Gaming and libraries

Mary Broussard, instructional services librarian at Lycoming College in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, has designed a number of games for outreach and instruction, including the popular Goblin Threat. Broussard spoke about knowing when to create games for the library, highlighting from her experience best practices for design and how to measure success of a gaming program. Andrew Battista, assistant professor of information literacy and reference librarian at University of Montevallo in Alabama, shared his use of badges as a replacement for grades for his curation culture class.

Battista said that grades are a difficult way to represent all the skills and concepts learned in class. Badges, on the other hand, provide the chance to represent literacies and platforms a student actually learns over the course of a semester.

Kirsch and Virginia Alexander, both librarians at the University of South Carolina Upstate, discussed the process of creating and implementing their Agoge information literacy game for transfer students. Revolving around the works of Jane Austen, Good Society emphasizes crafting a collaborative story rather than mechanics, dice rolling, and combat. Similar to the TV series Stranger Things , Kids on Bikes embraces classic teen horror and dark fantasy tropes, while encouraging players to find unique solutions to challenges.

For in-person TTRPG programming, set-up is as simple as laying out character sheets and sets of dice. For tactical combat, a grid map and tokens to represent monsters and characters will prove useful.

Roll20 is a free video chat service that allows for gridded combat and the uploading of various assets. When creating a collection of board games for circulation or programming, libraries should offer a wide selection of themes, mechanics, difficulty levels, and player counts.

The cooperative card game The Mind challenges a group to play cards in sequential order, face up, with limited communication. Skull is a fun bluffing party game, while 5-Minute Dungeon is a chaotic real-time cooperative game. Collect vegetables to score the most victory points in Point Salad.

Azul and Sagrada are beautiful drafting games. Board games of medium or heavy difficulty include Wingspan , an engine builder with beautiful artwork of North American birds. With the goal of gaining the most victory points, actions include attracting birds to habitats, laying eggs, feeding birds, and drawing cards.

In the Jack the Ripper—inspired Whitehall Mystery , one player drops body parts throughout London and hides their movement from the other players on a tension-filled chase. In the worker placement game Caverna , players take actions to gather food, dig into the mountain, feed their families, and go on expeditions. Root is an asymmetric war game where factions of cute woodland creatures compete to control the forest.

A casual meet-up is the easiest in-person program. Starting meet-ups with an icebreaker, like Happy Salmon or Codenames , can reduce social anxiety for newcomers. They prefer BoardGame Arena over Tabletopia or Tabletop Simulator because it has a gentler learning curve for new players. They also recommended using other free online platforms like the website codenames. Whether in-person or online, console or PC, gaming programming is a great way to connect with patrons of all ages.

His current gaming obsession is Slay the Spire. The CEO of the company has resigned. While many of the game developers are facing massive backlash, the misogyny, racism, ableism, and other prejudices in gaming extend well beyond the corporate lobbies and infiltrate in-game lobbies as well as Twitch streams and other social media.

When playing online multiplayer games, consider turning off in-game communications with members who are not in your party. This includes verbal comms as well as text comms. Doing so will help protect the individuals in your gaming group from slurs or reiterations of harmful stereotypes. It is important to emphasize that gaming is for everyone.

Whether your library is planning to host an e-sports team or just install the latest consoles, vendors offer a range of furniture, fixtures, and equipment for your library gaming space.

Atlantis Gaming Station. The Library Store. This three-sided unit can be used to mount three separate inch flat-screen TVs, enabling up to three multiplayer games to be played simultaneously—useful for casual gaming tournaments.

Esports Solutions. Spectrum Industries, Inc. The Esports Xpressions Gaming Chair features gel-cushioned adjustable armrests and repositionable memory foam cushions for the back and neck.

And the Esports Curve Gaming Chair offers contoured lumbar support and pneumatic seat height adjustment. Both the Xpressions and Curve chairs can be outfitted with customizable stitched logo panels, and the Xpressions chair can include base inserts that match team colors.

Euro Metal Series. Kidzpace Interactive. These durable, locking metal cabinets include a inch monitor, attached dual controllers, and an Xbox, PlayStation, or Nintendo Switch console preloaded with between 10 and 20 games. Kidzpace Interactive also offers the option to purchase the cabinet, monitor, and attached controllers for use with an existing console system.

Separately, the company offers The Edge, a line of plug-and-play, stand-alone video game kiosks, also with a inch screen, attached dual controllers, and a console preloaded with games. All units are designed to be easy to clean. These systems feature a large selection of proprietary card, sports, action, word, math, puzzle, and problem-solving games for all ages.

Touch2Play Max features 70 preloaded games with a inch HD monitor. The smaller Touch2Play Pro line includes a inch monitor with 40 games. Touch2Play Tables are inch HD touchscreens in a tabletop configuration. Available with a dual leg base, as a mobile table on coasters, or with a fixed platform base, these units are all waterproof and designed for multiplayer interaction with 14 games and activities.

The Toddler Touch2Play is a wall-mounted system with a durable inch touchscreen and 10 easy games and activities for children ages two to six.

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Sign up now to activate your personal profile, where you can save articles for future viewing. LOG IN. To access other site content, visit our homepage. Free Access Account. Log In. Invalid email or password. Try again. Forgot password? Don't have a Library Journal Account? Register Now. Public libraries have a mission to provide a variety of materials in a variety of formats.

Gaming programs are primarily social events. M for mature means the content is designed for people over the age of 17; is equivalent to an R rating for a movie those games are intended for people over the age of Some libraries carry M rated games in their collections for adults, or host programs or services using M rated games!

It depends on the community. Yes, which is interesting, because the average age of the gamer is 35 and rising! We are starting to hear about libraries doing intergenerational programs. They may be people who only hear what the mainstream media tells them about videogames, who still believe Dungeons and Dragons can lead to practicing witchcraft, who think games are too recreational for libraries.

They may be people who have not played games. They may feel:. Some are! So are many books. There is a serious games initiative in the gaming industry, and many games have an edutainment flair. Although a gamer may follow a path laid out by a designer, they are often several ways to get to the endgame. Playing a game requires creativity and imagination. You learn something new every time. Literacy is changing — there is a new literacy now. GTA represents a very small portion of available videogames.

Many games are! Some offer immediate rewards and many require concentrated effort. Many encourage self-improvement.