>> JENNIFER There is a learner guide that we've created for today's session, it's a resource for you to extend your learning on the topic.

There's some activities and questions that Joe has identified as key to taking next steps to building your collection.

This is a resource for you to customize.

If you have specific questions you'd like to bring to your team around this process, you can make the guide work for you.

So, definitely use that resource following up the webinar.

I'm so excited to welcome our presenter today, Joe Lanning, is the reference librarian and archivist at the Billings Public Library.

And he came to us with passion around this work developing video collections, because of the success that he has seen in his own library.

So, thank you so much, Joe, for coming today and sharing all this fantastic learning and experience that you have.

Welcome.

>> JOE LANNING: Well, thank you very much.

I'm assuming you can still hear me okay and all that.

What an amazing turnout.

It just keeps going up, and I guess it's too late to back out now, so, I'm in this with you.

I want to say, first of all, thank you very much to everybody.

You know, for attending today.

I'm going to put my notes on.

I am the reference, one of the four reference librarians here at the Billings Public Library.

I now get to be the archivist of a very cool special collections department.

But I used to be our AV librarian, as well.

And when I was in that role, I pretty much went to work right away, both advocating for, doing the research for, and then also just kind of putting in the pieces to create this video game collection.

It's been amazing.

It's been nothing short of amazing.

That said, I surely didn't do all this on my own, so I want to make mention I had a ton of help from my team, as I'm sure you will, as well.

Thank you very much for having me today.

Thank you very much for attending this.

This presentation has been through a lot of different iterations.

I presented at our state library conference on this last year.

I did a learning -- kind of shorter learning webinar through the state library a couple months back, and now we're with WebJunction.

This is the biggest, I think, of them all.

And now it's at its most developed stage.

So, I used to do a lot of other things, kind of letting you know how I saw a dip in our DVD collection checkouts, I should say, so I advocated for the reallocation of funds.

There's certain things like that, that I kind of felt was a little bit circumstantial as time went on, so I kind of cut that from the presentation.

And what I'm here to do with you today is provide you as much, like, actual, you know, functional information that you can get cracking with come Monday morning kind of thing.

Things you can put right into motion, the way things work in our library space, the way you might be able to accommodate the same way in your space.

So, that's what I'm here to do today for you.

How we did it in Billings, how we still do it, explain some of the decisions we made, and provide you with as much practical information as possible on how you can create a similar collection in your library.

Going to talk about the resources you need, which games you can start with, in my opinion.

I'm going to talk a little bit about funding, and how you can secure your collection and really minimize, if not eliminate, theft.

And then I'll go over a little bit about the circulation process, and then we'll kind of end at sustainability, programming, and looking towards the future.

That's the way I've kind of developed this as time goes on.

But for now, the first thing I'm going to do right out the gate is start with my spiel.

I'm really going to try to, I guess, sell you on the idea of why you should have -- why you should do all the work involved with creating a video game collection.

This is our games table.

This is right out here in the reference area, right outside the desk, you know, where you can see in the background there where we all sit.

These games represent, like, what's available for checkout, and I'll go into this a lot more later, but what you're looking at there, that's pretty much what we call our games table.

So, why should you create a video game collection at your library, why should you consider redirecting a portion of probably a limited budget or maybe applying for a grant, or approaching your Friends of the Library or your foundation for funding to start such a collection?

There's a number of reasons, honestly.

Number one, first and foremost, it's because it's kind of what we do as librarians, right.

You'll be immediately providing access to extremely popular, also expensive materials, that people will definitely love checking out for free at your library.

Many patrons have told us, many patrons have told other librarians I've spoke with, which I'll kind of go into here and there, how they really appreciate being able to test the game out for free via our collection, and then we'll decide whether they want to plop down the $60 or whatever it is for a copy of their own.

It's nice to provide that service to our patrons like we do with so many other materials.

Secondly, the collection appeals to children, teens, adults, many, many people of all ages play video games and are going to be placing holds on those games and checking them out constantly.

That's my third point.

These games check out like wildfire.

They circulate almost better than anything.

The hotspots, I think, are probably still topping video games I think in our library, but they check out very well.

People place holds on them, check them out.

We went a period of several months when we first opened up our collection where we had no games on our table.

It was kind of a great problem to have.

People were wondering where the games were, but they were just all checked out.

It really let us know that the collection was doing very well, and it kind of also helped me build it and convince, you know, the powers that be for more funding and that the collection had, you know, had wheels.

Just the other night, as a matter of fact, we had two games on that table.

On Monday night, I had two games available for checkout on that table.

Everything else was checked out or put on hold, and that's coming up to two years on the collection.

So, the collection remains popular, because video games themselves are extremely popular medium.

And it doesn't matter -- really honestly feel strongly about this point.

Doesn't matter if you're a small branch, if you're a rural library, if you're a massive downtown location, or you're something in between like us.

Games are going to become a very popular addition to your library's collection.

Then there's another point I kind of thought of later on, that I kind of tacked on here at the end.

These games are checked out time and time and time again.

And I don't mean like video games, I mean the same title is checked out by the same patron time and time and time again.

People play them, and then they don't fully complete the game, so they bring it back, but now that game's on hold for someone else, so they pick up something new, you know, but then they will return very often to that game again, whether it's to complete it, or maybe they just like existing in that world.

Zelda breath Of the Wild is like that.

Even if it's a matter of not beating it again, they want to play around in that world again.

It's a pretty unique medium in that respect, I think.

