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Hi there, I’m a librarian based in the UK as well as an avid role-player, and am currently conducting some research on behalf of our library service. I’m looking at how local libraries and gaming groups can support each other, and what types of gaming materials might be appropriate for local libraries to have as stock – currently our library service does not stock anything in the way of rpg books or gaming aids.
If you have any experience or stories of using libraries for gaming in any way, I’d like to hear from you.
Here are some questions that I have:
1. Does your library stock rpg games? How easy are they to access (are they on a shelf, kept apart for special request, in the reference section, etc.)?
2. Does your library provide other gaming materials (dice, flipmats, paper or whiteboards)?
3. Does your gaming group meet in a library? Is your gaming group organized by the library, or does library just provide a venue? Do library staff take part?
4. Can you advertise for your gaming group at your public library?
5. Does your local library lend out other types of games – board games, video games? Are there games tournaments hosted by the library service?
6. What would you feel to be more effective, for a library to support games that local groups are known to play, or to stock some items for a variety of games, perhaps providing opportunities for gaming groups to sample different games?
7. Librarians especially, would be good to hear from you!
Thanks for your time!
The city library in Philadelphia is very much not amenable to RPG gaming. The answer to all five yes/no questions is "no". The answer for 6 is "uh, consider making the answers to the above 'yes'". Just to be clear, I think it'd be epic if the Philadelphia library system supported roleplayers. We've got 54 branches(!), and therefore plenty of space.
There's also the fact that Magic and Warhammer seem to be far more popular in Philadelphia than any sort of RPG. The FLGS and a local meetup group both have calendars dominated by MtG and WH40k/Fantasy with relatively little actual RPGs. Maybe the library does stock MtG / WH stuff, but as I'm a roleplayer I wouldn't know anything about that.
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The city library in Philadelphia is very much not amenable to RPG gaming. The answer to all five yes/no questions is "no". The answer for 6 is "uh, consider making the answers to the above 'yes'". Just to be clear, I think it'd be epic if the Philadelphia library system supported roleplayers. We've got 54 branches(!), and therefore plenty of space.
There's also the fact that Magic and Warhammer seem to be far more popular in Philadelphia than any sort of RPG. The FLGS and a local meetup group both have calendars dominated by MtG and WH40k/Fantasy with relatively little actual RPGs. Maybe the library does stock MtG / WH stuff, but as I'm a roleplayer I wouldn't know anything about that.
Ah, interesting. Our local library service is a bit similar (lots of branches), but all are situated in either large towns or small, rural communities. Likewise, the games groups I know of in the area have a tendency to revolve around MtG, Warhammer, and HeroClix. I think it can be difficult for roleplayers to find each other.
Does your local FLGS or meetup group have enough space to allow rpg groups to run a game on the same days as other events? You never know, some MtG or Warhammer fans might be interested in joining in if they see you playing.
Hello,
I have some experience with this. From 2006 to about 2009 I hosted a Role playing program at my branch. It was on the 2nd and 4th Saturday of each month. At the time, we used RPGA adventures (3.5). They were free, were easier for my DM's to prep, etc. Also, the RPGA was extremely gracious towards us, and let us receive promotional items like a store. Our numbers were staggering, with an average of about 40 players, and we even hit 90 once (which was a nightmare, to be honest.)
Overall, it was one of the best progams I've ever done. We stopped not long after 4th because Libraries stopped being supported, as well as cutbacks in my system towards programming.
My branch did order roleplaying materials, and the program really helped shaped our branch's collection. They have high check out numbers.
I've been considering starting it again, with Pathfinder Society, but just haven't quite gotten there yet. The number one thing to consider would be cost. Although inexpensive, they still cost, which is something to think about. Also, if you are going to do this, start talking to volunteers, you are going to need them to run games for you. They are extremely important.
I'm in Idaho now, and haven't had time nor reason to hit any local library...so my answers are for the White Mountain Library in Rock Springs Wyoming.
For several years I was involved in a Warhammer group that met at the library. Some of us got together from time to time to play RPGs, but most of the guys who took on responsibilities for scheduling things and getting things accomplished either weren't interested in playing D&D or didn't have time for it.
1. Does your library stock rpg games? How easy are they to access (are they on a shelf, kept apart for special request, in the reference section, etc.)?
