march06b.indd


Lynn Sutton and H. David “Giz” Womack 

Got game? 
Hosting game night in an academic library 

Early one Friday evening in mid­September 2005, the normally quiet atrium of the Z. 
Smith Reynolds Library of Wake Forest Univer­
sity was filled with the sounds of Madden and 
Halo2, as nearly 50 gamers descended on the 
library. The idea to close the library on Friday 
night and invite gamers to play their favorite 
video and computer games was born several 
months earlier as the library’s Marketing Com­
mittee was seeking ideas to reach out to students 
who did not ordinarily find the library until 
much later in the semester. What better way 
to reach out than to provide a venue for the 
favorite pastime of many college students? 

Meet the gamers 
As an indication of the reach of gaming in 
society, the 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics 
was awarded to Robert Aumann and Thomas 
Schelling, two scholars who developed the use 
of game theory to analyze public policy. In 2004, 
the gaming industry outpaced the fi lm industry 
in total sales. Gamers now outnumber baby 
boomers 90 million to 77 million. Researchers 
have begun to describe how gaming has af­
fected a whole generation of learners.1 Society 
may have judged this generation too quickly as 
having a short attention span. In fact, they may 
just be multi­tasking faster than the rest of us and 
are likely plain bored with the lecture method 
that still predominates in teaching. One curious 
question to examine is why there appears to be 
a significant gender gap in gaming.2 At the gam­
ing event described here, only one female gamer 
showed up to participate. Those who study the 
gaming generation call them motivated, resilient, 
confident, sociable and analytical, all of which 
have implications for library service.3 

Gaming as a social phenomenon has been 
discussed in recent library literature. Feature 
articles have appeared in Library Journal and 
the “OCLC Newsletter.”4,5 Since gaming is most 
popular with youth, public and school libraries 
have taken the lead in promoting electronic 
games as part of young adult services. For exam­
ple, the librarian at North Hunterdon Regional 
High School has been holding game nights in 
the school cafeteria for two years.6 Academic 
libraries have not been as active in the gaming 
environment, but their time has come, as the 
toddlers who grew up with Super Mario in the 
late 1980s are now college undergraduates. 

Organizing and marketing the event 
Staff members in the library’s Information 
Technology Center (ITC) are responsible for 
supporting the university’s Blackboard course 
management system, as well as for training 
faculty and students in a wide range of topics, 
including an award­winning Thinkpad orien­
tation program, mobile technology, blogging, 
spam filtering, Endnote, Web design, and many 
other emerging technology issues. ITC staff im­
mediately and enthusiastically embraced the 
idea of a game night in the library. 

The ITC technology training coordinator 
contacted the university’s Resident Technol­
ogy Advisors (RTAs), a crew of students who 
assist other students living in the residence 
halls with the effective use of computers and 
who are responsible for providing technology 

Ly n n  S u t to n  i s  d i re c to r  o f  t h e  l i b r a r y,  e - m a i l :  
suttonls@wfu.edu, and H. David “Giz ” Womack is 
technology training coordinator at Wake Forest 
University, e-mail: womack@wfu.edu 
© 2005 Lynn Sutton and H. David “Giz” Womack 

March 2006  173 C&RL News 

mailto:womack@wfu.edu
mailto:suttonls@wfu.edu


A view of the library before game night. 

programs to students. The RTAs were very 
enthusiastic about the gaming idea, although 
they were less than enthusiastic about the 
original title for the event, “Games @ Your 
Library.” They suggested “ZSR­RTA Challenge,” 
giving us visions of mud wrestling or at best a 
tug­of­war. We compromised on “Get Game 
@ ZSR,” which the head RTA declared to be 
“cool, trendy, new, fresh, and excellent.” Game 
night was set for the second Friday in Septem­
ber, when freshmen were still new enough to 
look for ways to meet people. 

