University of Dubuque Annouces Video Game Collection







The library at the University of Dubuque launched a video game collection last week. The collection is currently around 40 - 50 titles from PS2, PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii systems and is based off a core titles list I developed last spring. The collection is developed to provide supporting material for the Computer Graphics department and recreational entertainment. The list of titles is based on the criteria I applied last year.

The games are indexed in the libraries catalog. Here's a link to some of the catalog records.

The collection has been on the shelves for just a week and without any promotion, already over 30% of the titles are checked out. Xbox 360 and Wii titles have seen the most circulation.

I'm excited about adding video games to the collection and recognizing games as a valuable media. It will be interesting to see the collection develop and how students and faculty respond to it.






4 comments:

Spekkio said...

I looked at your collection policy. I don't see anything about preservation or conservation. Will that be coming along later? Do you have any plans to expand to older works? What about hardware?

Paul said...

Thank you for the questions. As of now, the collection is focused on the campus community not on historic preservation. There are other, larger libraries and institutions doing that.

If there are requests from the faculty for older works that are tied to curriculum, then yes that is a need the library would want to support.

As for hardware, the library is treating the video game collection like the other media in the collection. The library does not check out DVD players and at this time does not plan to check out systems. If and when games are requested for course reserves, then the library would make sure the students would be able to play and experience the game.

Thanks again for the comments

Anonymous said...

"The games are indexed in the libraries catalog. Here's a link to some of the catalog records."

How did you catalog the games? was the information pulled from some already established database or did you have to enter it yourself?

Paul said...

anonymous,

Most of the games, and most games for current systems, have OCLC records for them. We added a few unique items in the notes field, but OCLC had the record for us.