A friend of mine happens to be a librarian, and every now and then she sends me some links to news about the slow infiltration of video games into library world. Todays links surprised the hell out of me. After all — considering how many people out there are still fighting to get their hands on a Wii, seeing one in a library is downright bizarre. Still, it’s a great publicity stunt to get people in the door. From The Shifted Librarian;

A couple of libraries have already been experimenting with Wiis for gaming in the library, albeit more as a novelty since they’re so new and you can’t connect them for multiplayer gaming (at least not yet).

* Wii Setup The Lafayette Public Library System in Louisiana held a tournament using their Gamecube, but Systems Administrator Adam Melancon also brought in his own Wii to let folks play with. He’s already started thinking about best practices (for example, put an “x” on the floor using tape so that people know where to stand or else they tend to move about and run into things!). Flickr pictures here, with a newspaper article about their gaming program here. Adam even has Friends of the Library money to buy two Wiis, four Wiimotes (controllers), and two copies of “Excite Truck” for the Library if he can just get his hands on them.

* It’s not just libraries in the U.S., though. Earlier this month Edwin posted about Wiiplay in his library in the Netherlands and how popular gaming is in general there. The post is in Dutch, but Babelfish gives you the general idea in English (or other languages). He’s also got some other fun Wii links in the post, too.

See kiddies? It’s like I always said — books are for losers and the printed word is dead. The only reason you need even basic literacy is so you can read theBBPS. Now go down to the library and get your game on!