School libraries seem, for some reason, to be particularly dull places to wait. Despite the

hundreds of books, handful of computers and conversational librarians, these activities which would

be interesting under conventional circumstances turn out to be very, very dull indeed when you're waiting for something.

This list of games was made in order that those bored in a library can at least be bored with good reason, rather than

being bored whilst performing some kind of mentally enriching activity.

For pupils...

"Top Ten"

Get the ”Top Ten of Everything” book and quiz your friends about the

ever-fascinating ‘top

ten Venezuelan Tiddlywinks players’, or something equally useless and bizarre. This game has been known to drive the players

slowly

mad*.

"Stare out the old headmasters"

Few school libraries these days are adorned with pictures of former heads. This is a great pity, since it deprives the pupils of an otherwise excellent game opportunity.

Find the scariest-looking picture of a former head and look at him without blinking until he

blinks and you win. The portrait of the school founder, William Adams, is the undisputed

record-holder, having gone over 300 years without any eye-lid movement.

This game can get quite painful if you are waiting in the library for a long time, however. It does provide perfect practice for

actual staring out, though.

"Give the Trainee Librarian Something to be Paid for"

Check out as many books as your library card allows, and preferably a couple more since it

is a school library and they’re not normally concerned about these things. Take them back to

be

returned about ten minutes later. Guffaw implacably.

Library Rugby, Basketball, American Football, Baseball, Football etc etc

Many variants exist of library ball games. Put simply, they involve running around using a book instead of

a ball*. Atlases and encylopaedias make good bats, while the optimum ball with a good-sized book is

a softback copy of "Lord of the Rings".

"Kwazoig"

A rather complex game whose rules do take about an hour to explain, thus kind of defeating

the object. It is played using a board which has various circles, squares, lines and other shapes on it, and the object is to be the

player with the most points when 'Kwazoig' is reached. It is a game requiring skill, cunning, patience, and a Kwazoig board.

"Explain the Rules to Kwazoig"

This is rather harder than you might imagine. There's not really space for details here; Kwazoig really deserves an article all

of its very own. However, it is certainly one of the more effective ways of passing very long periods of time in your library.

"Change the Resolution"

Find a computer with a nice small monitor*. Adjust the number of pixels on the screen

such that it either flickers insanely, or becomes too small to read. This really annoys the

technicians.

The undisputed champion resides at the Adams' Grammar School library, where to change the 14" monitors to 1152×864 results in a

slightly narrowed band of flickering colours. The next skill, of course, is to log off the school network without using the mouse so

that nobody knows it was you. This requires knowledge of keyboard shortcuts, and so most pupils get caught when the screen is restored

since their work is still there, usually with their name at the top.

"Accumulation Exacerbation"

See how big a pile of books you can make before someone gets suspicious and asks you what

you’re doing with a huge pile of (unrelated) books. A less advanced version of the game requires using similar books, but this is

much easier since it is relatively plausible that you should require a number of similar books for, say, a project.

"Give the Trainee Librarian Something to be Prescribed Prozac for"

Search for a few books which you know full well that the library doesn’t have;

preferably

old, large and expensive ones. When you find that they’re not listed on the computer system,

complain loudly and repeatedly and insist that they order them for you.

"The Low-Level hum"

This game is perfect for multiple players. It works best with at least three. One person hums a note continuously* at level which is not quite audible. Then, the next person joins in, thus increasing the volume and

perhaps making it able to be heard. Then another, and another person joins in, each contribution individually being impossible to hear,

but creating a combined noise level which may get you kicked out of the library. The game is completed when you are kicked out, though

there is much musical fun to be had creating harmonies in the meantime.

"BookSwap"

Take one book. Take another completely unrelated book from the other end of the library.

Return them to each-others positions. Continue to do this until the librarian spots you. The

winner is the person to swap the most books*.

"Write a List of 'Games to Play when Bored in a Library'"

That's how this got done. It's actually surprisingly difficult to do this.

"Spot the Person Coming Through the Door"

Perhaps the most popular* Library Game of all time, "Spot the Person Coming Through the Door", is

spectaculary simple and irresistable to play! It involves looking up and staring at anyone

who opens the door and walks through*.

"Rotate the Table"

This is peculiar to schools

with big, long wooden tables that are cleary relics from a bygone age of big, long wooden tables.

The object of this game is to rotate the table* through at least 180° without being

told off. This has never been achieved to the knowledge of any

authors, teachers, and certainly librarians.

"ISBN maths"

Try to make the number 42 by performing mathematical operations on the digits on a book's ISBN. This is almost invariably possible,

if you allow all mathematical operations, but it can be made more challenging by restricting which functions you can use, or by not

using a calculator.

For librarians...

"Overdue Book Terror"

Send pupils letters and tell them repeatedly to return books which are overdue. This is more fun if the books are ones the pupils have never heard of before, and more fun still if they aren't even in the library at all.

Your average school pupil will get very panicky at this point and either offer to reimberse you for this valuable book, or run away in terror. Either result is amusing, and one is quite profitable.

"BookSwap II"

Leave the books that pupils have played BookSwap with in their swapped positions. This renders all research efforts utterly useless, and since you already have a paying job¹, you don't much care.

Taken to an extreme, you can actually swap more books yourself.

"Confiscate the Kwazoig Board"

Ironically, this game isn't complex at all. Just walk up to the pupils in question, and grab the Kwazoig board² and take it away to a faraway place such that the pupils can no longer use it. Very vindictive, but very effective.

"The 'Beep' Challenge"

This only works in libraries that have one of those funny beeping-gate things which attempt to prevent stealing of books.

Simply place a book in someone's bag or pocket, and wait for them to leave the library. This is known as "spiking". Then, when they walk through the gate, the alarm will sound, and there will be much laughter from you and embarrassment from them as their every attempt to pass is rendered useless by the sounding of an alarm.

Champions can be forged by spiking huge numbers of people, spiking with ever-larger books, or by spiking with very embarrassing books to make it even more fun when the person eventually disovers what's setting the alarm off.

"The Joy of Sex" is always a good one, as is "Masturbation: How Can I control the Urge?", or even "Pop-up Gynaecology".

This can of course be played by pupils, too.

"Write a List of 'Games to Play when Bored in a Library'"

This is every bit as fun for librarians as it is for pupils. Give it a shot. Also, it doesn't hurt anyone.

The rest...

This is by no means a comprehensive list of library games. The constant and age-old battle for the upper hand between pupils and librarians continues unabated. Generations of pupils have invented hoards of others, but these elude

documentation, lost in the annals of history and the minds of our fellow researchers. Similarly, librarians are cruel beyond belief in many cases, and have come up with many forms of retribution more severe than those above... However, it does cover a goodly portion activities designed to alleviate boredom in libraries.