There were a scattering of second ed D&D books. I never found any on the shelves, just came across them on the libraries computer system and asked to see them.
2. Does your library provide other gaming materials (dice, flipmats, paper or whiteboards)?
Um, no. It was hard enough to get a room consistantly.
3. Does your gaming group meet in a library? Is your gaming group organized by the library, or does library just provide a venue? Do library staff take part?
We met at the library, and though we had a schedule set up through a system the library provided I would say about a third of the time the "contract" was broken on the side of the library. Either they had a library based event that no one had told us about (generally until we showed up, only to find out there was something else in the room we had), or the local LAN party group had access to the room, even though we had scheduled long before them. Problem was the guy who was in charge of running the room scheduling system at the library was also the guy running the lan parties.
4. Can you advertise for your gaming group at your public library?
I believe so. I think there was a board somewhere in the library we could post events at, but when we did advertise we just put an add in the local paper.
5. Does your local library lend out other types of games – board games, video games? Are there games tournaments hosted by the library service?
There were our warhammer tournaments and various video game tournaments ran by the LAN guys. No idea of any board game activities.
6. What would you feel to be more effective, for a library to support games that local groups are known to play, or to stock some items for a variety of games, perhaps providing opportunities for gaming groups to sample different games?
I would say absolutely start with what they know people are interested in. If you start off advertising Risk and Magic the gathering tournaments when no one plays either, you're pretty likely to get a poor showing. Optimally if you want to expose people to the newer things you should have the materials. A friend of mine is always trying to get people to play warhammer fantasy, when they've already spent hundreds (and a lot of cases thousands) of dollars on 40k minis. He has a small handful of fantasy armies, but not much anyone is interested in...so no one ever plays. We had the same probably with warmachines. Couple guys wanted everyone to play it but didn't even have enough for their own armies.
Does your local FLGS or meetup group have enough space to allow rpg groups to run a game on the same days as other events? You never know, some MtG or Warhammer fans might be interested in joining in if they see you playing.
That's a hard question to answer: the FLGS recently moved into a bigger space. We'll see if there's spare space on the days when they host big MtG events. As for the local meetup, no, they're completely overrun by WH. They tried running D&D groups but the interest is practically nonexistent.
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Hey, I met my gaming group through a local library (city has a population of 190,000)
1. Does your library stock rpg games? How easy are they to access (are they on a shelf, kept apart for special request, in the reference section, etc.)?
No real gaming materials to speak of
2. Does your library provide other gaming materials (dice, flipmats, paper or whiteboards)?
There were whiteboards that we had access to when we were gaming there, theoretically there were also computers we could use to look things up and a cafe like snack bar.
3. Does your gaming group meet in a library? Is your gaming group organized by the library, or does library just provide a venue? Do library staff take part?
We met in the library for about 3 months of every other week in a conference room - I happened to find this meetup group advertising online - we were eventually asked not to come back for being too noisy >;p (gamers tend to be a bit noisy while playing which should be a note for most libraries) I've stuck with this group for two years now through a dozen different venues
4. Can you advertise for your gaming group at your public library?
Yes, you could - in fact you could advertise just about anything you wanted to that was going on locally, through many different message boards throughout the library
5. Does your local library lend out other types of games – board games, video games? Are there games tournaments hosted by the library service?
They lend out some video games, along with CDs and DVDs, no support for board-games at all as far as I know. Both of the libraries that I go to in town seem to host video game tournaments about once a month (not sure if the library is just a venue or the people actually hosting it as I haven't been to one)
6. What would you feel to be more effective, for a library to support games that local groups are known to play, or to stock some items for a variety of games, perhaps providing opportunities for gaming groups to sample different games?
The answer to number six is it depends on who your trying to target. If your trying to target players (the larger group) I'd think having the books to rpgs that people play locally would be more effective - since many don't have a collection as large as say their GMs, and might like to learn about the history of the campaign world or make a character on their own. Alternatively, I think if you wanted to target GMs you would be better off putting in unusual RPG books that you wouldn't expect a GM to own in their normal collection - like maybe a citybuilder guide (that could support multiple game systems) instead of a core rule-book. At least a GM that was starting out that didn't have over a thousand assorted rpg books in their collection already - someone knows who I'm talking about >;p
I honestly don't see the books to unusual game systems being much more than a novelty myself, something you might theoretically read but never play, but I am a pathfinder loyalist :p
My local library (Aurora, Colorado) does in fact stock Dungeons and Dragons books. They have over two dozen. They do not supply any other materials, or any other games. I don't know of any groups that play or advertise there, but I don't know for sure that it doesn't happen. So far as I know, they carry no games aside from some 3.5 D&D books.
