So in the last week I’ve been working practically full time, came down with the flu thats going around, had to work on practically 20 pages in 6 days of a Batman comic plus study for and do an exam for my library course.
So yeah, blogging kind of fell by the wayside. BUT, Uni is over for a few weeks now and the flatting is taking a bit of a break so I should have more time to get back into the blogging.
Today though I thought I’d write about why we have stuff at the library. Yep. Stuff. Why?
Do we have cds to borrow because they’re important culturally? Because they’re a valid creative art form? Because people want them? Why? Whats the reason behind it? And more to the point why don’t any of these reasons allow for games to show up in libraries collections.
Games are a relevant art form now – creatively we’re getting to the point where you can see games that make an artistic statement or are designed to make you ‘feel’ something. Its a valid art form. The video game industry is quite huge and while I’m not sure of the exact numbers I’m sure its right up there with music and books. They would definitely be in demand I’m sure. And price wise, if you’re buying from the right place you can get hold of games quite cheaply – just a little more than a brand new harcover novel. And when you compare that against the cost of audiobooks it’s ridiculous.
So why don’t libraries have video games to borrow? I think all the reasons I listed above are valid to consider whether a particular type of media should be contained at the library and I see no reason to exclude games from this. I know many libraries in the US have video game collections but from what I’ve seen very few Australian libraries have game collections. Why is this?
There might possibly be legal reasons I’m not aware of – I don’t know.
At Cockburn Library we have PC games – mostly kids educational software, but we do have titles like Plants vs Zombies and some of the more popular casual games. We’re practically there, why not just go with it and get Wii and PS3 games?
If anyone has any knowledge on this please let me know.
