It's Your Move

A library collection is a community asset. Studies indicate that chess is a healthy mental pursuit for children of all skill levels; the educational nonprofit Chess-in-the-Schools. www.chessintheschool.org reports improvements in reading scores and a variety of other intellectual and social benefits for kids who accept the rigors and rewards of chess study. Many library collections currently have only a smattering of old classics, international tournament books, and player anthologies; few titles date from beyond the 1980s, and there is often little cohesion in the selections. Fortunately, we live in a golden age of chess publishing, and the following tips will assist librarians unacquainted with the noble embrace of Caissa (patron goddess of chess) to build responsive print collections. This is not to discount the impact of computers and the Internet, which have opened new vistas for participation. Chess engines and databases offer new access to master games and chip-assisted analysis. As 24/7 opponents, computers are excellent repositories for personal tournament and "skittles," or offhand, games. For now, however, electronic sources supplement rather than supplant books and periodicals. In order to select appropriate materials for your collection, it helps to understand how the game works. Chess is played on an 8" x 8" board of alternating white and colored squares with 16 identical pieces on each side--eight pawns; two each rooks, knights, and bishops; a queen and a king. The object is to attack the king leaving him no escape--checkmate! The variety of paths to that end are staggering. A good chess book should have clear, accurate diagrams, with obvious links between notation and position. Pass on buying or weed anything with squares offset, or frequent misplaced or mislabeled pieces. Also, look critically at any title that uses older descriptive notation to record chess moves. Algebraic notation has become the universal standard and the system newcomers will learn. Out-of-print gems like Fischer's My 60 Memorable Games and Practical Chess Endings by Estonian GM Paul Keres are perennials that should remain on most library shelves. Likewise The Oxford Companion to Chess has no peer in print. However, treatments of opening variations grow stale as theory advances and are worth a weeding review each year.