There's other things, hotspots, maybe some of our tech kits that check out frequently by the same people.

But video games are, I think, even maybe at the top of that.

It's not like a DVD, again, DVDs check out all the time, but it's not the same person checking out Jaws, you know, for the fourth time so far, but it is that way with many of our video games.

I've spoken with video game collection managers across the country in preparation for the presentations I put on, on this topic.

And they all cannot speak highly enough about the video game collections and the success they've had, and they all and we all encourage you to do the very same thing to start one of your own.

Honestly, because they are extremely fun.

They are fun collections, they are fun collections to build and manage.

People love them.

And, I don't know, not to make it sound too much of a sure thing, but it's kind of about as close to a sure thing as you're going to get, I think, in library world.

Of a successful, well-circulating collection.

I've never talked with a librarian who regretted starting a collection, regretted inheriting one.

I've spoken with many who inherited the collection and now they manage it, but they didn't start it.

I've never spoken with one who regretted that, who was planning on downsizing it, let alone, you know, getting rid of it.

Some of the names on this list, I've spoken to so many very, very cool people.

Lawrence, Kansas, Allison in Provo, I know Allison is in the chat with us today.

I think Heather from Rochester, Minnesota, and Elizabeth from Helena, Montana, are all in the chat today.

These people helped me out immensely.

I want to say that right now, because I encourage you all so much, reach out to your fellow librarians.

That's how I started, just by Googling video game collection public library and that's how I found these libraries and more before I started kind of tabulating what I was doing.

Librarians are so helpful.

You already know that.

Definitely this is something that people will be very willing to help you with, as well, you know, starting this game collection.

Right, okay, so, yeah, but we also know that hesitancy is likely to exist.

There's concerns about theft.

There's concerns about whether the money will be well spent, how much you'll even need, which I will go into today a little bit.

Or maybe you're trying to convince a dubious management, who is absolutely convinced that those things are going to walk out the door as soon as you bring them into the library.

We've all had to deal with these questions and problems and find solutions and answers to them, and we are happy to help you out, do the same thing.

You will find your own answers and find answers in a way that fits your library, which is something I'm going to say time and time again today.

You're going to find a solution that fits your space, but there are solutions out there.

So, I'm going to now jump into resources.

And kind of talk about consoles, or at least the games for which console I recommend you start with.

Expenses and funding and how I purchased the games, websites and the resources I used, you know, where I got the games from.

There's a good amount of information in this module, I'll try to go slowly, but I do have a lot to cover, and I will try to address any questions that pop up during this time and definitely before we move into the next module.

I'll make sure that I take any questions.

So, let's jump into -- let's jump right into resources.

Okay, so, like I mentioned, right, the first thing we're going to do is figure out which console's games you're going to start with.

You could start with all consoles, there's about five to choose from.

If you have the budget, if you have an amazing staff along with you to help, recommending games and helping you manage all that, you can go for all five, or you can go for a mixture of the five.

Whatever you want to do.

It's my recommendation just because I can speak on it, it's what we did and what many other collection managers did when they started out.

The one choice for you to start with is the Nintendo Switch, right.

I've spoken with, again, many librarians I've met with over the years while I put this together and I can basically definitively say they all agree with me, maybe not entirely, but I can't think of one that did not say, yeah, the Switch is the way to start.

It's the way to go.

And there's a couple of really good reasons for going this route.

And I'm going to share those with you right now, but by all means, if you do have questions or maybe even disagree or want to add contextual information, you manage a multi-console collection right now and you have thoughts on what I'm providing the information I'm presenting on, please chime in, in the chat and we'll provide that information for everyone else.

The number one reason why I recommend that we go with the Nintendo Switch to start off with is because of the immense popularity of the titles related to that franchise Nintendo.

All the Mario games, all the Zelda games, all the Pokemon games, right.

All the games on this list up until the number 23 spot, are Nintendo-exclusive products, and they are some of the most successful titles and franchises in all of video gaming.

And we can look through these a little bit.

You see Pokemon, Pokemon, Pokemon.

You see Mario-related games on this all over the place.

These are all kind of like the bread and butter.

You see Zelda on this, as well.

These are the bread and butter of Nintendo.

When we think about Nintendo, this is a lot of kind of what we think of.

Now, there are PlayStation and Xbox exclusive games also.

And there's a hot take for you, they are not nearly as popular, I should say.

They are not nearly as popular as Nintendo's exclusive titles.

So, my argument for -- first one off the gate, these titles are going to be sought after by a larger portion of your patrons, so I think it should be the one that you start your collection with.

And then as the years go on, then you develop into the other ones.

So, first and foremost, popularity of Nintendo titles.

I'm keeping on the same slide, just moving on to another point here.

The second biggest reason is that the vast majority of Switch games have an ESRB rating of E or E-10 plus, which basically means for those that don't know, everybody or everybody 10 and up is kind of what they determine is, you know, can play the game without being offended or seeing something offensive.

E-10 plus, you can see on the Super Mario Odyssey, I don't know what it is about Super Mario Odyssey that gets it the 10-plus rating, but sure enough, I don't think a 7 year old would really have any sort of a problem playing that.

Not making any parenting comments or anything like that, but I think most people would be find with kids playing E-10 plus games.

T is something else, and definitely M, way different territory, but the vast majority of these games are E and E-10 plus rated.

Again, see, these are some of the most popular and best-selling titles of all time.

The number one game on this list, Mario Kart 8, the sixth best selling video game of all time.

