The Park Ridge Public Library here in Illinois got a nice write up in their local paper. “Library to try lending video games” states that only one board member voted “no” on the idea. It’s interesting that the board had to approve this idea.
“Kids throughout Park Ridge kept coming up to me and asking why we didn’t have video games for circulation,” she said.After awhile, Odlevak began asking herself the same question. She began conducting research and said she discovered that libraries around the country are starting to add video games to their collections.
Odlevak will actually purchase the video game titles based on what young adults are requesting. Games that involve sports, popular movies, history and education will make up the bulk of the collection.
Odlevak said she has not conducted a formal survey to determine what young adults want, but she has received feedback by working with them on a daily basis.
“Just hanging out and listening to them has been my survey,” she said.
[emphasis mine]
There are some funny and interesting comments on the digg thread discussing this, including info on libraries that are already doing this in Canada, and the UK.
…is this a good idea? And why couldn’t they do this when I was a kid?
Guess this person can’t use the library anymore as an adult?
This makes me wish I had a digg account so I could take part in this conversation about content in libraries.
I know a few librarians that are as compulsive in their list making as I am. Just a hunch, but maybe something to do with librarians’ love of order makes us prone. Ta-da Lists are nice, but I really like having lists written down on notecards and in my Moleskine. If you’ve ever made a list of lists you’d like to make, you might enjoy reading about some styles of list making. I really like the idea of using check boxes (to retain legibility) in place of crossing items out, tho I doubt ticking a box is as satisfying.
I don’t do much quick linking here, but if no one else is going to post about this, I will. Why? Because it combines two great things: IM and RSS.
This service let’s you subscribe to RSS feeds via an IM account. It works though a bookmarket named “monitor this” which you can click on a page that has a feed. Then you simply select a service and screen name.
So I can tell immedi.at to send updates from a blog to a screen name, and when the feed is updated, it pings the screen name. Neat. When I tried this out, there was no validation, so this service is high on the prankability scale.
I’m not sure how immedi.at it really is. I my test subscription took about 1 minute. Also, you might get a “Application error Rails application failed to start properly” message since people are likely hammering their server right now.
I couldn’t see having all of my subscriptions coming in though IM, but perhaps it would be good for following some feeds closely for a set period of time. Play and enjoy! And remember, Tom the Turkey is your friend!
Do numbers like 1080i and 32:9 get you excited? What about online gamer-created talk shows? For the latest Product Pipeline in “LJ’s netConnect” I’ve written a bit about the three upcoming video games systems coming out. If you’re heard all the flap about games in libraries and would like an introduction to what many, many, many people will be doing with their leisure time, give it a read. In addition, here’s A Brief Timeline of Home Video Game Systems
1974 – Atari Pong
1977 – Atari 2600
1982 – ColecoVision
1985 – Nintendo Entertainment System
1985 – Sega Master System
1989 – Sega Genesis
1988 – Atari Lynx (Portable)
1988 – Nintendo Game Boy (Portable)
1991 – Super Nintendo Entertainment System
1995 – Sony PlayStation
1996 – Nintendo 64
2000 – Sony PlayStation 2 (PS2)
2001 – Microsoft Xbox
2001 – Nintendo GameCube
2004 – Nintendo DS (Portable)
2005 – Sony PSP (PlayStation Portable)
Q4 2005 – Xbox 360
April 2006 (expected) – PlayStation 3
2006 (expected) – Nintendo Revolution
