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Videogames on Library Shelves
illumina+us writes "According to an article at Gaming Target libraries across the nation are shelving video games and you will soon see them at your local branch. To quote the article: 'Public libraries all over the country have been adding video games to their collections. Its very possible that a library in your hometown has games on its shelf right now.'"
It's almost 10 years since belgian "mediatheque" (= libraries for music & video) expanded to also features CD ... and at least 7 years for games.
I suppose it's the same in most countries.
#include "coucou.h"
I guess that the "book library" is such a venerable and beloved institution that Borders, etc won't file frivolous lawsuits against libraries for their competition. It would make them look very very bad. However, the "videogame library" is a newer and odder concept, and might be fair game.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Libraries already carry videos, DVDs and CDs, so this seems to be a logical next step for them. Libraries even used to provide record albums for checking out starting back in the '70's, so they have a long history behind this.
Making all these things available for free is what libraries are about - a resource for those who can't afford it. Not everyone can buy every $30-$50 game that they want. If the libraries are providing educational games, as well as the fun time-wasters, then its a good public service.
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
What a total waste of taxpayer dollars! But then again, I suppose that's what people thought when they started adding videos and popular fiction books to library shelves. Indeed, a game such as Final Fantasy VII has just as much plot and "literary value" as your average romance novel or Adam Sandler film. Video games are products of our culture, and as such would tell us and future generations a lot about ourselves and our times, so there's no reason why they shouldn't be archived as books are in libraries. And it would bring the teenagers in, and maybe while they're at the library they might actually pick up a good book or something...
Perhaps the wide-spread adoption among libraries of a specific video game format (such as the PS2) would also spur on a whole new set of edutainment titles, multimedia encyclopedias and technical manuals and such that would be available for libraries to check out to their patrons. If Sony maintains backwards compatibility with the PS2 format for at least the next few generations, these would still remain useful for some time, unlike the multimedia CD-ROMs of the early '90s that require Windows 3.1 or an old version of the Mac OS and Quicktime to run. With the graphics capabilities of the PS2, you could make, for instance, car and appliance repair manuals, that allow you to rotate the engine on the screen and take things apart and put them back together again before working on the actual equipment. Or you could put the entire Project Gutenberg library on a PS2 DVD, which could print to a USB printer or save to a USB keyfob. This would actually be a boon to poorer families, who might be able to afford a $149 PS2 but not a computer with a DVD drive that could handle the graphics required for similar full-screen video and 3D object manipulation.
That said, a PS2-updated version of A Brief History of Time CD-ROM would be super-cool...
Part of a library's purpose is to act as an archive, not just loan out material (it's arguable that loaning out material is a side benefit of having an archive of books, not the other way around). The only other place I know of archiving games in The Underdogs, and they're (at best) questionably legal.
What you fail to realize is that a collection of books is just as transient. Titles don't go into a library collection and stay there forever.
the book your tax dollars financed ten years ago served it's purpose and is probably gone now. This is especially true with popular fiction titles. More sholarly books tend to stick around, but generally, books that were popular 10 years ago don't get read now. so they go away to make room for what the public wants NOW. The same will be true with the console games.