Video Games Added To Public Library Shelves

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“Going Rogue” by Sarah Palin or “LittleBigPlanet” by Media Molecule? A future visit to your public library may leave you pondering a similar check out dilemma.

In an effort to increase teen traffic, the Jackson-George Regional Library in Mississippi has added $13,000 worth of Wii, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 games to their shelves via funds made available through Library Services and Technology Act grants.

Library Director Carol Hewlett states that trend statistics prove video games attract both young adults and teens, adding:

“Games can provide learning and enrichment in the medium most attractive to today’s children and teens. It’s a natural step forward for public libraries.”

The library plans to ramp up their selection to about fifty titles across eight branches, with games falling under the E (for everyone) and T (teen) rating bracket. Patrons will be able to check out two games at a time for a one week period. Youth service assistant Rose Guice commented on the early success of the initiative:

“We got them in and as soon as they went out (onto the shelves) they were gone,”

That’s great — now lets just hope the snot nose brats actually bring them back. In all seriousness, this is pretty interesting, though I’m not sure how prevalent it will become. With services like Gamefly available, would you actually take a stroll to your local public library to rent a video game?

[Thanks Sun Herald]

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  • matt

    if they’re free to rent for all library card holders then hell yes i would go into my library just to pick up a game to play for a week. the return of them is what i see as a major problem, although where i live (somerville MA) if you don’t return the books within a certain time the police will come to your hose and you mite end up with a stealing city property charge, so i certainly wouldn’t have an issue returning them.

    in reality games are just another form of media, and any decent town/city library has books,dvds, and music cds. it only makes sense that they would eventually start carrying this form of media as well, although it is quite a bit more expensive then a book cd or movie. so i wouldn’t expect them to have the latest block busters.

  • http://www.savetheinternet.com/ DavidGX

    A library in a small town near here used to have video games a while back, snes titles and such. It’s not new.

  • http://www.ripten.com Chad Lakkis

    I wish I had cool stuff like this when I was in school.

  • nesooo

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    Igre