Rethinking Video Games in the Academic Library

Stacey Greenwell over at The Uncommon Commons recently wrote about their welcome event . She works at the U of Kentucky, so it shouldn't be a surprise that basketball hoops were involved.

She ends her post stating:

“I've gone so far as to submit a proposal to purchase a few consoles for the library.”

It's nice to see such enthusiasm, but I've recently started to turn against gaming in academic libraries. I think its fine for special events or if you want to disguise it as a “study break” session, but trying to brand your library as someplace cool because of Madden Tournaments or that you have a Wii or Playstation available for checkout is weak. You play to a niche, maybe a big niche, but ultimately I think it deteriorates the mission of the academic library.

I've spent some time this semester visiting GT dorms and frat houses and they all have commons spaces with screens and projectors available to them. The gimmick of using video games to lure students into the library is off base, at least for my population. Sure we could easily turn ourselves into an arcade, but we already have one of those on campus and it's only about 100 yards away from the library, so why should we duplicate that effort?

I think a stronger position for the academic library is to aspire to offer the premiere productivity and study space on campus. We should provide something that isn't offered elsewhere and that fills a stated need.

In the long run, a better generation of buzz is through programming and partnerships, gather than Xboxs. I was pleasantly surprised today when I clicked a random date on our events calendar and saw the wide variety of offerings:

Keep in mind, we're undersized, and personally I think under funded, yet Tech is an entrepreneurial and scrappy library. (That's a compliment!) I like that we push a varied agenda of experiences, and I feel that academic libraries should attempt to inspire students, not just entertain them.

And sure, someday we'll probably have video games available for checkout. We do have a leading game critic on our faculty, but conversations with my users reveal that they'd prefer nicer quiet study spaces and more computers and printers, rather than video game zones. It's a matter of priorities. For $1,000 we could buy a console and a load of games, but I think that would be “off code” with out intention. I also think that there are better opportunities for relaxation and leisure than this .

So Stacey, good luck with your effort. I'll be curious to follow your progress, but be mindful of the cause and effect of gaming in the library. I'd much rather have my students complain about a noisy Calculus 2 review group rather than a bunch of kids pretending to be guitar heroes. When gaming becomes a daily occurrence, it quickly loses it's charm.

Comments

[Eric Jennings]

I do think that by making the library a video game haven you're going to get noisy Madden tourney groups and that is definitely something that I wouldn't want to deal with. But, the opportunity for a student to study a video game - its art/graphics, the hardware needed to run the game, or the software used to program the game - could be used beneficially in an academic setting.

Public libraries have been struggling with the same problem for years: do they offer popular fiction, videos and DVDs (i.e., give the people what they want) or do they collect a wide range of materials including nonfiction and the not-so-popular fiction.

We (and I may be speaking out of turn here since I'm a relatively new librarian) have to decide on what we're collecting and why. I think that if you can tie it to the curriculum (see my argument for) then by all means collect it and offer it to students. However, if you're buying this stuff just for a fun diversion I'd rather use my money elsewhere to buy books or for a database. And if you're really lucky and have too much money to spend and not enough materials to spend it on, buy Xbox360s and Wiis.

[stacey.greenwell]

I appreciate your insights on this, Brian. I agree that it's easy to cross the line and offer gaming only for the "cool" factor. It’s not a good idea to compete with a successful student center. In my proposal to the administration, I feel (I hope) I’ve justified why we should give this a try. I’m looking at investing in a few consoles (used) and basic controllers—students and staff will supply the games. This way we can keep the cost pretty low—we spent more on pizza for the Hubbub party.

Assuming we get it funded, we’d be using the hardware both at the Hub and at the Engineering Library. At the Hub we have an ideal space for gaming. We are located in the basement of the Young Library and are the designated noisy place in the building. In addition to encouraging group noise and activity, we allow students to use cell phones anywhere they are lucky enough to get a signal (that's another thing--quite the opposite of many libraries, we encouraged campus IT to actually *install* equipment to improve cell phone reception in the basement).

The most striking thing about our space is the six projectors that surround our help desk area. Each month we display a different art exhibit on the projectors—this month is work from students in a summer photography class in Italy. When I’ve set up games before we’ve used the projectors and—wow—okay, it is cool.

If we don’t end up buying equipment, I may consider letting staff bring in consoles and just keep my fingers crossed that nothing gets damaged. However we approach it, I do plan on offering games on occasion at the Hub.

[anthony]

We had a seperate building in the student center at CSU Sacramento with gaming consoles in it. I don't think library is the place for gaming consoles though.

[anthony]

We had a seperate building in the student center at CSU Sacramento with gaming consoles in it. I don't think library is the place for gaming consoles though.