I would like to amend my above posting to say that, to my shock, the local library does indeed stock some D&D stuff ... under "Children's Literature Research" =\. How the Fiend Folio (!) was categorized thusly I will never know.
Its only sort of related but you might want to get in touch with the hosts of the podcast 'On Board Games'. Scott in particular is involved in research with gaming in libraries, and though for the most part his interest is in Board Games, not RPGs, I imagine a lot of the information he has would be relevant to you. It is very likely he will have detailed information on question 5 in particular on a much larger scale then any of us could give you for our own local libraries.
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Hi!
I’m a librarian based in Finland, and I work at the largest public library in the country. Helsinki City Library is part of the the HelMet Network (Helsinki Metropolitan Area Libraries) Library, which consists of:
• 63 libraries
• six bookmobiles
• 14 institutional libraries and home service
• 900 staff members (library and media professionals)
The number of the annual loans and visits are both approx. 17 million, and the HelMet collection includes over 3.4 million items.
1. Our RPG collection is quite large; in addition to numerous D&D and Pathfinder books, we have, for example, Judge Dredd RPG, CthulhuTech, RuneQuest II (and Glorantha), Savage Worlds, CoC, Shadowrun, Paranoia, Legend of the Five Rings, Song of Ice and Fire RPG, Warhammer 40000 (all RPGs), Deadlands Reloaded, Battlestar Galactica RPG, Twilight: 2013, etcetera. We have also acquired quite a few “indie RPGs”, such as Mouse Guard, Agon, 1001 Nights, Umläut : Game of Metal, Trail of Cthulhu, Dead of Night, Burning Wheel, Spirit of the Century and Capes. All in all we carry something like 350+ titles, both in English and Finnish, and I’m proud to say that we have at least two to three copies of each title. All of them are kept on shelf and can be checked out normally (the loan period is four weeks).
2. We only have rulebooks, supplements and adventures; there’s been talk of acquiring dice and boxed sets, but experience has shown that both can be challenging as library material (esp. in normal circulation; can you imagine counting all the pieces in a WFRP 3rd ed. boxed set each time it is returned?).
3. There have been quite a many RPG groups/short campaigns ran by library staffers in the past, and some libraries have conference rooms that can be reserved (even for this purpose ;)). There has been talk of trying it again -- i.e. running games for “newbies” -- at certain (large) libraries, but it’s still in planning stages.
4. Sure! At least some of our libraries have boards for patron use; however, posting of long-term ads is still discouraged.
5. We have hundreds of video game titles in the HelMet collection (I think it’s 450+ titles altogether?). You can play video and board games in many of our libraries; a few of the HelMet libraries even lend out board games. We have had gaming days and tournaments for board and video games, and I also want to point out that we participate in the National Gaming Day (known as ‘Kansallinen pelipäivä’ here in Finland).
6. Personally, I think the needs of the local patrons (in this case, gamers) should be paramount in collection development, because library acquisitions are meant for circulation, right? However, variety is always good; for example, some libraries only buy D&D books, occasionally even 20+ copies of the same title, and that isn’t professional collection development, even if the local D&D players wanted them to purchase every possible supplement. When I was a teenager, I was overjoyed that my local library acquired a wide range of RPG titles that we could read and sample, even though we mostly played (A)D&D. If it hadn’t been for the library, we wouldn’t have ever discovered and tried them, because we just couldn’t have afforded them back then. If your library only has the funds, you should acquire as many games as possible (indie RPGs as well), but naturally with the emphasis on the local needs and the more popular systems; rulebooks and adventures mostly, because that’s what people need (supplements and campaign settings are cool, but one to three is enough even for the top selling games).
Finally, I’d like to say that I’m glad that fellow librarians elsewhere are researching and thinking about games as part of library services and collections. Although you’ve probably heard of it, Scott Nicholson has written a book called Everybody plays at the library : creating great gaming experiences for all ages on the subject. It has some good advice on organizing different types of games at your library, and also include good arguments you can use to convince your colleagues and superiors of this! All I can say is: go for it! :)
1 - 5. No. The local university library does however let student groups use available space for group activities after hours on weekends.
