'They have a market value on the streets': Saskatoon public library to end video game loans due to theft

Saskatoon Public Libraries (SPL) will no longer loan out video games starting in November.

SPL director of collections and service infrastructure said the collection was becoming too expensive to maintain.

“Video games are very expensive, and they have a market value on the streets and in second-hand game stores. So what we were noticing is that our video game collection has become a target for theft,” Amanda Lepage told CTV News. “Because of that, it's become a very expensive collection to maintain.”

Lepage said the budget for the program would be redirected to other SPL collections.

“We decided that we were going to discontinue the video game collection and offer that access to those opportunities and services in a different way, and then invest the money that we previously allocated to video games in other collections that are in high demand.”

She said about 4,000 people had borrowed video games from the library in 2022 and there were roughly 2,000 games in the collection.

“We spend about $66,000 a year on video games, and we'll be reallocating that to other collections.”

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Once the games come off the shelf they will be used in the video game rooms at the Round Prairie and Rusty Macdonald library branches, Lepage said.

She also said they would work with other organizations that may be in need of video games.

“We're going to work with community partners who may also have video game consoles for programming or to do the work that they do and our partners can contact us through the website if they feel like access to our video games would benefit their programming and their services. Then we'll work with those partners to distribute the games that were purchased with our funds.”

Lepage said the video game program began at SPL in 2012 and grew to be popular.

“It was very popular with a very specific group of patrons. Obviously, folks who had video game consoles to play at home. So it's kind of started slowly and then grew in popularity, but 4000 patrons is a reasonable percentage of our library patron base, but we find that there are other collections that have more people borrowing them that we could serve better.”

She said the decision was one that they felt was best for Saskatoon patrons.

“We're always looking at what's trending, what's sustainable, what is popular, what new things are coming out. So we're always looking for new and interesting ways to serve the community and get the community value.”