Kids play these games, teens play these games, adults play these games.

As a matter of fact, many of you might have played Animal Crossing, the number two game on this list.

Animal Crossing is on this list because of the COVID epidemic.

I remember a ton of people playing this game while quarantine was just hitting us in March of 2020, but vastly adults and definitely kids that play this game and teens, as well, but many adults play these titles.

It's not just like, you know, developing a juvenile collection.

I want to make that point pretty clear, because I set out really with that intention of building a collection that people of all ages would enjoy and would check out.

My last point that I'm going to kind of throw in there is why you start with Switch games, because they are crazy durable.

They are basically like SD cards, and it's extremely hard to destroy an SD cartridge, you know, to make it so it's non-functional.

Checking out my notes here.

Let's move on here.

If you're curious about that matchup between Switch games and say, for example, PlayStation games, I put this on here.

And I put a lot of lists in this presentation for you all today, because I wanted you to have these lists going forward just for reference material to harken back to, to maybe look and see how it's developed over time.

It's kind of a list-heavy presentation, hopefully it's not jarring, but if you're curious about that matchup between Switch games and PlayStation, here's a snapshot from a while ago, but the information is still pretty accurate.

You can see a prevalence of T and M-rated games on the PlayStation list to the right.

Again, these are the most popular selling titles, top 20, and you can see the prevalence of E and E-10 plus that we've taken a look at.

ESRB ratings might be a very big concern for you and your administration or your patrons.

Definitely your patrons' parents.

So, I think this information in this breakdown is definitely at least worth knowing about, so you can make the best informed decision.

I want to point out one example of a collection that can be made with no M-rated games, and she's in the chat, Allison is in the chat with us today from Provo Library in Provo, Utah.

They have a close to a 500-game collection.

Hi, Allison, thank you so much for being here, by the way.

They have close to a 500-game collection, multi-console, not an M-rated game in the whole thing.

And yet the collection is impeccable, lots of T-rated games.

Just soaked with E and E-10 plus.

But M-rated, not one single one.

Yet the collection checks out like wildfire.

I was curious, though, and I was going to ask Allison to maybe tell us how often patrons are requesting M-rated games, though.

If you do go that route, how many times are you butting up a patron saying, you know, can you get, you know, Grand Theft Auto, for example.

She's already popped up something.

Received a total of four purchase requests for M-rated games because we don't purchase them.

I suggest we request interlibrary loan.

Oh, that's interesting.

Interlibrary loan for games.

Really.

I didn't even think -- haven't even checked on that.

So, yeah, letting you know you can build totally sans-M-rated game collections.

Thank you, Allison, by the way, for giving us that info.

I'm going to move on here, because we have a little bit of stuff to go through still.

I guess do we have any questions related to ESRB?

Because that's kind of one of the biggest concerns we brushed up against when I was floating the idea of the collection.

You know, whether or not we should be M-rated games was definitely part of the conversation, and we decided not to.

It was only kind of a month into purchasing that I was able to, you know, convince management maybe we can get away with it.

Just a couple.

If there's anything in the chat, definitely don't want to skip past it.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: Let's see, does look like there's maybe -- 

I love there are others confirming they use ILL if they run into issues.

With the library not having it.

>> JOE LANNING: Awesome.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: Lots of discussion of some of the things I know you're going to come to in terms of how you store them, how you circulate them.

And then lots of folks confirming your work around console selection and Switch being predominant and those folks have multiple consoles, Switch games have higher circulation.

>> JOE LANNING: That was the consensus among everybody I've spoken with, but I mean, you never know, you know, somebody might have said no way.

Okay, awesome.

I'll keep pushing through to funding, but it sounds like the chat is really, really having a great discussion.

So, we will get to storage, how we circulate them, all that kind of stuff, that's coming up next.

Let's talk about funding.

It's an important aspect.

How much are you going to need to start a collection?

Well, games usually cost between $15 and $60.

But if you want to say I'm going to play it safe and consider that every purchase is going to be a $60 game, I don't think you're doing -- you're figuring too high if you go that route.

It might be better for you to think about it in terms of how much do you have to spend.

Maybe figure that out first, and I put this on here, this slide on here, just to show that, look, let's say you're going to do a total proof of concept, I'm approved for $600.

What games for the Switch console would I buy for $600?

These would work very well, and this is not updated.

There's no Mario RPG on here, there's a new Donkey Kong Mario game on here.

Princess Peach is coming out soon, so definitely titles that are not there yet.

That being said, you could still purchase these ten games, multiple copies and all, Peach is in March.

Good to see you, Jackie, by the way, thank you for coming.

These games would still check out, you put these on the table, they are going to move.

Don't always have to have the newest release.

Cool to that have, but don't have to.

If you have $600, these will work just fine.

But if I knew I had a $3,000 budget to start me off, I didn't spend it in one lump sum, though, I bought about 40 games out the jump, and I let my technical services department process those, get a feel for them, and then I waited until the collection launched and saw what we needed more of, and then I started buying duplicate copies.

That's the way I did it.

I think having an idea of how much you can afford is the better way of going about it, but definitely not the whole 60 divided by a certain amount of budget.

You're going to get them for a lot cheaper than that.

$60 games are going to be like the core collection, you know, kind of like this.

These titles.

And then after that, you're going to go a lot more to, like, the $20, $30 indie games, stuff like that.

So, okay, I got a little bit more to say about this.