6. The general attitude for public libraries in my area is they only exist to supply reference material for students and books for the elderly and pre-schoolers. There is also a push to close all local libraries because the internet makes them obsolete.
My mother is the branch manager of a small public library, so I'll answer as best I know for her branch:
1. I think they have or she is planning on ordering some rulebooks, probably a combination of Pathfinder and 4E
2. No
3. No
4. Yeah, a gaming group could put up ads alongside other "community events" type stuff
5. Yeah, they've held board game days that were really popular with a lot of people, including more of an adult board-game-geek crowd than they expected
6. I know that what she'd like to have at some point would be a library event with RPG gaming on a drop-in basis (i.e. not a campaign)
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Its only sort of related but you might want to get in touch with the hosts of the podcast 'On Board Games'. Scott in particular is involved in research with gaming in libraries, and though for the most part his interest is in Board Games, not RPGs, I imagine a lot of the information he has would be relevant to you. It is very likely he will have detailed information on question 5 in particular on a much larger scale then any of us could give you for our own local libraries.
Thanks for the tip, I will definitely look that up!
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Hi!
I’m a librarian based in Finland, and I work at the largest public library in the country. Helsinki City Library is part of the the HelMet Network (Helsinki Metropolitan Area Libraries) Library, which consists of:
• 63 libraries
• six bookmobiles
• 14 institutional libraries and home service
• 900 staff members (library and media professionals)The number of the annual loans and visits are both approx. 17 million, and the HelMet collection includes over 3.4 million items.
1. Our RPG collection is quite large; in addition to numerous D&D and Pathfinder books, we have, for example, Judge Dredd RPG, CthulhuTech, RuneQuest II (and Glorantha), Savage Worlds, CoC, Shadowrun, Paranoia, Legend of the Five Rings, Song of Ice and Fire RPG, Warhammer 40000 (all RPGs), Deadlands Reloaded, Battlestar Galactica RPG, Twilight: 2013, etcetera. We have also acquired quite a few “indie RPGs”, such as Mouse Guard, Agon, 1001 Nights, Umläut : Game of Metal, Trail of Cthulhu, Dead of Night, Burning Wheel, Spirit of the Century and Capes. All in all we carry something like 350+ titles, both in English and Finnish, and I’m proud to say that we have at least two to three copies of each title. All of them are kept on shelf and can be checked out normally (the loan period is four weeks).
Asgetrion, may I say, I think you must work at the world's greatest library for gamers! I'm going to start learning Finnish! :) Thanks for the detailed information, and I will definitely look up the Scott Nicholson book as part of our research, I hadn't come across it.
1. Does your library stock rpg games? How easy are they to access (are they on a shelf, kept apart for special request, in the reference section, etc.)?
The Wichita Public Library main branch has several 3.0 and Star Wars D20 books on the shelves on the main floor.
2. Does your library provide other gaming materials (dice, flipmats, paper or whiteboards)?
No it does not.
3. Does your gaming group meet in a library? Is your gaming group organized by the library, or does library just provide a venue? Do library staff take part?
No it does not.
4. Can you advertise for your gaming group at your public library?
There is an out of the way public announcement board that anyone can place an advertisement on. It will stay up for months. It will come down in minutes if it is in poor taste.
5. Does your local library lend out other types of games – board games, video games? Are there games tournaments hosted by the library service?
No it does not.
6. What would you feel to be more effective, for a library to support games that local groups are known to play, or to stock some items for a variety of games, perhaps providing opportunities for gaming groups to sample different games?
A little of each.
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Thanks for all the great responses everyone, this is very helpful. I'm so thankful that where I work they have been so open about looking into this.
The vibe I'm getting about the ideal collection is to cater for the types of games that local groups are already playing, and I agree. That would be the primary goal, in order for it to be beneficial for local groups, and also to encourage them into using the library. It would be nice to have other games available for gamers to try, though you have to take into account that library budgets are ever shrinking, and game materials would be a small percentage of that budget.
