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To be honest, I'll accept almost any selection excuse for not having
RPG materials in a library's collection; collection development is
hard enough as it is without being second-guessed by every special
interest group, no matter how deserving or worthy. I honestly don't
think that RPGs make very good library materials (although I've seen
it happen), acquisition policies aren't really written with that sort
of material in mind, and it's hard enough maintaining a balanced
overall collection in limited shelf space without adding another
entire collection. That being said, some specifics and advice:

(1) Any set of core rules or rules supplements are going to be needed
fairly constantly by at least one member of an ongoing campaign;
having them as library materials only helps when everybody's going to
need them at once, such as during character creation, and then only
for the materials that everyone's going to need, such as core rules.
(Class-specific supplements are right out.) Of course, even core rules
will still be of interest to people interested in learning more about
a particular game, either because they might play it or because
they're wondering about this "RPG" stuff.

(2) Adventures, assuming that they're solidly bound and have no
separate pieces to lose, /are/ usually of use for a limited time, and
to only one person at a time (the GM). Therefore, they do make good
materials from that perspective, although they'll only be of interest
to the GMs of groups whose play style it fits rather than everyone
using a particular system. Of course, having adventures without any
copies of the core rules would be a little silly.

(3) Gamers are a pretty small portion of the overall population, so
there's a limit to how many patrons this is going to interest. This is
more the sort of thing that I would expect to see one library within a
system* have a collection of than expect every library to collect.

*whether a large urban district or an inter-district system with
reciprocal borrowing privileges

(4) Yes, gaming is going to invite some attention. Quite frankly,
every librarian I know or have interviewed about similarly contentious
collections (e.g., yaoi) at my library or any other, including in
conservative townships and in other states, knows that they're
carrying hot items and couldn't care less. Exceptions are rare. The
ALA complies statistics on the most-/challenged/ books; actual /bans/
are almost unheard-of. For example, the most-challenged individual
book on the 2000 to 2009 list was The Chocolate War (at #3, #s 1 and 2
being series). According to WorldCat, it's held at 3569 of the
libraries that they have information for. #1 on the list was the Harry
Potter series; the first book in the series is listed at 4909
libraries. No library that has those two in its collection is likely
to be overly worried about the pressure generated by a D&D manual.

(5) Libraries tend not to collect things that their librarians don't
know enough about to be good curators of. If you want a library to
take a donation of gaming materials, you might need to (a) convince
them to start a proper collection (especially if you don't want the
stuff to get weeded in the next weeding session) and (b) be prepared
to educate them about the needs of a collection, how to find out
what's hot, etc. Use what I've said above as a starting point. Be
prepared to buy them a subscription to Internal Correspondence if you
have you. (They can order it through any of a number of library
suppliers, and it's useful for anywhere with a comics collection
anyway.)

I hope that helps.

In service,
M. Alan Thomas II
Mad (library and information) Scientist

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