Hi, everyone.

Thanks to all those who responded to my Yu-Gi-Oh! post. I got a lot of fantastic feedback that I'd like to share with everyone.

First of all, the program was a great success. We had 90 kids here. That's a huge number of kids for a small library like this one - to give you an idea, I think that's a little bit more than what we had for our summer reading kick-off preformer. The adult dept. said they were busy all night with all of the parents up there checking out. And best of all, they made more new cards than they had ever done before - the program brought in a lot of people that had never been to the library.

So, here's some info for anyone who wants to do the program - from my own experience, and from everyone who wrote me.

First of all, I wouldn't push the program too much. We just had it on our sign outside and on our calendar and hordes of kids showed up. Word spread on its own at school. I would also have sign up or at least a limit if you don't want too many kids.

Instead of doing a tournament, like I did, I would do just a Yu-Gi-Oh! Night. The competition made it a LOT harder to organize and the kids seemed to have more fun after they had already lost and were just playing for fun.

I took the time to wade through the rules and learn them all. This was a waste of time. I thought the kids would come to me with questions and that if I knew the rules, I would be able to answer them. Actually, though, they all knew the rules that I read. It was disputes about things that didn't come up in the rules that they were asking about. And when they did ask questions, I just told them I didn't understand and they accepted this and worked it out on their own.

One of the most common questions was whether or not we allowed Japanese cards. One of the kids told me that when Toys R Us holds tournaments, they do allow the cards. I let them use them and nothing arose of it, but one of the librarians who wrote said she doesn't allow them because you can't read on them what they do since it's in Japanese (each card has info about what it does printed on it).

One very important thing to know about Yu-Gi-Oh! is that at the end of each match, the winner gets to take the loser's best card. We did not allow this at the library and made the rule that everyone goes home with the cards they came in with.

Many librarians stressed that you should not allow trading in general (the kids trade the cards like baseball cards) because older kids will take advantage of younger kids. They also said it was important to make an announcement ahead of time to always keep your cards with you. Otherwise, kids wander away and leave their cards on the table and they wind up stolen. Many of these cards are very valuable (think 50 or 60 bucks per card for the best ones)and theft was a common problem at many library programs.

Something that worked well for a lot of libraries was bringing in an adult or older teen who knew a lot about the game to help them run it. Some had sons or friends, but many who didn't, asked someone from a local gaming store or comic book store. These people are often happy to help out because they get to plug their store as the place to go for Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.

I gave out cards for prizes - I got three packs of cards (about $4 for a pack of 9), drew 18 names for one card each, and used the last pack for kids who were still in the tournament when our hour ran out and had to go home. For our grand winner, I got a Yu-Gi-Oh! toy. He was a sophomore in high school and less than thrilled. I would stick to cards for prizes. I think I may ask Toys R Us to donate cards for our next Yu-Gi-Oh! night. They make a lot of money off this phenomenon and would probably love the chance to get their name attached to our event.

I hope this helps anyone planning on doing the program. It really brought in a lot of new poeple to the library - and mostly 10 year old boys, who can be the hardest to reach. It's super cheap, and pretty much runs itself (as long as you have fun play instead of a tournament). Most of the librarians who wrote me said that it was their most consistantly successful program. I'm planning on holding a Yu-Gi-Oh! Club once a month on the Saturdays that I work. We've had lots of calls asking when the next one will be.

Please feel free to email me with any questions. I'm obviously very new at this, but am happy to share anything I learned.

Meghan Stillwell Head of Youth Services Acorn Public Library District Oak Forest, IL adsyouth at mls.lib.il.us

  • Have 2 older teens who know about the game help out by monitoring the

duels, keeping track of winners and losers, and even helping you organize the event if you don't know much about the game.

  • Put a disclaimer on all advertising stating that the library is not

responsible for personal property. Parents of a few kids called to complain that so-and-so lost cards or cards were stolen or cards were lost because another kid cheated, etc. Some of these cards are worth money so it can be very tempting for some teens.

  • Print out official rules from the company's site and go over these rules

with the kids. Some of the guys in my group (and we just play for recreation at this point) had their own rules and didn't want to play by the "official" rules.