When I was in the third grade, and getting beaten up after elementary school was a fairly routine part of my day, the public library was my sanctuary. Passing by it on my way home from school, I would walk through the door of the library and breathe a sigh of relief.

I guess bullies didn't go to the library. At least they didn't go to my library, The Charles H. Taylor Memorial Library in Hampton, Virginia. It was there that, surrounded by the feeling of safety and the smell of glue, mold and 75-year-old librarians, I learned to love books. And it was there that the tension of the world lifted from my shoulders as I gazed around that big room lined with books. It's the same feeling I get today when I walk into a library or a bookstore.

It was for that reason that I was excited to learn of the American Library Association's mission to make the public library a board game haven—a place where you not only check out games, but, more significantly, where you can go to play them.

The ALA thinks board games have great value to society. Why? Because they feel that board games are a way to accomplish three important social goals: create smarter kids by enticing them into the library through games; help children to think strategically; and improve the social climate in cities by bringing disparate groups of people together around a table.

The library is, after all, the perfect place to accomplish these goals. It is one of the last great, non-commercial, public spaces left in America.

Now, before you dismiss this as just "nice to know," let me give you some facts about libraries and what this can mean to all of us in Toy Nation:

• There are more public libraries in the United States than there are McDonald's restaurants.
• Libraries circulate more books than Amazon.
• Through inter-library loan programs, libraries ship more packages than FedEx.
• Every year, more people go to the library than all of the nation's sporting events combined.

Libraries, in short, are big business, and they looking for us to be a part of it. The ALA's 2008 conference, for example, featured a board game night for its attendees. The association followed that with a National Game Day last November in which every library played the same game on the same day.

And that's not all. Some school libraries have given games an important role in their 21st century literacy standards. Such schools will be looking for new ways to tie board games in with their curriculum.

So, how can you take advantage of the American Library Association's outreach via games?

For one thing, if you are a game manufacturer you should be thinking about how the library ties into your marketing plans. Do you want to sell games to the library to generate more sales or do you want to donate games to the library so that kids sample them there then buy one at retail to play at home? (Or both.)

You can also help the library solve a problem: How to make game boxes and boards more durable and their pieces harder to lose. Maybe, game companies could run a special institutional version of some of their games for the library that features tougher box bindings and either fewer or universal components (so libraries can have more tokens, spinners, dice, etc., on hand when pieces get lost). Or maybe they can just provide double the number of pieces when providing for the library version.

However you want to approach the library opportunity, it is that all too rare chance to do well and to do good. You can do well by creating more sales for your company. You can do good by helping to make America a better place now and for future generations. How cool is that?!

I'll talk to you later. I'm going to the library.