I also want to make the point --

and this is kind of a controversial one.

Definitely what people have to say in the chat I'm really interested to find out.

So, there are definitely different opinions about this.

I purchased as many games as I could that were either on sale, that's not controversial, or pre-owned.

I definitely bought pre-owned Switch games, so I could stretch my budget for, you know, as far as possible.

Now, unfortunately, as this list shows you here, preowned prices for Switch games have jumped dramatically since I purchased mine two years ago, about February of 2022.

But as you can see in this example, if I bought all new games on my left, I'd come out to about $579 for these ten games.

If I bought all preowned, I'd come out with $50 cheaper that I could put towards another game, right.

I did not see any problem, again, mostly speaking because of the durability of the SD card that I talked about earlier.

I didn't see a problem with doing that with Switch games.

They are not as delicate as a DVD, as the blu-ray discs, PS5 or PS4 comes on.

So, I didn't initially have approval with management to do that.

I had to really politic and advocate for, I think that this is the best way, you know, to really make our budget go.

And to the credit of my management, they said, okay, you know, we trust you to do it.

And we haven't had one single issue.

I haven't bought a game that went bad, never once have I seen a Switch game just stop working.

But whether or not you buy preowned versions whether it's Switch games or whether you go to PlayStation and Xbox, whether you buy preowned games or not is something you're going to have to make a decision on and know, in my opinion, before you purchase anything.

I mean, if you decide to buy new and later change your mind, great, but I think it would be better to know going in if you're going to be allowed to do preowned games and stuff like that.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: I thought I would just jump in, because there's a few questions for clarification around this specifically.

Somebody mentioned Gamestop has the insurance, where if the item is damaged they'll replace the disc.

I don't know if that goes for used as well as new.

>> JOE LANNING: Absolutely it does.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: Sometimes those can make a difference.

Folks talked about being only allowed to buy from Amazon or book vendors, so that's challenging when you can't take advantage of sales out there that are happening.

And then folks confirmed kind of that weighing the slight difference between new and preowned in order to take advantage of benefits of the new, to go ahead and get new.

So, lots of interesting -- 

somebody just said if you get a Gamestop membership, you get extra 10% off preowned games, so things weigh into that decision.

>> JOE LANNING: Yeah, chat is on it.

You're about two slides ahead of me.

Absolutely, get yourself an annual membership that allows you to accrue points, as well, which we turned into buying more games, basically turning them into vouchers that we purchased more games with.

That being said, and it used to be part of the old presentation, I dropped it.

Good knowledge here, could have stayed in.

If you have to buy from a vendor like Ingram or something like that, then, yeah, there's -- 

this part doesn't really apply to you.

For that I used to be a lot more sorry than I was, because these preowned prices are absurd.

Most GameStop preowned prices are $5 under MSRP.

Wasn't like that two years ago, and I'll show you a slide showing that.

Now the difference between buying on Ingram and buying preowned on GameStop is much closer.

Used to be really blown out.

I got way better deals with GameStop.

That's not necessarily the case anymore.

It is tougher to buy off Ingram, because I don't necessarily know they have the stock.

Target, Amazon, eBay, I wouldn't have problem with that.

Ingram doesn't have a video game supplier yet either.

Christie, you told me that not too long ago.

Ingram is in the balance.

Christie, speaking with my rep, they are getting another setup soon.

Ingram, maybe, maybe not.

Pretty soon, hopefully kind of thing.

Not as big of a deal as it used to be.

The price differential is much closer now than it used to be.

Okay.

I'm going to move on, because Jennifer won't let me talk for two hours.

So, just so you can see this, here's another massive list for you.

This is what I bought, the first 78 games that I bought.

They are alphabetical.

Sorry, I was going to do them by date, but it was a mess.

So, I did them alphabetical.

I just wanted you to have this, so you can see what I purchased and the prices.

You can see Animal Crossing for $50.99 and then I bought it for $45.99.

I got that thing for $9 less than they are selling it now.

And that adds up as you're going through a $3,000 budget.

Anyways, I didn't purchase any multiple copies at the beginning.

That was a mistake.

I waited until my holds came through.

I could have done a little bit more research and talked with Kevin in Lawrence or Allison and stuff like that, seen, okay, what should I buy multiple copies of.

I'm going to show you our most popular checkouts soon so you know which ones to buy multiple copies of.

I could spend a bit more time on here, but we have it covered with the chat.

There's a pretty easy way of finding out what games you should purchase, in my opinion.

I definitely go to GameStop and I go To Best Buy and filter most popular or best selling.

Video game reviews are pretty hard.

If you see something 4.8 out of 5 stars and it has 6,000 reviews, that one is solid, you know what I mean, multiple thousand of reviews with high stars, that's easy.

I don't think Amazon inflates the rating system with video games the way they do with some of their other promoted products.

I think Amazon is still a pretty decent, you know, utility for seeing if something is popular or not.

I just stick with GameStop and Best Buy.

You can go to Metacritic and stuff, too, and really dip into the reviews, but seeing what's popular, what should I buy multiple copies of, what's coming soon, Best Buy and GameStop in my opinion, easily searched.

Go here one slide.

I would say at this point I'd love to hear from librarians in the chat how they purchased what they used.

Not bad, pretty good website, good resource.

If they have information of what's popular and not.

More thoughts on that.

See what my next slide is, here.

Still on funding.

Thank you very much, Jennifer, for pointing this out to me.

