Tales from Play It Loud

Abstract

This report describes my experience of introducing and managing the Play It Loud gaming program as the supervising young adult librarian at the Northeast Regional Branch of the Richland Library in Columbia, South Carolina. An assessment of the program’s effects against a number of The Search Institute’s “40 Developmental Assets” suggests that the program has had a positive impact on its participants. The success of the Play It Loud gaming program suggests that multiplayer games, both electronic and analog, have the potential to create positive links from player to player and from player to library and that there is great potential for future gaming programs to combine with other youth programs to form a clearly educational component to a library’s overall programs.