Librarian's Guide to Games and Gamers

Book excerpt: 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.