By the way, there's an awesome opportunity for a $1,000 grant either in one lump sum or two $500 payouts that you can apply for.

This would be a fantastic way to build out your 16 titles, you know, those core collection of the Switch titles.

That would be about $1,000 or so.

The Marios, Zeldas, Pokemons, this is a wonderful opportunity for applying for, you know, additional kick into your budget if you want.

No way of guaranteeing what's popular for us is going to be popular for you, but yeah there is kind of because we follow national and international trends just as much as anyone else in this day and age and I would be surprised if Nintendo Switch sports was not high on the list in Provo or, you know, Union, New Jersey as it is for us.

Okay, so, it's pretty likely we share the similar popularities.

If you're curious what's checked out most here in Billings, here you go right here.

So, if we were doing it over again, I would definitely say a couple of Nintendo sports, couple Pokemon Legends, older now, but it's okay.

Thing is, 117 value, 89, 76, not that those don't check out anymore.

Those are constantly gone, checking out nonstop still to this day.

So, they are in those values, higher echelons, because they've never stopped checking out.

Not because they did so much initially.

They've never stopped checking out.

So, just to give you an idea of what some of our most popular titles are.

Mario -- audio did something, you can still hear me, right, Jennifer?

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: Yes, yes, yes.

>> JOE LANNING: Some of the newer titles like Mario RPG and stuff like that aren't on this list yet, but some day they will be.

Okay, those are my thoughts and I know I'm moving briskly, but those are my thoughts on resources and what you're going to need.

Money, how you spend it, how you figure what to spend your money on, as far as like the how much you have to spend, of course, that's up to you and your library, but those are my thoughts on really the resources you're going to need to get this thing going.

Any questions before we move to the next module, before we get started on this one, more than happy to tackle them.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: I was pulling questions and a lot are on what you're about to cover.

Why don't we continue on, I'll keep collecting questions.

>> JOE LANNING: Okay.

So, now that we've addressed some of the elements of collection development, let's talk about collection maintenance and how we secure the games and pretty much eliminated the potential for theft at our library, and in the process I'll also dip into the checkout procedure, so you can get a feel for that, and maybe take away somed whys how you could do this at yours.

There's that shot again, this is our games table.

And as always, everything I'm about to get into, there's a number of ways to do this.

You'll find the one that works for your library.

We decided on going with the system that's the majority of other libraries use.

I've already seen it in the chat a couple times, and that's the dummy case method.

It's tried, true, and it's tested.

It's pretty solid, I guess I'll say.

So, all these cases are empty, and they represent the games currently available for checkout at our library.

Okay.

In a nutshell, here's how the checkout process works.

The patron brings the case of the game or cases of the two games that they want to check out to the second-floor help desk.

By the way, games check out for two weeks at our library.

You can put them on hold, but you cannot renew them.

So, if you bring them back, check it in, if there's not a hold, you can check it out right then and there.

It's not that we found something in renewals that we were opposed to.

It's just that the way they are coded in the Montana Library System, we would have to go through I think too many hoops to make that possible.

So, we just went with coding them as technology.

That's just -- so we get the metrics that go with that, so, again, two-week checkout, holds, no renewals.

And a $1 a day late fee, which these are one of the very few items left in our library that there is a late fee attached to.

So, again, you bring the case and the game you want to the second floor help desk.

We use a simple internal I.D. 

system that you can see here on the case on the left picture, so this game is number 27, right.

So, what we do is we find the correct cartridge case that we keep in a drawer, and that's the picture on the right, that would have number 27 in it.

This one is obviously 1 through 40.

That's the titles that one holds.

And we grab the cartridge, put it in the case, join them together, and check it out.

And that's it.

It's done and done, happens right there at the desk.

That's all said and done.

Pretty simple.

This is the drawer that we have all of our holds kept in and all those cartridge cases.

As you can see with my keys sticking out of that drawer, it's a locked drawer behind the reference desk, right.

So, I've come to find out, though, that we're a little lucky that we have a locking drawer very closely, you know, attached to the reference desk, and we have that kind of storage space where we need it, right.

Some libraries cannot mimic this, because they don't have that same available space.

But they still use the same dummy case method, only the cartridges are not kept there, but they are kept in the back, right.

And we all know what in the back means to our library.

Essentially, it's somewhere behind closed door that only a staff member can access or has access to.

And, so, they either go back and get the cartridge or they have it sent from the back, whatever the case may be, it works for them.

It's just the way they need to do it.

If it's that small thing, right, that you can't check the games out right then and there for the patron, instead of you have to wait two minutes for the game to come out from the back, if that's all it is that's keeping you from starting a collection, then that's the least of your worries.

No patron is going to complain because, you know, it's not right here, right now when I wanted it.

We keep ours in a locking box and see the envelopes behind the circ desk.

Takes up way less space than having dupe cases for everything.

So many ways of doing this.

So many ways of doing this.

Here's how the Logan Public Library did it.

They sent me this picture, I thought it was cool.

I really like how they used the cover art instead of the numbering system, so they know which game goes where.

They are building a new library right now, or doing a massive renovation maybe, so they might have a new system in place pretty soon, but I like this picture anyways.

This tackle box, though, is a little big.

So, if you have space concerns, something like this might take up a lot more space than that smaller SD card carrying case that we use, just so you know.

I think I added to one of my slides, but in case I didn't, I'm going to go back real fast.

These cases, by the way, where we keep our cartridges in, those are on Amazon.

I think Jennifer has the link for that.

They cost about $18 on Amazon.