The RTAs were instrumental in devising 
a way to network the equipment so larger 
numbers of students could play the same 
game. The chosen venue was the library’s 
beautiful atrium, with Halo2 on Xbox on one 
side and Madden 2006 on Sony PlayStation2 
on the other. Students who brought in their 
own games could spread out to one of the sur­
rounding group study rooms. With seven LCD 
projectors and screens available, we planned 
to take 28 reservations and allow others to 
watch or rotate in. Students were asked to 
bring their own game consoles, controllers, 
and games. 

The RTAs were also charged with market­
ing the event, which they did by placing post­
ers in the residence halls, talking it up with 
students, and posting an official event in the 
student Web site’s weekly calendar. Perhaps 
the most effective marketing tool was a direct 
e­mail to all freshmen the week before the 
event. As soon as the e­mail went out, reserva­
tions started coming in. 

One student replied to the mes­
sage, “I just wanted to let you know 
that I think this video game night is 
a great idea! Unfortunately I will be 
gone Friday night, but I just want to 
encourage the idea and hope that 
even if the turnout isn’t outstanding 
you will arrange to have another one 
later in the semester. I will certainly 
come to the next one, even if I am 
the lone female gamer. I have been 
to other schools’ video game LAN 
nights, and they are very popular. 
I’m so glad to see this coming to 

Wake. Please let me know of any future game 
nights.” 

Game night 
Promptly at 7:00 p.m. on Friday, when the li­
brary normally closed for the night, the gamers 
began arriving at the library door, controllers in 
hand. A greeter ushered them in to the atrium 
where their registration status was checked, 
and they were shown to their assigned station. 
Most people had signed up with friends to play 
a specific game, but others came in singly and 
were assigned randomly. The games began 
immediately. Halo2 on Xbox was by far the 
most popular. The RTA’s had networked four 
game consoles on the right side of the atrium 
so four­person groups could play by them­
selves or play against the larger group. By the 
end of the night, 16 students were playing the 
same game against each other. Around 9:00 
p.m., a boy and his girlfriend arrived lugging 
his large desktop computer and monitor so he 
could play computer games by himself but in 
the middle of the crowd, which he proceeded 
to do for the rest of the night. 

Library rules prohibiting food were relaxed 
for the night, and the promise of free food was 
part of the draw for some students. The library 
provided free pizza, soft drinks, and cookies 
in the middle of the atrium, dividing the Halo2 
and Madden players. Twelve pizzas were 
consumed in the first hour and by the end of 
the night, 20 pizzas had been eaten. 

In addition to the eight RTAs who served as 
technical support, six volunteer staff members 

174C&RL News March 2006



roamed the event as troubleshooters and food 
replenishers. Troubleshooting proved neces­
sary as two power failures were encountered 
when circuits were overloaded. This only 
served as a convenient pizza break for the 
gamers, while staff raced from one electrical 
closet to another looking for the right breaker. 
Eventually, power was re­routed to avoid 
overload and the games continued. 

Conveniently, the large­group Halo2 game 
ended right at 11:00 p.m. and we announced the 
event was over. Gamers politely picked up their 
controllers, thanked us profusely, and asked 
when the next game night would take place. We 
are very sure they would have played all night 
in the atrium had we not sent them home. 

Feedback and evaluation 
By all accounts, Get Game @ ZSR was 
a smashing success. Feedback from the 
gamers who attended was uniformly 
positive. In the days following the 
event, ITC staffers were stopped on 
campus by participants who wanted to 
thank the library again and ask when 
the next game night was scheduled. 
A faculty member who heard about 
it went out of his way to say what a 
great idea it was for an academic unit 
to sponsor a fun evening event for 
students. Anecdotal evidence indicates 
that students participating in the event 
were not regular library users and thus 
the marketing effort was successful. 
One student asked that night why we in the 
library were being so nice to students. Was it a 
publicity stunt, he asked? 

One totally unexpected outcome of the 
event was the number of students who tried 
to come in and use the library after closing 
time on Friday night. While the two 24­hour 
study rooms remained open, we turned away 
a surprising number of students who wanted 
to look things up or check things out. They 
looked at us, unbelieving, when we said study­
ing was not allowed, only gaming! 

