GAMERT (Gaming) Round Table

Hey everyone!

I had someone who is not a member of GameRT (!) contact me about circulating board games. His library is a university library that will begin circulating about 10 board games soon. He would like to know how you circulate board games in your library. Do you catalog each item and just barcode the game box? or do you treat it more like a kit and bag and barcode each set of items within the game?

I'm curious about this as well. My library circulates board games but only in-house and to faculty. We don't count each piece/card as it comes back in.

Thanks,
Diane

We circulate over 200 titles to school libraries and teachers across 22 districts. While they don't go home with students, they do get used by them a lot. We rarely get loss of parts surprisingly, when we do we make that copy a parts copy and order a replacement. That way in the future, you can draw from a parts copy for missing pieces.

We only catalog the game itself and only periodically inventory the games themselves for parts. If we do have an issue arise, it comes to our attention from a borrower who notifies us of missing parts. Our circulation is done through a Drupal website we built for our resources GVLIBRARIES. We include information about the game, rules if available as pdf and where it fits subject and grade level wise since we service a school population.

Thanks! I forwarded on your message. We do the same as you here at UNT. I think if I had to label the pieces for Arkham Horror I would run out of here screaming. :P

--Diane

Although I suppose that horror wouldn't nameless...  Just eternal.

We only recently began circulating select titles from our library gaming collection (about 100 games). Other than including a list of parts and asking that patrons who borrow to please check before and after, we rarely have any issue with missing parts. 

This could be, in part, due to the fact that mostly experienced or emerging gamers borrow our games and they tend to know the drill and understand the expectation of care.

Most of our concern is over protecting the game (sleeves, tuck boxes, etc.) so that the game can get and take plenty of love.

That being said, I hope to start circulating games to teachers at our local school as soon as a few titles (AHEM -- Freedom for one!) arrive. But I prefer to keep the fiddly games with many pieces out of the rotation. I also dedicated a few bucks to replacement parts and as part of our Game Designer's Guild we have a tool chest full of replacement parts!

Brian, I love the Drupal site! I may need to consider something similar soon. My outreach to the school is just starting and I hope it grows.

John Pappas

This is kind of a late response, but I wanted toss in my two cents in case it's still relevant to your colleague.

We've been circulating our games for just a month, but so far it's gone really well and we've had almost no problems.

We catalog the games individually. OCLC has records for a lot of games, and I've only had to do original cataloging for three (Love Letter, Sushi Go!, and Prolix). Three labels go on the front of the box: a barcode, a "Do not return in the book drop" label, and a list of the contents. I tape up the covers of the large boxes. For small card games like Love Letter and No Thanks!, I've found some clear plastic boxes in which they fit perfectly. Our library system uses RFID, so we're able to tag all of these games, too, which is good for loss prevention.

If it's practical, we'll check a game's contents when it's returned. So far, only one piece from a game (Blokus) has been lost, but like John, we've set aside a small amount for replacement pieces and are building up a stock of bits for replacing lost pieces.

The key is to select games that can handle wear-and-tear, are still playable if some pieces go missing, have easily replaceable pieces, and/or are inexpensive enough that a full replacement is doable. I've found the Gaming in School in Libraries, The Dice Tower, and my local meetup (Portland, OR) guilds on BoardGameGeek to be invaluable in helping to find games that fit these criteria.

These are the games as they appear in our catalog.

Cheers,

PJ