So, yeah, I believe we do have a link to the Amazon page where we buy our cartridge cases.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: I think we might need to get more.

We just got the carrying case link.

We'll get the cartridge case that you guys were excited about, as well as these SD card cases.

>> JOE LANNING: I can find that for you immediately.

Yes, we'll have that soon.

Okay, now, we do also check out consoles, as well.

And I'm going to go into that more in a little bit, but because it's part of the checkout process, I kind of wanted to include it in here, as well.

They check out under the same conditions that video games do.

Two weeks, you can put them on hold, no renewals, but we also go over the replacement cost for each component that comes in that case on the left.

So, if you have -- if you lose -- this happened actually, the right and left controllers, one of them snapped off the Switch, so they had to spend $80 to replace both controllers, because they come as a pair.

We only use Nintendo products that we buy directly from their website.

Basically, they are kind of keeping it easy, just tell them just Nintendo products and also it's to maintain definitely a quality of standards so we're not using, you know, knockoff parts or whatever.

It's just replacement Nintendo products taken right from the store.

So, yeah.

We'll move into this one.

There's the replacement costs on the right in case that's helpful for you.

And the carrying case.

And we're going to get to that carrying case in a second.

I'll show you.

We also ask that patrons sign an agreement form prior to checking out consoles.

You might notice that there's no language on here that says, quote, something along the lines of must be over the age of 18 or 18 and over or whatever, or something similar.

This is another one of those instances where you as the librarian will find out what best fits your library.

For us, when minors create a library account, they are attached to a guardian, so the guardian is ultimately responsible should the case get damaged and Switch gets broken or whatever.

That's how we do it.

You'll definitely find a way that works best for you.

So, here's that form.

Hopefully, pretty easily snipable and editable to put your logo on there and stuff if you want to do that.

Here's that case.

I love this thing, I think it's really cool.

You can apparently stand on it.

I have not put that test to it yet, but you apparently can.

Waterproof, drop proof.

They've definitely been dropped in the library as patrons are walking out with them.

No damage whatsoever.

It's a DEVASO case, goes for about $45 or $50 on Amazon.

It tends to go up $5 when you buy one, because we bought one a couple days later twice now and they were higher in price.

I want to make mention, though, by the way, this says that they fit the OLED version.

Don't worry about that whatsoever.

They fit every version of the Switch, whether it's the regular, the OLED, or the Switch Lite, it's not going to be a problem.

They'll fit all the Switchs.

We have that link, outstanding.

I want to go back a bit for a second, I want to make a point with the dummy case method that it's just the game itself that's protected from theft, it's not the cartridge itself on the right.

There's no room to put a 3M sticker on the cartridge, and I don't know of any sting ray system, if there is one, please put that in the chat, developed yet for Switch cartridges.

You know, like there are for DVDs and CDs.

So, I bring this up to, one, emphasize the importance of protecting your cartridges, because the cartridges are not protected.

It's just the case.

So, keep those cartridges locked up and create a system that makes it very hard for patrons to have direct access to.

But also to point out that you might have a similar problem that we had early on.

Where patrons were taking those empty dummy cases from the table and walking out with them and checking those out, right.

So, they would get all the way home, and we're in Billings, Montana, so many people come an hour away when they come into town to utilize, you know, the largest city.

And then they get all the way home with no cartridge in the case.

And that was a big bummer for a lot of people.

So, thinking swiftly, we created this sign, put this sign up that says cartridges not in cases.

Go to the desk and -- I'll be honest with you, we all know how well signs work in libraries sometimes.

This actually worked like a charm.

I think the problem of that happening dropped significantly.

So you might want to make sure your patrons are aware if you go with this system, cartridges are not in the cases.

I know, people don't come into the library to read.

They are not in there, they are going to get all the way home and it's not in there and stuff.

One of those things we learned as time went on.

Of course, no system is perfect.

We do have games that go lost, as you can see.

One of our consoles went lost.

That was tough, but we did, you know, a console never came back.

It's just not on this list anymore, or you would see it.

But overall, since we've started the collection, very few games have actually made it to the lost designation in our system, and then still never came back.

When I did this for the Montana webinar, I did -- I mentioned a couple months ago -- this was a much healthier list, but that was because one patron, kind of a parent with a couple of kids, had multiple games checked out, they forgot about them, they were late, brought them back, cleared the whole list up basically.

This is kind of what we run for our lost list.

They are not growing legs and just going out the door the way we were initially concerned about.

You know, video games are just going to be stolen at a higher rate than other materials.

Not in my experience, and not in any of the librarians' experience that I've talked with in developing this presentation.

And no cartridges have ever been stolen from the library, because we have the cartridges locked up in the drawer.

Other libraries, they use the locking cases, you know, like the retail locking cases, have had more lost with cartridges, but that system works for them and that's just one of the kind of, you know, risks they run.

And it's worth it to them.

And it works for them.

We're going to move on to sustainability and the future.

I don't know if we want to stop real quickly, Jennifer, we might be pressed for time.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: Let's keep going and cover questions at the end.

>> JOE LANNING: Sustainability.

Let's talk about expanding the collection and console checkouts more in depth and maybe some ideas on programming, make sure I don't have any final notes.

First thing you might want to consider is this collection starts to take off and you're seeing all the games gone and it's really popular and your patrons are really giving you positive feedback, I would imagine if you're much like me, the first thing you're going to think is let's go with all the consoles, let's branch out.

