"Local teens and pre-teens will soon be able to borrow popular video games from the Park Ridge Public Library, making the library one-of-its-kind in the northwest suburbs.

Last month, the Library Board of Trustees approved a pilot video game collection for the Young Adult Department. The library would like to start the collection with 50 video game titles. Funding to purchase the games has been requested from the fundraising organization, Friends of the Park Ridge Library.

"We'll be one of the first libraries in our area to [purchase video games]," said Janet Van De Carr, the library's executive director.

While some libraries within the North Suburban Library System have "strategy guides" for playing specific video games, none have yet added a game collection, although libraries in Deerfield and Algonquin are considering it, Van De Carr said.

Van De Carr said this week that she did not know when the collection would debut at the Park Ridge Library because she was still waiting to hear if Friends of the Library have funding available at this time. Just over $3,000 has been requested.

The library hopes to purchase "high demand" video games for Playstation and Xbox systems. Only games that are rated E for all ages or T for teens will be added to the collection. There will be a borrowing limit of two games per patron at any one time, and there will be no charge to check out a video game.

Young Adult Librarian Therese Odlevak had initially made the request for video games to be available at the library.

"Kids throughout Park Ridge kept coming up to me and asking why we didn't have video games for circulation," she said.

After awhile, Odlevak began asking herself the same question. She began conducting research and said she discovered that libraries around the country are starting to add video games to their collections." [more]