Lit­tle Library Got Wii

“I had a fab­u­lous time in at the ‘Gam­ing in Libraries’’ ses­sion of the Mid­west Library Tech­nol­ogy Con­fer­ence, where they not only talked about games, they let us play. It’s more than a Field of Dreams approach, just toss­ing games into a room; I have worked with, read about, and heard from those clever librar­i­ans who design activ­i­ties, resources that do what librar­i­ans do so well, put infor­ma­tion in con­text for us.

This is not even meant as a post to pon­der the impli­ca­tions, more of an obser­va­tion I had a few weeks ago when I stopped by the Isabelle Hunt Memo­r­ial Pub­lic Library in Pine, Ari­zona — the clos­est town (3 miles) with a gas sta­tion (actu­ally 2) and a mar­ket (1) to where I live. The pop­u­la­tion of Pine is likely a bit over 2000, and the library is a real gem.…

And darned if on my last visit there, they had re-arranged the check­out racks of DVDs to make room for a sin­gle Wii station!

Yep, this lit­tle library has got Wii.” [Cog­Dog­Blog, Thanks, Liz D.]

Empha­sis above is mine, because I love Alan Levine’s descrip­tion. Although we’re not related, great Levine minds think alike.

What I really love about this, though, is that it shows how even small libraries can imple­ment gam­ing on some level, as opposed to other ini­tia­tives that require huge increases in staffing or bud­get lines.