Librarian's Guide to Games and Gamers
From Collection Development to Advisory Services
by Michelle Goodridge and Matthew J. Rohweder
November 2021, 247pp, 7 x 10
1 volume, Libraries Unlimited

Paperback: 978-1-4408-6731-6
$70, £54, 61€, A96
eBook Available: 978-1-4408-6732-3
Please contact your preferred eBook vendor for pricing.

If you find yourself working in a library with a gaming collection and want to learn more about the possibilities, this guide is for you.

Helps librarians who are not themselves seasoned gamers to better understand the plethora of gaming products available and how they might appeal to library users.

As games grow ever-more ubiquitous in our culture and communities, they have become popular staples in public library collections and are increasing in prominence in academic ones. Many librarians, especially those who are not themselves gamers or are only acquainted with a handful of games, are ill-prepared to successfully advise patrons who use games. This book provides the tools to help adult and youth services librarians to better understand the gaming landscape and better serve gamers in discovery of new games—whether they are new to gaming or seasoned players—through advisory services.

This book maps all types of games—board, roleplaying, digital, and virtual reality—providing all the information needed to understand and appropriately recommend games to library users. Organized by game type, hundreds of descriptions offer not only bibliographic information (title, publication date, series, and format/platform), but genre classifications, target age ranges for players, notes on gameplay and user behavior type, and short descriptions of the game’s basic premise and appeals.

Features

  • Provides a new approach to gaming that fills the gap in the library by introducing the idea of gamers' advisory
  • Contains a representative list of board games, video games, roleplaying games, card games, and more for librarians to consult when working with patrons or programming
  • Discusses the aspects of gaming collections in libraries including cataloguing, preservation, purchasing and collection development, stack maintenance, understanding player motivation, genre-specific terminology and phrases, future trends (e.g., AI, AR, VR), and other tips and tricks for maintaining a successful gaming collection
Michelle Goodridge, MA, MLIS, is liaison librarian at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario. She has authored a book chapter and several journal articles and has presented at conferences on gaming collections and programming in libraries. Goodridge's key areas of interest are game programming in libraries, bridging the gap between public and academic libraries, using games for English as a Second Language learning, representation of law enforcement in video games, and using game simulations in the classroom.

Matthew J. Rohweder, MA, MLIS, is liaison librarian at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario. He has been contributing author to an LGBTQ+ encyclopedia along with author of a book chapter and has presented at dozens of conferences in North America and the United Kingdom on such topics as information literacy, LGBTQ+ issues in libraries, and gaming in libraries. He has been awarded a number of social sciences and humanities research grants through the government of Canada for his work on LGBTQ+ representation in American literature. Rohweder's key areas of interest are games and gaming in libraries, LGBTQ+ representation and outreach in libraries, information literacy and the importance of failure in teaching, and the representation of law enforcement in video games.

Reviews

"A superb book for early-career librarians, librarians who are new to games and gaming, academic librarians hoping to install games into the collection, and anyone looking for a fresh perspective on gaming."—Library Journal, February 1, 2022

This book will help librarians not only build a game collection, but also develop innovative programming and services around that collection. —Scott Nicholson, Professor of Game Design, Wilfrid Laurier University, Brantford, Ontario, Canada

For libraries getting started with their gaming collection, Librarian’s Guide to Games and Gamers is a one-stop text for understanding how to make room for the dynamic field of gaming in your institution.—Phil Salvador, Visual Media Collections Coordinator, American University Library
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