You know that a video game has gone truly mainstream when libraries, of all places, start using them in their facilities. And that’s exactly what has happened at the Humboldt Public Library in Humboldt, Iowa (USA).
As part of a Teen Advisory Board program, the library sets up a Guitar Hero game for visitors to play after school on certain days. And according to a librarian the after-school ritual has been a fixture of the library for months. Naturally, it serves as a hook to get people, particularly teenagers, into the library, where their fellow peers on the advisory board can then chat them up and, of course, recommend some good books for them to check out while the player’s of Guitar Hero wait their turn.
The theory behind the advisory board is that a recommendation from a peer is likely to carry more weight for a student than one from a librarian. Among the books suggested by board members are Patricia McCormick’s Cut, Dia Calhoun’s Avielle of Rhia, D.J. MacHale’s Pendragon Book Seven: The Quillan Games, Catherine Jinks’ Pagan’s Crusade, and R.A. Nelson’s Teach Me.
This is not the first bit of government-encouraged gaming to surface either. Last year, West Virginia unveiled its plan to incorporate Konami’s rhythm game Dance Dance Revolution into all public schools’ physical education or health-related curricula within two years.
What I want to know is . . . wouldn’t some rockin’ Guitar Hero be a bit of a bother to the rest of the partons at the library? Library’s are supposed to be quiet after all . . . Not that I’m against it or anything. The more video games in libraries the better!