I was really excited to see the Darien Library  giving their library members this most excellent opportunity to play Minecraft:

Darien Library is excited to be hosting its own Minecraft server. If you don’t know about it already; Minecraft is an awesome sandbox construction game in which players create and destroy different types of blocks in a 3D environment. Explore new terrain, gather raw materials, create amazing structures, and watch out for Creepers that come out at night!

To join the Darien Library Minecraft server, simply enter the address to join when you open a new game: minecraft.darienlibrary.org

I knew that some of the teens at my library were into Minecraft, so I started thinking about how I could get Minecraft to them at the library.  I knew that a Minecraft server wasn’t the best fit for my library, so instead I purchased the game from Minecraft.net and decided to focus on setting up one computer that teens could use to play the game.  Our goal is to develop a Minecraft world with contributions from any teen library member that just so happens to want to give the game a try while they’re in the library.

While we haven’t reached that step in the process, we are very much on our way there!  This summer, one of the goals of our teen volunteers was to start building in the Minecraft world and come up with some really impressive and exciting examples of what could be done with the game.  He also took what he learned while playing the game and came up with an instruction manual that will help future library players get adjusted to playing the game.  Earlier today, I sat down with our volunteer to talk about what he’s done in Minecraft: