• Inland Libraries Bring­ing in Video Games as Part of Teen Offer­ings
  

  “At the Fontana Branch Library, teen librar­ian Mike Jimenez formed a video game club that draws up to 50 play­ers every Thurs­day. A new, soon-to-open library will host gam­ing tour­na­ments run on a 26-computer net­work in the teen area, he said.

  Ali­cia Dok­tor, who is in charge of the teen ser­vices at River­side Pub­lic Library, said the comic book-formatted graphic nov­els are strate­gi­cally placed under the plasma screen to lure prospec­tive read­ers. ‘Most of the time they’ll check out a book,’ she said.

  Rosas, a senior at Riverside’s North High, dri­ves down­town to the library every day after school. Besides com­ing to check MySpace, he reads fic­tion, espe­cially the short sto­ries of Larry Brown. But at 3:15 p.m. Tues­days, he’s ready to take on Gui­tar Hero. ” [The Press Enter­prise]

• Idaho Turns to Chess as Edu­ca­tion Strat­egy
  

  “Mrs. McCoy does not do this because she is pas­sion­ate about chess; she barely knew how to play before this school year. But she began teach­ing it as part of an unusual pilot pro­gram under way in more than 100 sec­ond– and third-grade class­rooms across Idaho.

  On Thurs­day, state offi­cials will announce in Boise that the pro­gram will be extended in the fall to all sec­ond and third graders — mak­ing Idaho the first state to offer a statewide chess curriculum.…

  There are no stud­ies show­ing that teach­ing chess has ben­e­fits for chil­dren, but there is anec­do­tal evi­dence, Mr. Luna said.

  ‘One of the things that we hear is that too much of what we do is based on rote mem­o­riza­tion,’ Mr. Luna said. ‘The part I really like about this pro­gram is that kids are think­ing ahead.’…

  Some of the ben­e­fits of the pro­gram, Mrs. McCoy said, came in unex­pected areas.

  ‘I actu­ally have one stu­dent who is orig­i­nally from Rus­sia and two His­panic stu­dents who have lim­ited Eng­lish skills, and chess kind of lev­eled the play­ing field, and it kind of helped their self-esteem issues,’ she said. ” [New York Times]

• Tak­ing Play Seri­ously at the Pub­lic Library With Young Video Gamers
  

  “And you thought libraries were sup­posed to be quiet. Not on Friday.

  Under the Beaux-Arts arches of Astor Hall at the New York Pub­lic Library’s flag­ship build­ing on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, thump­ing hard-rock beats mixed with tennis-ball thwacks and the screech of burn­ing tires late Fri­day after­noon, as the library showed off the lat­est addi­tion to its col­lec­tions of books, films, music and maps: video games.…

  ‘What we’re see­ing is that in addi­tion to sim­ply help­ing bring kids into the library in the first place, games are hav­ing a broader effect on play­ers, and they have the poten­tial to be a great teach­ing tool,’ Mr. [Jack] Mar­tin said. ‘If a kid takes a test and fails, that’s it. But in a game, if you fail you get to take what you’ve learned and try again.’

  ‘In a lot of these games you have to under­stand the rules, you have to under­stand the game’s world, its story. For some games you have to under­stand its his­tory and the char­ac­ters in order to play effectively.’…

  Across the hall, Rad­hames Sal­divar, 16, a 10th grader from upper Man­hat­tan, ripped through a blis­ter­ing ren­di­tion of Heart’s ‘Bar­racuda’ on Gui­tar Hero III. After­ward he said: ‘I never thought I’d see this hap­pen. I might have to check out the library some more.’

  A few feet away, Car­los Rivera, 16, said he helped orga­nize the reg­u­lar Fri­day after­noon game ses­sions at the Jef­fer­son Mar­ket library branch in Green­wich Village.

  ‘I thought a library was just for books, just for study­ing, just for a lot of things I don’t nor­mally do,’ he said. ‘But when I found out the library was start­ing to have games it was great, because it’s really good to hear that the library is pay­ing more atten­tion to the youth and what we’re into.’

  He paused. ‘And it’s also good because I can just say to my par­ents, ‘I’m going to the library.’ ’ ” [New York Times

• Check out this video of a gam­ing tour­na­ment at the John­son County Library, in which librar­ian Chris Kop­pen­havor talks about the ben­e­fits of gam­ing. Go JoCo, my child­hood library system!

Con­grat­u­la­tions to Naomi, a school librar­ian who won the Wii from the fundraiser Michael Stephens and I held for LISHost. Blake wrote a script that ran­domly gen­er­ated a name from the list of donors, and hers was the name that came up.

Thank you to every­one who donated money for this cause. With your help, we raised $823 with just one Wii!