American Libraries

Jami Schwarzalder: Last week we did open gaming with the Wii where we had 14 kids in a line and we just passed the Wii remote down the row as we played WarioWare. In that same room I had board games out for them to play—and this isn't normal board games, this is eclectic stuff from Germany, Looney Labs, lots of stuff like that that the kids haven't played before.

AL: Not just backgammon, in other words?

Jami Scharzalder: I don’t even have backgammon and I teach them how to play it and they love that. We also do a lot of PlayStation 2 with DDR and Guitar Hero. And I bring in Guitar Hero III. So I've gotten about 30 kids that come regularly to the library. There are more kids that come in every week and we're going to start tournaments in a couple of weeks to get even more boys to come in. We might also be able to use some other software to make games in the library. Another thing we're really, really looking forward to is doing DS programs, where we buy like 14 DSs, 28 games and circulate them for all ages.

Stephanie Iser: I wanted to try gaming so I actually brought some equipment from my home into the library to try it out with the teens that I work with. And we made a gracious donation to the library of our equipment because my husband acquired some new gaming equipment and didn't need it anymore. But we also have a good Teen Services Coordinator and she purchased a Play Station 2 for each library branch and the equipment to do Dance Dance Revolution, so that's how we got started with video gaming. After our program is over, occasionally I’ll have some teens come up to me and ask me to help them find some books in the collection. So somehow by being in the library for the gaming they are sometimes more likely to come up and talk to me and ask me to help find other things the collection while they're there. I work in the urban library system the inner city and in the neighborhoods where I particularly work there's not anything else for teens to do for recreation and fun. So just providing them a safe place, letting them know the library is a place they can go to be themselves and have fun is really important.

Eli Neiburger: We have two stations here basically. You want to sit down and do a four-player match and then the winner gets a point. We'll keep shuffling people around until we get four people who we know are pretty kick-ass. And we'll have four people face off and determine who is the most kick-ass person in the room. One of the big things we've seen with our players is for some of them; their skill really becomes a part of their identity. And they feel very proud about their skill, they want to defend it and it becomes a really big deal for them. So this is still one of the most popular games that we do at our library. We do tournaments. We have 115 boys in the library on a Friday night, all to play this game.

Librarian: What will girls play?

Eli Neiburger: The thing is this game is highly appealing to boys and there are some girls that come to it as well, but we also have a lot of teen programs where we get scads of girls and no boys showing up. So we don’t worry too much about the fact that Super Smash Bros. is a very boy-heavy event. It depends on the game because Dance Dance Revolution will get almost a 50/50 audience; sometimes a little more girls than boys. Just like any other library programming, the content determines the audience. So when you pick a certain title, it’s highly appealing to boys. But you know, most of those boys don't come to the library for anything else. Ever. We had one kid who was in one of these events and he lost a really bad tiebreaker and he went stomping off and said, “I'm going to read some Piers Anthony, I'll be back later.” You have unexpected ways that the library gets used.