I also agree that linking in with established organizations like RPGA or Pathfinder Society are great ideas - you get the sense you are part of a bigger story and the stand-alone nature of most organized play games would probably appeal to casual players who are perhaps new to role-playing.
Great to hear your stories from different places - I'm curious, are there any librarians from the UK involved with rpgs - wargaming - ccgs at their libraries?
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For several years I was involved in a Warhammer group that met at the library. Some of us got together from time to time to play RPGs, but most of the guys who took on responsibilities for scheduling things and getting things accomplished either weren't interested in playing D&D or didn't have time for it.
Fraust, how well did it work with running the warhammer games at the library? I'm asking because I know they can take up a lot of space. Wargaming is popular in our area, one of the things we're looking at is how we could accommodate them.
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It would be nice to have other games available for gamers to try, though you have to take into account that library budgets are ever shrinking, and game materials would be a small percentage of that budget.
Putting out a request for donations, perhaps on Freecycle, is normally a productive way to acquire old and obscure game systems.
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Asgetrion, may I say, I think you must work at the world's greatest library for gamers! I'm going to start learning Finnish! :) Thanks for the detailed information, and I will definitely look up the Scott Nicholson book as part of our research, I hadn't come across it.
You’re welcome! Always happy to help a fellow librarian, and hopefully you (and all the other colleagues on these forums) will be able to attend the IFLA 2012 conference here in Finland! :)
I’m proud to say that Finnish libraries have always been on the forefront of adapting new technologies and innovations, and also experimenting with things. While smaller rural libraries and more conservative librarians might still hold to old-fashioned views on collection development policy, at least the Regional Libraries and Helsinki City Library (the Central Library for all the Finnish public libraries) have acquired games since RPGs first hit the stores in 1980s in Finland. As gaming and games have evolved from a weird, geeky thing to a widespread and accepted pastime, more and more libraries have spent resources on games and game-related technology, activities and events. It probably helps that we have many staff members who are gamers themselves, but we also have quite open-minded Chief Librarians and Heads of Department who want to try out new things and are willing to devote resources for it (for example, one of the libraries in the HelMet Network offers the possibility to play WoW in the library).
Anyway, if you’re a librarian and a gamer, you should definitely start learning Finnish! :D
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If you have any experience or stories of using libraries for gaming in any way, I’d like to hear from you.
Around 1978-79, not long after first beginning to play D&D, I learned that there was a regular D&D group meeting at our local library in Lincoln, Massachusetts. The Lincoln Public Library was a great old red brick building built in the 18th century. The building itself had the feel of a castle or cathedral.
Lincoln is a small (pop ~2500 when I lived there) historic colonial town. Paul Revere was captured in Lincoln not far from the site of the Library. At the time, the town had a volunteer youth activities coordinator who had arranged with the library staff to make a space available for this group to meet every Friday after school.
The room that the Library provided us was called the "Records Room" which as a place to store archives in a temperature and humidity control room. The room was built like a vault in the lower level of the building. We couldn't have been luckier regarding this space. It was mostly sound proof so we could be as loud as we wanted without disturbing the rest of the Library guests. It had a great conference table and wonderful lighting. It felt like we were playing in the command center of a WWII era military bunker. Just outside the Records Room was the Science Fiction section of books that was stocked with great material from authors such as Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, Robert E. Howard, and J.R.R.Tolkien.
I remember with crystal clarity the day that I rode my bicycle down to the library and entered that room while a gaming session was in-progress for the very first time. Most of the other kids were a year or two older than me, but I was welcomed in and encouraged to play. I rolled up a character and joined the game (1st edition AD&D). At the time, I was around ten years old. This group became some of my best friends, and we continued to game together consistently until the whole group had gone off to college and even then we would try to get together on breaks from college.
One of the guys from the old gaming group is now serving in the U.S. Army as a battalion commander. He and I exchanged messages recently about Dungeon Mastering for our kids. We all remember those early days playing D&D at the Library with great fondness.
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Thanks very much for posting your story, Jim. It's great that you had a local group like that to get involved with and made some great friends, and that the library was so accommodating. And what a great looking building! It sounds like that was an ideal setup.
For myself, I think it was our school librarian who really encouraged me and my friend to explore role-playing. From the day we brought in the red box-set to have a look at it in the library, instead of telling us we couldn't play, she asked if she could join in! And pulled in other students and teachers as well.