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Last week, I visited the King County Library System to present two gaming workshops to KCLS staff. KCLS has developed a fantastic initiative to get some gaming hardware out to some of their 44 branches without pushing anyone too far outside their comfort zone.

One of the exciting things about this initiative is that it started at the top; KCLS Director Bill Ptacek returned from ALA last year all fired up about gaming, and set KCLS Teen Coordinator Barbara Carmody to develop a program. Barbara initially thought it was a terrible idea; now, a few months later, she has asked for and received a PS2 for Christmas (and is expecting a dance pad for Mother’s Day), is addicted to Katamari Damacy, and is eagerly anticipating Brain Age on DS. Barbara’s enthusiasm for the project is infectious, and her genuine interest in the games teens want to play gives the entire program a solid foundation.

With around $50,000 (out of a $71 million budget) to work with, Barbara has put together a set of well-varied gaming kits for branches of different sizes of capabilities, and the first are rolling out now. The local newspaper ran a typically terrible article (that Barbara saved) about the initiative, complete with the old strategy guide chestnut, photo of crazed teenage library volunteer, and an honest-to-god, threat-or-menace lede. The article prompted a great letter (of support) to the editor from a patron, and even picked up an elusive (and slightly derisive) kotaku post.

The article touches on what my dad might call the salami issue; there’s only so much salami to go around, and a common complaint is that doing something frivolous like a gaming program takes salami away from worthier pursuits. As a public library, any use of salami that involves the public actually eating the salami is an appropriate, even optimal, use of the salami. You might even say that the best uses of the salami are those where the highest percentage of salami reaches the public; those with the lowest salami overhead.  New salami delivery systems that are able to deliver salami to consumers who historically haven’t gotten their fair share of that public salami have a value to the public organization greater than simply the amount of salami they deliver.

Gaming events are salami for gamers. It’s what they want. Public libraries have an important role in promoting literacy, but there’s also this other big system of learning institutions, and that’s kind of their turf, you know? Our relationships with our patrons do not need to be exclusively pedantic; as public libraries, we have a recreational component to our mission, so putting a higher value on — and providing more salami to — the kids who like to write for fun as opposed to the kids who like to play videogames for fun is making a value judgement about how they spend their leisure time. Most of our mission statements make it pretty clear that we’re not supposed to do that. Not everyone is a writer, not everyone is a recreational reader. We can bemoan their tastes, we can try to change them, but it’s their library too.

But I digress, sheesh. The wonderful thing about the workshops at KCLS is that I think some minds were changed. Even some of the voices from the article were playing Mario Kart and warming to the concept. KCLS has been doing open plays and having good success; one of my goals was to give them some ideas and encourage them to take the next step and do some tournaments. Open play is a great place to start, especially when you’re just getting used to setting thing up and handling a new audience; but some issues that rapidly crop up during open play, such as kids getting bored of games and wanting to switch every 5 minutes, or just not sharing and playing nice, are totally eliminated when holding a tournament.

For example, when we do open play at AADL, most players will only play mario kart for 15-20 minutes before wanting to switch to another game. However, in our tournament format, we’re about to start our third consecutive year of playing Mario Kart and the players are eager for more. The excitement of a tournament introduces a new level to the title that open play can’t touch.

So, after some scenes from our DVD, and some discussion about built-in tournament modes and simple excel-based tournaments, people seemed less daunted by the prospect of organizing a tournament, and hopefully, more convinced that games have a place at the library. There’s a lot more to talk about from this trip, but it’s great to see a big system taking such bold steps!