And that's definitely something that you can do.

If you have the budget for it, if you have, you know, everything I've talked about today, even if you didn't go with the Switch, is directly applicable to the PlayStation had and 5 and Xbox 360 and Xbox Series X.

Just a matter of securing the collection, knowing where to purchase the games, where to purchase from, what's popular, what do your patrons want, you know, that kind of material, it's applicable to all consoles.

We have not yet gone this route in Billings.

Something we're still looking to do in the future.

But librarians have spoken and told me that, you know, while those games do check out, and I think a couple people have spoken about it in the chat today, they are still not quite as popular as the Switch.

And I think that's largely because of the popularity of the Switch we talked about earlier.

Now, I'm going to say one more thing about this.

I put Nintendo DS games on here, because a number of people said they'd love to see them in the collection.

I think it's a really cool idea.

People are picking up their old DS consoles and playing them again, handing them down to their kiddos, so kiddos are playing them.

I consider maybe running a poll with patrons to see if they'd like DS games after the success of your Switch console games, you know, has shown.

One of the recipients of that grant we talked about earlier, the Rosel LPL in Illinois has DS games in their collection.

Pretty cool.

In my opinion, like the vinyl record collection of a video game collection, retro and nostalgic, but people do still definitely like to play them.

Definitely worthy of consideration.

You buy the Pokemon games for the Nintendo DS, and best of luck going forward.

Those might grow legs, and look at me talking like that now, but they are kind of collectibles, collectors items, so be careful with Pokemon games for the DS.

Console checkouts, let's talk about this a little bit more.

People want PlayStation 5 games and Xbox games, you're definitely going to think about making consoles available.

You'll get people asking do you also check out the console pretty quickly.

This can definitely be an expensive addition.

Heather from Lewis & Clark Library in Helena, Montana, has some great ideas -- not Heather, Elizabeth -- has great ideas how to run a system, how to be creative with console checkouts.

Consoles, regular Switch consoles are $300.

The Lite version that's just the handheld is $200.

The OLEDs are about $350, and you definitely do not need to purchase those for your patrons.

If you have the budget, outstanding, go ahead.

But if not, the regular will do just fine and even just the handheld version, I think, would be immensely popular with patrons and would keep your costs down if you're looking to keep your costs down, but still provide consoles.

Keep in mind the games are constantly checked out like ours.

People won't actually have anything to play when they check out the console, if all your games are checked out and their console comes due, what are they going to play?

You might want to purchase some physical copies of Nintendo Sports or something like that and catalog with the console, so when they open the console, there's a couple of games waiting for them.

We were going to go that route, but then we got a grant from our foundation to purchase consoles, so we just purchased digital versions of like 13 different games, which you see on that picture on the right of the actual console itself.

All those games come preloaded and more, so when you check out the console, you have like 13 games that you can already check out.

Really popular ones like Zelda and stuff like that.

So, it's either way you'd want to go about it, but you want to make sure they have something to play.

Des Moines public library, awesome public libraries have held amazing Mario Kart tournaments for childrens and teens.

Other libraries hold weekly Mario Kart after-school online sessions, they just start a lobby, put the joint password on their Facebook page or whatever, which is a great way of social media promoting the collection while they are at it.

Actively engaging in programming to get that out there, and it's gone great for them.

We held a Super Smash Bros tournament.

We facilitated, I should say, our teens in the teen tech lab got the word out and ran it.

They just ran it through the library.

That was a fantastic success.

We actually donated some of our extra games as prizes for that.

And went great.

Do you clear the save data for the digital copies of the games after the consoles are returned?

Yeah, we have library accounts attached, we have four consoles, so we basically have BPL 01 through 04.

Each console has its own BPL account.

We don't clear the saved data if they play the games on those.

We kind of just let that be.

They don't have cloud access.

When people create their own accounts, and they do all the time, we delete those accounts before -- as part of the check-in process, we delete any additional created accounts, but we are not going in and clearing all the game data, no.

We also wouldn't mind if people did that on their own, but, no, we're not clearing the game data on the BPL account when they come back.

I feel like I flew through, and hopefully I didn't.

I want to say for more information or you want help, you want access to any of the data we provided today, or just want to talk to me about this, reach out.

I need to spend one more minute to say thank you so much to Jennifer with WebJunction.

It's insane how great she is at her job and how easy this has been.

So, thank you so much.

It's been an absolute pleasure working with you.

Kelsey and Megan are two of my administrators who have gone lengths, lengths, making this possible.

My administration has encouraged me to do this.

I have really great support over here in Billings, so I want to say thank you to all my colleagues, and I'm happy to spend the rest of our time just together today answering questions and chatting about this.

Thank you so much for coming out today.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: Fantastic, thank you so much, Joe.

Super exciting.

Lots and lots of great suggestions, as well as questions in chat.

Thanks, everyone, in chat.

And I have collected questions, but definitely if you don't feel like it's getting answered, feel free to post it in there again.

You had mentioned how you identify the console in your collection.

Somebody asked is your console part of the library of things, part of your video game collection, I think you talked about coding it as technology to get the right checkout period.

Is that right?

>> JOE LANNING: Yeah, we coded as technology, because we're part of the Montana State Consortium.

They made that decision kind of in Helena, that's what we were able to code it as, so it's within the shared catalog.

That being said, basically, the easiest way for people to search our collection is through our catalog, through the OPAC, you know, same thing for all of us.

But the classification, just the call number VG Switch is what I usually tell people, the call number is easily distinguishable from anything else.

