Volume 8, Issue 2, Spring 2007

Library Builds Collection of Video Games

Video game collections and services are gaining ground as valuable tools for education and research. The Undergraduate Library’s Gaming Collection supports a wide variety of interdisciplinary programs and scholarly research as well as the needs of students interested in gaming for class work and other activities.

Once seen as a passing form of amusement, video games are an important part of today’s culture, video games comprise an important focus of study to current and future scholars. Used for teaching and learning, they are viewed as a form of communication and as an effective vehicle for teaching complex systems theories. Social and behavioral scientists, political scientists, historians, literary specialists, and others seek to examine, play, and comprehend games and gaming as they strive to understand the twenty-first century.

The University Library is the only academic library known to capture the gaming output of its faculty and students, and it is one of only a very few engaged in collecting and archiving multimedia video games. By acquiring and preserving these games—from the console-based versions of the 1970s to the online games played today—the Library supports the rich gaming culture on campus.

For more information, please visit the Gaming Collection website. The Library welcomes contributions of functional video games or consoles as well as video-game related literature to enhance this groundbreaking collection.