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Canadian Libraries Want $300,000 To Buy Games
AirborneGamer writes "The Toronto Public Library is asking for $300K to build up a collection of video games. They have not said if they will buy all types of games, or leave out the M-rated ones. As the City Councilor of Toronto said about the project, 'It may be the only time a young person comes in. It can act as a magnet to attract people. Once we get them in there, you can be darn sure that our librarians will be hard at work to introduce them to everything else the library can offer.' This is a good plan actually, and besides bringing kids into the library it will bring in parents and or guardians who otherwise may not visit the library on their own."
Libraries are becoming increasingly less relevant to the generations who grew up with the internet at their disposal. I personally only made the trips back to the library when they started offering DVD's/ Blurays.
Sure you can play Super Street Fighter IV Jimmy, as soon as you finish reading War and Peace :D
In Michigan our local library always carried computer games. Not always up to date but a good selection of Maxis games, tycoon types and even a few shooters. It seemed to work out quite well to me...
I wonder how DRM would work out with this sort of concept. If the game tries to keep itself from passing from user to user.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
All the popular titles use some kind of DRM. Did they keep this in mind? What will the publishers say? Are there for rent versions or will the librarians just have to go and unlock the games through dozens of different hotlines or however this works?
Or are they only talking about console games?
Ooh, Super Mario Brothers! Well, if you like this, you may also like:
The Encyclopaedia of Plumbing
The Mushroom Index: food, fun, or poison?
Carnivorous plants of South America
The Princess Diaries
which is totally what she said
Back in the early '90ies, I got loads of games from the public city library in my home town. It was especially great for adventure games, because they have a limited replay value anyway. And my library got all the CD-ROM versions, which meant you could get full speech on games like Day of the Tentacle, which was awesome of course.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
...I wouldn't consider half the media today to tell a congruent story.
Yeah, it's fairly rare that two stories nowadays are exactly the same shape and size. They always do things like change the words, and use different words. Something about "copyright" law.
P.S. You probably meant coherent.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
I'm an American living in Norway and I was shocked to find that my local library has a large collection of Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 games that can be checked out. They also have a sound-proof room where you can play Guitar Hero and Rock Band, as well as a large collection of contemporary music CDs with everything from Metallica to obscure Norwegian music. You can listen to them there or check them out. My wife checked one out and lost it, only finding it several months later and they didn't even make her pay a fee or a late charge. I've been here a while now but back when I had just moved here and was learning Norwegian, I used to go in and use the computers. They had children's games with everything from Oregon Trail-type clones to Harry Potter. It helped me learn vocabulary that wasn't in my books and get a working knowledge of the language, not just the grammatically-correct style that almost no one speaks. One day, a new bitchy librarian decided that I wasn't allowed to use the ones with the games on them because they're "for children", even though there are ten of those PCs and hardly any children in there. Norwegians can be like that, but I digress. I never counted how many PCs they actually have in there, but there are at least 30 for surfing the web, research, or looking through the library's online catalogues. Interestingly, the ones for games run Windows and all the others run Linux.
Words can change to refer to new things. It's called semantic shift. It's a normal, everyday phenomenon of human language. The vast. vast majority of people are completely unaware of the etymology and have no problem in understanding libraries as fundamentally places where information is stored.
And now that I think of it, can you source your etymology of liber? In Latin the word was used not only for writings written into wax tablets, papyrus and vellum, as well as for literary creations that hadn't even been written down. Martial refers to his body of epigrams, which he delivered at recitals (and only then were written down and preserved by the audience) as libri. Paper produced from wood pulp was unknown to the Romans.
I lived in the Netherlands about ten years ago and my local library had an extensive collection of music and movies (VHS and DVD). In addition they had quite a lot of older PC-games. The best part was their kick ass English book section with a lot of sci-fi and fantasy.
But I hate the idea of tax money going to frivolous things like this. Personally, I can't stand that my library lends DVDs and music too. Public libraries, in my opinion, should solely be about self-improvement and betterment. Books, movies, and music should be classics, self-help, technical, etc. It doesn't make a lot of sense to have the library just be a surrogate Blockbuster/Netflix/Gamefly.
What do you mean, games and movies don't tell stories? Storytelling is the main driving force behind games nowadays, even on the consoles and even the mainstream ones, and they're often quite complex too.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Why can't they just download them for free like everyone else?
The kids that want to go to the library already do. Their parents usually are readers also and tought them by example.
