When I talk with skep­tics of videogame ser­vices in libraries, I remind them that gam­ing isn’t a new con­cept for us. Most pub­lic (and even school) libraries have some sort of past asso­ci­a­tion with chess, as well as other board games, and most pub­lic (and even aca­d­e­mic) libraries today real­ize that some per­cent­age of their users are play­ing games on the library’s inter­net ter­mi­nals. So if chess is okay in the library, how are videogames dif­fer­ent, espe­cially the socially-oriented ones that libraries tend to offer?

This isn’t a new ques­tion, as I recently learned when Val alerted me to a very pub­lic dis­cus­sion about videogames in libraries that took place back in 1982–83, even spilling over onto the May 9, 1983, “CBS Morn­ing News” show.

It all started with a Novem­ber 1982 col­umn in School Library Jour­nal by Carol Emmens about four pub­lic libraries that were — even back then — cir­cu­lat­ing videogames. Some quotes from that piece:

“Pac­Man has invaded restau­rants, doc­tors’ offices, arcades, homes, and the world of tele­vi­sion as the star of a Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toon show. And now he has even invaded libraries! He is at the fore­front of a new library service–the cir­cu­la­tion of video games. A sur­vey turned up four libraries that cir­cu­late games.

‘As far as I’m con­cerned, the cir­cu­la­tion of video games is too suc­cess­ful,’ says Har­vey Barfield, audio­vi­sual librar­ian at Arling­ton Heights Memo­r­ial Library (Ill.).…

The library (serv­ing 65,000) owns 400 video­cas­settes and 50 Atari car­tridges, pur­chased with AV depart­ment funds. The com­bined monthly cir­cu­la­tion for video­cas­settes and games is approx­i­mately 2500.…

With $1000 seed money pro­vided by the Friends of the Library, [East Brunswick (N.J.) Pub­lic Library] bought 55 car­tridge locally, and on the first day of ser­vice every car­tridge was checked out. The Friends donated another $500, and now the car­tridge col­lec­tion totals 105.

[Assis­tant Direc­tor Sharon] Kar­mazin says, ‘All the car­tridges are out all the time and the cir­cu­la­tion is really incred­i­ble: 235 in July and 259 in August. Peo­ple hang around the library for hours wait­ing for returns.…

In Feb­ru­ary, the South River (N.J.) Pub­lic Library (serv­ing 14,000) started to cir­cu­late 20 car­tridges, which had been pur­chased with $200 donated by the Friends of the Library.… Cir­cu­la­tion is very high, and [Direc­tor Irene] Cack­owski, not­ing the many new users brought into the library, says, ‘What a ser­vice! I can’t say enough good about it.’…

The inno­va­tions at Clo­quet [(M.N.) Pub­lic Library] reflect the phi­los­o­phy of Head Librar­ian Mike Knievel, that libraries are not lob­by­ists for print. He says, ‘The role of the library is not to push books per se, but to acquire, orga­nize, and redis­trib­ute infor­ma­tion and recre­ational mate­ri­als,’ regard­less of format.”

Libraries exper­i­ment­ing with videogames and find­ing them to be a very pop­u­lar ser­vice turned out to be too much for Will Man­ley, though. He wrote a blis­ter­ing attack on the prac­tice in the March 1983 edi­tion of Wil­son Library Bul­letin. As early as 1983, he was sound­ing the alarm that videogames in the library would be the death of civ­i­liza­tion as we know it.

“Noth­ing, repeat noth­ing, in eleven years of being a librar­ian has upset me more than a lit­tle, one-page arti­cle in the School Library Jour­nal of Novem­ber 1982, in which the direc­tors of four pub­lic libraries boasted about the won­der­ful suc­cess they were hav­ing cir­cu­lat­ing video game cartridges.

