Books about gamers for librarians, teachers

In the Los Angeles Times, writer Alex Pham reports that the San Fernando Library encourages youth to play video games and even invites them to be as loud as they like.

“It lets teens be more comfortable with the library and become familiar with librarians,” San Fernando librarian Lydia Harlan told Pham. “And it’s what kids are into these days.”

In the article, Pham reports that more libraries are turning to video games to connect with technologically savvy youth who might be losing interest in books and stories. In New York, the New York Public Library has even added a collection of books, films, music and maps about video games.

“Especially at this pivotal moment in our history, it is so great to have so many people of this age group here in the library, because it foreshadows what life is going to be like around here when we have transformed this building,” said Stephen A. Schwarzman, the co-founder of the Blackstone Group, to the New York Times. “We want to do a better job of integrating the circulation and research collections, and part of that is becoming more relevant for a younger audience.”

But not everyone agrees that this would be a good idea, some parents feel that it would just distract kids.

“To be honest with you, I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Miguel Castaneda, 45, told the Chicago Tribune after his 14-year-old son played a video game at the Florence Library in Los Angeles. “I think a library should be for studying, and when you go to play video games, your mind is away from what you’re supposed to be learning.”

In Chicago, the Library system does not approve of the new video game fad other libraries have taken a liking to.

“The video game aspect is not the direction we want to go,” Ruth Lednicer, the system’s director of marketing, told the Chicago Tribune. “We want to keep them focused on the literature-based aspect of it, keep it focused on reading and writing, and even the performance-based aspect helps them with public speaking.”

Whether the library system chooses to add video games to their collection or not there are a series of books about video games that may interest youth according to an article published by Kelly Czarnecki in the School Library Journal. Czarnecki wrote that the following books can help libraries understand the teenage mind:

• Sex, Brains, and Video Games: A Librarian’s Guide to Teens in the Twenty-first Century by Jennifer Burek-Pierce. Burek-Pierce, an assistant professor at The University of Iowa’s School of Library and Information Science, covers a wide range of adolescent issues and interests as well as findings involving the pros and cons of video games and discusses violence in video games to name a few topics.
• The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design by Flint Dille and John Zuur-Platten. The book is more of a resource for aspiring game writers and designers as well as high school students interested in a career in the gaming industry.
• Playing to Learn: Video Games in the Classroom by David Hutchinson. The book contains hundreds of video game activities ideas for teachers who want to integrate video games into 4th to 12th grade classrooms with exercises in all subject areas to include Language Arts, Social Studies, history, science, math and music to name a few.
• Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth about Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do by Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl K. Olson. Kutner and Olson are founds of Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media, and have studied more than 1,300 middle school students in Pennsylvania and South Carolina to determine the effects of video games and violence on young people.
• The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning by Katie Salen. The book explains how gaming empowers young people and contributes to literacy, as well as help librarians and teachers relate to today’s youth culture.
• The Pleasures of Computer Gaming: Essays on Cultural History, Theory and Aesthetics by Melanie Salwell and Jason Wilson. The book contains eight essays that look at computer gaming, the importance of cheats in a gaming context rather than deceptive practices, a look at gaming and addiction and other topics of interest.

Read [Chicago Tribune] Also Read [New York Times] Also Read [Los Angeles Times] Also Read [The School Library Journal]