bad apples show up on occasion, but it's rare.

I asked her about game content. She said that she does not use any games that have an "M" (mature) rating. All are rated "T" for teen or "E" for everyone. She had one mother ask her whether she had vetted all the songs on Karaoke Revolution to ensure that there were no objectionable lyrics. She laughed when relating this story and said that she told the woman, umm, no -- but it is rated "T." Other than that one comment, she's not had any parents complain about game content or gaming at the library in general.

The only downside to gaming day is for Megan personally. The library actually owns only one of the consoles and the projectors; the rest of the equipment belongs to Megan and her husband, who, obviously, are gamers. So she and her husband have to schlep the equipment back and forth from home, and if something gets broken, well, it's her property, so it's her loss. She said that they will soon be donating all of the consoles to RHPL because they are upgrading to the PS3 and the Nintendo Wii.