Total cost of the event was approximately 
$425, divided evenly between rental of the 
screens and purchase of the food. Fortunately, 

the university’s Information Systems unit donat­
ed six older LCD projectors, which though old 
and a little fuzzy, still did the job at no cost. 

What will we do differently next time? 
While pleased with the success of the initial 

game night, there are a few things staff would 
do differently next time: 

• Consider hosting a Halo2 tournament, 
complete with trophies and prizes. 

• Publicize earlier and in more places that 
students notice. 

• Bring or rent newer versions of Madden 
sports games. 

• Borrow additional Xbox and PS2 con­
soles to have on hand for walk­in players. 

• Take a nap on the afternoon of the event; 
the staffers were worn out at 11:00 p.m.! 

Gamers compete in the library’s atrium with Xbox on one 
side and Sony PlayStation 2 on the other. 

Conclusion 
The experience of the Z. Smith Reynolds Li­
brary indicates that with a modicum of effort 
and expense, a successful and fun gaming 
event can take place in an academic library 
without sacrificing the dignity of the institu­
tion. Instead, the library gains credibility with 
its students and demonstrates its relevance 
in the fast­paced digital world. The next 
question libraries should ask themselves: 
Got game? 

Notes 
1. Marc Prensky, Digital Game-Based 

Learning (New York: McGraw­Hill, 2001). 

March 2006  175 C&RL News 



2. Denise E. Agosto, “Girls and Gaming: A 
Summary of the Research with Implications for 
Practice,” Teacher Librarian 31 (2004): 8–14. 

3. John C. Beck, Got Game: How the Gamer 
Generation is Reshaping Business Forever (Bos­
ton: Harvard Business School Press, 2004). 

4. Kurt Squire and Constance Steinkue­

hler, “Meet the Gamers,” Library Journal 130 
(2005): 38–41. 

5. “The Big Bang,” “OCLC Newsletter” No. 
267 (2005): 7–12. 

6. Games @ Your Library. Available at 
www.nexgenlibrarian.net/popculture/2005/04 
/games­your­library.html. 

(“Borrowing from the balcony,” continued from page 167) 

I managed to attend at a pivotal point 
in my career. I had been in a director 
position for more than five years and 
going through the personal question­
ing of whether I was in the right posi­
tion. However, it is always great when 
some of your leadership behaviors 
are affirmed, and you are able to tell 
yourself that indeed you can success­
fully do your job. As the same time, one 
discovers new insights, and I began 
to appreciate approaches I had never 
consciously considered before. The 
faculty delivering the program were 
exceptional teachers and they and the 
program required you to stretch. In­
tensive programs like the institute are 
a marvelous way to get reinvigorated 
and refocused. The position of director 
of libraries is very isolated within the 
academy, and over time it is possible 
to lose direction, or at least be follow­
ing a tangent that is not core and for 
me; it is necessary to step away from 
the day­to­day and take the time to 
re­evaluate. Realizing this need, attend­
ing the institute was a major personal 
benefit . . . I have utilized the lessons 
of reframing many times . . . ”—John 
Teskey, class of 1999 

It is clear from my conversations with 
alumni that the value of the institute is endur­
ing, given its focus on developing within at­
tendees a framework for analyzing situations 
and developing strategies to address them 
regardless of the nature, size, or circumstance 
of an institution or an individual’s leadership 
position. Whether one is a new leader or a 
mature leader, continuing to broaden and 

deepen skills is essential to professional vi­
tality. The ACRL Harvard Leadership Institute 
understands and fosters this; how remark­
able to see past participants still inspired by 
what they learned years after their week in 
Cambridge. That’s a remarkable educational 
experience of real value. 

Thank you 
I would like to thank institute alumni Lee Van 
Orsdel, John Teskey, Rebecca Donlan, Ed 
Garten, Linda Masselink, and my colleagues 
from the 2005 class, Michael Somers, Ann 
Riley, and Carlos Melian for sharing their 
perspectives. 

176C&RL News March 2006

www.nexgenlibrarian.net/popculture/2005/04