Outreach for Librarians: Gaming in the Library

Advantages and Disadvantages of Board, Card & Video Games

Board and card games and/or video games – This is an important decision to make at the beginning of the program.  Both have their advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages of Board and Card Games

• Easier for large groups to participate. 
• They are easy to invest in and are relatively inexpensive.  Once you’ve invested in a board game, with the exception of damage or loss, you won’t have to replace this game for a long time.
• People will donate games they’re not playing.
• Students aren’t on their phones or other electronic devices.
• Students will not only talk with each other, but they may help other students learn the game.
• There are games out there for every age, interest and ability.

Disadvantage of Board and Card Games

• Students might have never played games in their homes before and are hesitant to get involved.
• Noise can sometimes be an issue.

Advantages of Video Games

• You will quickly get the attention of seasoned video gamers.

Disadvantages of Video Games

• You have to invest in an expensive gaming system and individual games that will age quickly as well as having monitors/TV’s and electrical outlets.
• Video games need to be played in an area where you can have a lot of noise.
• Only a few people can play at a time.

Sponsored by ALA’s Gaming Roundtable, you may want to have a special week or day of gaming events.  This is a good time to introduce new games – especially if you registered for and received a game from the sponsors of International Gaming Week.

Why would you have gaming in a library?  Students will learn critical thinking skills, strategy, and perseverance, but gaming gives students an opportunity to put their phones down, be social with other students and to work on their face-to-face conversation skills.

Supplies:  a selection of various games, some games will need paper and pencil for keeping score, a bowl of candy (optional but highly recommended)

How To:  You can do this in a variety of ways, but the easiest is to put out a selection of games and let students play.

Where to play:  Whether you’ve chosen to do just board and card games or if you’re doing video games, gaming can become noisy.  If you have an event room in your library, this would be a great place to do gaming, but if you don’t, you might have to think outside the box and use an event room in your building or even do it in an atrium.  Regardless, you want a lot of foot traffic so that you’ll be seen.

Other Ideas

If you have a student group, this is an excellent place to utilize them.  Teach your student group how to play the games, and then have them take a table and lead the game play.  This teaches them leadership and gives them a sense of accomplishment.  This will also allow you to have more games being played at the same time allowing you to either monitor or engage in play yourself.  Also, sometimes students will more quickly engage with playing with another student than with “an adult” (a.k.a. the librarian).

Gaming 

Selecting Games

Know your audience! 

• Just like any other material in your library, investigate the game to see if it comes recommended, ease of play, level of play, age group recommendations, etc.
• Caution:  Cards Against Humanity – This is a controversial game that has been discussed on some library listservs – especially since some of the playing cards are X-rated and some freshmen may still be minors.  In the last couple of years, there have been other similar games published that could be substituted for this game.
• International students sometimes struggle with word games because English is their second language.  It depends on their proficiency in English.
• Students may not be able to devote hours to playing a single game, so they need to be relatively quick for a gaming event (10 minutes to no more than an hour).
• Be prepared to teach students how to play a game.

• Have a mixture of classic games that students may already know as well as games you would like to introduce.

Game Suggestions

While this isn’t an all-inclusive list, here are some suggestions for games in your library.

Board Games

• Battleship
• Blokus
• Catan
• Chess and Checkers
• Life
• Monopoly
• Sequence
• Ticket to Ride

Card Games

• Apples to Apples
• Exploding Kittens
• Fluxx (some versions easier than others - from Looney Labs)
• Loonacy (from Looney Labs)
• Racko
• Regular deck of cards
• Sushi Go
• Uno

Word Games

• Bananagrams
• Scategories
• Scrabble
• Taboo

Other Games

• Dominoes
• Jenga
• Yahtzee