Howdy gamers, welcome to the first stop on the trail and in this installment we are going to talk about video games and libraries. Sure you may think that these two things would not go hand in hand with one another however recently studies have shown that this can be a power house mix to attract teenagers and children to the hallowed book hall.
So the goal of this book is simple: get more people to the library and have video games to be one of those "services" that are made available to the patrons. Eli Neiburger is both a librarian and a gamer and has seen his hobby become a major success in his district and has the plan to make it a success for your own.
Now as you might imagination the core of this book is not for "gamers" but rather librarians who may or may not know about video games. Therefore several parts of this book address things like which games you should look into, what consoles you may want to get, what cabling is required to set up an event and the logistics of the event to attract people into coming.
As a facilitator it does an amazing job into breaking down the various aspects of planning of the tournament season at your library, from convincing a person who does not think video games belong in the library to using your budget to get the most bang for your buck. It breaks things done into simple terms and tells even the non technologist how to pull an event like this off and keep the gamers coming in.
As a gamer the biggest takeaway from this is the tournament system they use to ensure that no one would be bored at the event. As well as how the rules need to be both structured enough to be understood and flexible enough to change on the fly in case an issue arises. This in combination with how to set up a room for a tourney comes into play if you were wanting to set up one at a convention, your basement, or in another public space. This is a great guide to ensure you get the maximum amount of fun from the experienced player to the novice.
All in all this book was made for librarians, as it was published by the ALA directly. Yes the American Library Association has published a book on how to create video game tournaments at your local library to encourage gamers to come. If that alone does not tell you that libraries are not cool I am not sure what will. If you are an adult that wants to run a tournament to attract people to come and keep coming back to your public venue this is right up your alley.
As for a gamer this is something you may want to skip since it deals with more of an open venue management rather then the nuts and bolts on setting up ways to get the clan structure set. Plus since it is an ALA book the price point of this one is $50. Which in my opinion is way too much for you to go and purchase this title, my best suggestion is to check this out at your local library (heck my library had it on its shelves for me to go and check out) take some notes and return when finished. You can check out the book on Amazon which provides you with a nice Kindle version for those reading on the electronic device.
