by Traci Glass<\/p>\n
I just discovered a great new way to bring more tweens into my library \u2014 gaming!\u00a0 I know, I know, video gaming in libraries has been around for awhile now, but last Thursday was my library\u2019s first foray into the venture, even though I\u2019ve been gaming at home for years!\u00a0 Future Guitar Gods (most of them tweens) were born as I sat back and enjoyed the sounds of Nirvana, Heart, and Sonic Youth on a workday, no less!\u00a0 Not only did they play video games, but they were amazed to see the library\u2019s great collection of gaming magazines and books, including Electronic Gaming Monthly and GamePro.\u00a0 They were also super excited to meet new gamers (which included me!)!\u00a0 Guitar Hero II and Guitar Hero III were definitely the star games, and my mind was filled for the rest of the day with the guitar solos from Mississippi Queen<\/em> and Bulls on Parade<\/em>, the most popular songs to play by far.\u00a0 Instead of tournament style, we played freestyle; not once did I have to chide anyone for hogging the games, and I only had to sit through Freebird<\/em>, the longest song on the game, twice!\u00a0 All the tweens and<\/u> teens graciously gave up the guitars to those waiting when their song was over.\u00a0 I was lucky to not have to rent or buy a lot of equipment for our first foray into the gaming world, and that made it easier to convince my library to sponsor this event.\u00a0 I brought my Playstation 2, Guitar Hero II and my 2 personal guitars.\u00a0 My very helpful volunteer, Billy, brought his Playstation 2 and his Nintendo Gamecube for those gamers not interested in Guitar Hero.\u00a0 The Library graciously paid for Guitar Hero III, an extra guitar controller so that all four Guitar Hero players could have a guitar to play, and a few Gamecube games from Blockbuster.\u00a0 For those of you looking to do a Guitar Hero gaming day \u2014 1 word of advice:\u00a0 make sure that you unlock all the songs and save your game to a memory card before the gaming day.\u00a0 Lucky for my tweens and teens, my husband and I love playing Guitar Hero, so we \u201cworked\u201d\u009d really hard on our off time to make sure all the songs were unlocked and saved.\u00a0 That way your tweens and teens can have access to all 30 or so songs, instead of the requisite 10 or so the game gives you if you don\u2019t unlock any beforehand.\u00a0 I was excited to meet new tweens and introduce them to their wonderful library; I\u2019m hoping they will remember how much fun they had at this activity when they see advertisements for other tween\/teen library programs or when I visit them at their school.\u00a0 All in all, this was a fun and easy first attempt into the library gaming world that definitely brought the tweens and teens together\u2026for next time I\u2019m wishing for a Wii!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Traci Glass I just discovered a great new way to bring more tweens into my library \u2014 gaming!\u00a0 I know, I know, video gaming in libraries has been around for awhile now, but last Thursday was my library\u2019s first foray into the venture, even though I\u2019ve been gaming at home for years!\u00a0 Future Guitar Gods (most of them tweens) were born as I sat back and enjoyed the sounds of Nirvana, Heart, and Sonic Youth on a workday, no less!\u00a0 Not only did they play video games, but they were amazed to see the library\u2019s great collection of gaming magazines and books, including Electronic Gaming Monthly and GamePro.\u00a0 They were also super excited to meet new gamers (which included me!)!\u00a0 Guitar Hero II and Guitar Hero III were definitely the star games, and my mind was filled for the rest of the day with the guitar solos from Mississippi…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[38,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-programming-ideas","category-slice-of-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}