Video games! In the pub­lic library! Chain saws, paint rollers, ham­sters, drill bits–these items for cir­cu­la­tion, when we’ve read about them over the past ten years in our pro­fes­sional lit­er­a­ture, con­cerned a num­ber of us as con­sti­tut­ing non­sense. But there is some­thing faintly tol­er­a­ble about non­sense. It’s part of the human con­di­tion. We come up against non­sense all the time–at school, the post office, the dentist’s office, and yes, occa­sion­ally the pub­lic library. But non­sense, once it is accepted for what it is, can even to a degree be funny. The key to non­sense is that it just happens–there is very lit­tle rhyme or rea­son or phi­los­o­phy to it.

But cir­cu­lat­ing video games at the pub­lic library is not non­sense. It is seri­ously wrong. It is an aban­don­ment of the mis­sion of the pub­lic library. It is sur­ren­der­ing to the com­mer­cial and the super­fi­cial. It is con­trary to every­thing we stand for.…

In effect, video games con­sti­tute the most seri­ous threat to that impor­tant rela­tion­ship between chil­dren and books since the advent of the television.…

The ‘it brings new peo­ple into the library’ argu­ment is issu­ing forth from the lips of more and more librar­i­ans, and that’s an indi­ca­tion that we’ve for­got­ten what a library is all about.…

And when those pop­u­lar ser­vices not only don’t com­ple­ment our focus on the printed word but actu­ally clash against it, then we begin to sub­vert that com­mit­ment [to the com­mon good].…

If we stop stand­ing for the impor­tance of books and infor­ma­tion, then we will lose everything.”

All of this must have become so con­tro­ver­sial that Man­ley and Knievel were invited to debate the topic of “print vs. non-print” on “CBS Morn­ing News” with Bill Kur­tis. In the same over-the-top tone of his writ­ten edi­to­r­ial, Man­ley pro­claimed on the show that, “Offer­ing videogames in libraries is like serv­ing mar­ti­nis at AA meetings.”

This atti­tude was overly-simplistic and short-sighted 25 years ago, and it still is today. I’m going to give him the ben­e­fit of the doubt that in this day and age, espe­cially with usage sta­tis­tics sup­port­ing the inclu­sion of non-text mate­ri­als and pro­gram­ming, that he has since changed his opin­ion that pub­lic libraries should focus only on text on paper.

But the whole thing does illus­trate how libraries aren’t just about books, how new con­tent for­mats are always viewed sus­pi­ciously as not being part of the library’s mis­sion, and how that view changes over time once the for­mat becomes more main­stream. Twenty-five years later, it’s impor­tant for librar­i­ans to real­ize that videogames are just one more for­mat in a long line of many, and that they are an exten­sion of the same types of ser­vices we have pro­vided for decades such as sto­ry­time, board games, pro­grams for adults, craft pro­grams for chil­dren, meet­ing space for knit­ting clubs, com­puter classes, and more. How could we pos­si­bly jus­tify such basic cur­rent ser­vices as inter­net access and ref­er­ence ser­vice if we cling to out­dated def­i­n­i­tions of the library as being focused solely on the writ­ten word?

Per­son­ally, I believe pub­lic libraries are the last safe spaces that serve (and wel­come) every­one in the com­mu­nity, regard­less of race, eco­nomic posi­tion, age, or any other fac­tor. Many libraries have worked hard to become the cen­ter of their com­mu­ni­ties, and the con­cepts of the library as a space for civic engage­ment and as a “third place” are valid and impor­tant roles. The library as a 19th cen­tury vault of writ­ten knowl­edge with no other pur­pose but to raise the moral con­science of the masses through “good” lit­er­a­ture is a long-gone propo­si­tion. Times change, and libraries need to change with them.

I’m not call­ing Man­ley out on his views from 25-years ago, so much as show­ing that we’re still hav­ing these same argu­ments today and to note that you could sub­sti­tute “fic­tion,” “chil­dren,” “music,” “com­put­ers,” “inter­net,” or “videos” in any of the above quotes to see where we’ve already been on this. The key is to remem­ber that gam­ing in libraries in any form is an “and” propo­si­tion, not an “or.” It can coex­ist peace­fully with the books, mag­a­zines, news­pa­pers, and other ser­vices. It’s not the end of the world as we know it.