VG Switch is usually the way I tell people to search all of our games that's in the collection.

So, I don't know if that quite answers it, but that's how we have it coded over here, yeah.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: That's super helpful.

Let's see, you talk add little bit about checkout periods and things like that, and fines.

I thought there were just a few interesting things to pull out in chat.

Somebody did talk about that they have a limit of two games per card.

They changed the checkout from one week to three weeks with auto-renewals and the circulation increased after that.

So, sounds like there's -- 

>> JOE LANNING: Love it.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: Lot of variation in chat in terms of how you have it set up.

So, be sure for folks to return and take a look at that.

There was a quick question about if you have a very small budget to start the collection, how do you determine the duplicates?

You were talking about duplicate decisions.

>> JOE LANNING: There's no wrong way of doing it.

I would love to say, well, okay -- I will say, get two Nintendo Sports, because that thing -- people love playing that thing.

Nintendo Sports is one of those titles where it's like everybody wants to play that.

And it's the same way when the Wii was out, bowling and that kind of stuff.

But you're not going to go wrong, and I'm not trying to do a terrible copout, but if it's a Mario-related game and it's newer, it's going to be a hit.

So, just some of the newer releases Mario games will be a hit.

Some of the standards, as well, if it's Mario related, it's kind of a sure thing.

Mario Party Superstars I think came out when the Switch came out.

It can't stay on the shelf.

It's so old now, you know, relatively speaking.

It can't stay on the shelves.

Really, it's the IPs.

It's the IP of Mario, Pokemon, and Zelda that you're going safe by going that route.

One of the questions, quickly, Barbara said how do you get patrons to bring back consoles and games when they are late.

We beg and plead them to bring it back.

Don't do anything else beyond that.

That's really -- I mean, short budget, you only want to buy five or six games to start with, sure.

The top-rated Mario games.

Mario Kart, 100%.

Nintendo Sports and other things like that, just to get the idea to your patrons that these are here now, that's really part of the focus, and putting on your social and promoting it that we now do this, that's going to be a huge influence to get people in here.

And then you're going to probably see the need for expanding your budget.

That will be a proof of concept, I guess.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: And just in terms of budget, there were a couple other suggestions that came through in terms of funding, you know, somebody said tiny library with a tiny budget.

Somebody said that at their previous library, they received a grant from the local police association.

>> JOE LANNING: Right on.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: Think about that.

I know other libraries in smaller communities sometimes have gotten grants from their local game store, you know, their vendors in the region, you know, partner with those folks, as well.

Really, I mean, that police association one is such a good example of, like, really out of -- 

>> JOE LANNING: Reach out.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: Some folks said their state is providing funding for libraries around this area through IMLS funding, so definitely think about that, as well.

>> JOE LANNING: I don't feel like circing consoles, yeah, a majority of libraries don't.

It's taking an additional thing on.

Again, if that works for you, don't circ consoles.

Yeah, and it is an additional amount of work and functionality.

I require more from my reference librarians, we're out there, check it in, check it out.

That's normal.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: I thought there was an interesting question... see if we can find it.

Oh, what's your opinion about games multiplayer versus ones that aren't multiplayer, in terms of making the case, do you think there's anything around that?

>> JOE LANNING: Well, I guess let me ask for some context.

Is it games that require you to be online?

Require like a Call of Duty kind of thing?

Talking about the games with single player but they have a multiplayer functionality and that's the really popular thing, because other than that, I would not -- I'm not making really any -- not in that role anymore, but I'm not making determinations between an online or single player.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: I think it's more for the public, like if they have a gaming setup in the library.

I don't know if that makes a difference.

>> JOE LANNING: Oh, oh, that's something completely new and fresh and amazing, as well, the idea of maybe an e-gaming kind of like a community within the library.

No, I fully support all types of video gaming in the library, whether it's multiplayer, competitive, teen-related, juvenile, adults.

No, I wouldn't want to make a distinguishing kind of, you know, comparison between single versus multi.

No, I think it all belongs in the library.

That's something we can have a much more in-depth conversation about, but no.

Both are pristine for the library, perfect for it.

>> JENNIFER PETERSON: Okay.

I just want to do a quick plug, Rebecca said she's on the GameRT Board committee and she is encouraging folks that are applying for that Game On! Grant to put thought into the narrative, because lots of people are applying, and, so, really make your narrative stand out.

Thank you for that advice, Rebecca.

Super helpful.

Let's see, I think we are at the top of the hour now.

There goes the time.

Thank you so much, Joe, for providing your contact information.

Some of the questions in there I know Joe can answer offline, as well.

And I do encourage you to check out that ALA group on Facebook, if you are not in ALA, the Facebook group has some really excellent ideas coming through and lots of other folks to ask questions much like you've been asking today.

So, reminder that I'll send you an email later today once the recording is posted.

I'll automatically send you a certificate for attending.

And I'm going to send you to a short survey, as you leave, if you don't have time to take it now, the link is in that email I'll send you, but we really appreciate your feedback, we'll share your feedback with Joe, and it really helps us guide our ongoing programming, so thank you for taking that time to do that, as well.

Thank you so much, Joe.

Super, super exciting.

My 20-something kids were so excited when I told them the webinar today.

And I can guarantee that they are right on board with all of your great ideas.

Thank you so much, Joe.

>> JOE LANNING: Thank you, everyone.

Thank you, Jennifer, so much.

(End of webinar)