Gaming in the library

Games online can be either pure entertainment, or somewhat educational. The ones that are more towards the educational, parentally-approved ones probably tend to be less entertaining, but not necessarily. And even the nominally purely entertaining games teach something. The question is, what? In a library setting, gaming can be a draw for those who wouldn't otherwise be interested in stepping foot in a library, whether it be for a formal gaming program put on by the teen librarian, or just to use the computers to play online, such as what we tried in this week's assignment. On the other hand, it can cause other patrons to get huffy when all of the computers are in use, when they have more "important" things to do on the computer than gaming. I even once read a magazine article to the effect that the reason students these days do so poorly on tests of geographic knowledge is that libraries are putting on fluff gaming programs. Of course, that argument supposes not only that games aren't educational at all, but that the poor, unsuspecting gamers would be in the library studying geography if it weren't for those pesky librarians' gaming programs.

One time I asked my son why he likes his video games so much, and he said that it's better than reading because in a game, he is an integral part of the story. If he wants to putz around in a particular area, he can, and if he wants to drive the story forward and have adventures, he can do that, too.

Then again, libraries have this faith that once we get someone in the door, we can interest them in reading. It would be very nice to see some empirical, even strong anecdotal evidence to that effect, and I haven't yet.