The idea is to give those kids who don't go another reason to go. If they don't go because they're not that interested in books, then they might go because of games. Once there, they might discover that books (or one of the other things on offer) hold something of interesting for them as well.
Also, I'm not sure why a kid would want to go to the library to play video games. Most kids have what they need to play at home.
Seems like wasted money to me.
The same reason people go for books -- not everyone can afford to buy every game they would like to experience. Most kids from a certain economic background might "have what they need", but there are significant sections of society that don't. Libraries provide public access to cultural materials -- this is simply recognizing that games are of cultural significance and should therefore be included in what's on offer.
Thought thinks itself.
You notice we never see stories when libraries want to spend money on graphic novels, or money on subscriptions to teen magazines, or money on the hundreds of other items that are only of interest to a few people. You're not going to believe this, but libraries in the Chicago system have (gasp!) chessboards! Call out the Tea Parties!
But we're supposed to all go into paroxysms of anti-government outrage when a library system wants to buy...games.
You know how many soldiers $300,000 would train and outfit? None! You get ONE KID who comes from a family too poor to buy games and he learns to love games and grows up to start a company that makes games and you've made many times that much money in taxes.
God damn I am tired of people who've enjoyed the fruits of public spending and are now complaining about anybody else doing so.
You are welcome on my lawn.
As a meeting place, they're also a lot safer than the local bar.
My mother's assistant director at a suburban public library. They just developed a "youth center," filled with Wii & Playstation consoles to attract youth to the library and give them a place to hang out.
What they soon discovered was that it got more attention than they expected. Kids would just loiter there all day on the weekend, or all evening on weekdays. Many parents also dropped their kids off at the library in the morning and left them there all day. The library isn't built to be a babysitting service, but lots of parents didn't see it that way. They started having problems with graffiti, fights, turf wars, and other general mischief, and complaints from the general patrons have been on the rise.
Free video games in public places may attract kids, but they often attract the wrong kind of kids. The jury's out on whether or not the attraction actually increases awareness and utilization of the public library.
I'm sure there's a solution for this, as you can rent games from lots of places other than the library, right?
At least in the United States, 17 USC 109 reserves the right to rent or lend copies of computer programs exclusively to the copyright owner with three exceptions: 1. nonprofit libraries, 2. software embedded into a device that can't be copied out of the device, and 3. console games. So nonprofit libraries are the only place that one can try PC games without a demo before buying them. What does Canada's copyright statute say about this?
God damn I am tired of people who've enjoyed the fruits of public spending and are now complaining about anybody else doing so.
Interestingly, you're the only one I've seen (meta-)complaining about this.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Short sighted would be more correct. I do understand that it can be confusing with Neo-Cons destroying everything conservative.
DVD lending has given me and my kids looks into other cultures. An example of that would be Anime.
An added bonus is that going to the library is a normal experience for my children.
"Public libraries, in my opinion, should solely be about self-improvement and betterment. "
So no sci-fi? romance?
who do you think you are where you get to tell people they need for self-improvement and betterment. MY daughter is interested in Learning Japanese solely because we where able to get Japanese movies from the library.
"Books, movies, and music should be classics, self-help, technical, etc."
Who are you to determine what a classic is?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Good thing that public libraries provide computers in most, if not all, parts of the U.S. Otherwise, I might say that there's a whole bunch of disenfranchised people in inner cities who can't afford internet access.
Oh, wait. Those internet-enabled computer in the libraries that anyone can use? They're very much a suburban thing in the quantity needed to serve the community.
I assume you got your degrees from private universities?
Yeah but to be fair, if you remove CSS then webpages look like crap.
What internet money, guy?
I'm not sure if you're an idiot or a troll ... I simply do not believe you can have earned two degrees, in any subject, without entering a library. Or is there some catch, your university library is not "government funded"? And since when is Wikipedia a citeable source for any academic work?
On reflection, I'm leaning more to "troll".
And now that we have the internet, such that I or anybody else can download literally millions of free books (or just read wikipedia), the government-funded libraries are even less necessary.
You do realize that not all books are alike, yes? Even if there are three million free books available online, that's only a sixth of the books estimated to exist worldwide. And an in-depth book is better than Wikipedia for anything but the most cursory look at a topic. There's a reason Wikipedia requires sources, and there's a reason that most of those sources are books--many of which, I might add, you can't find on Gutenberg Project or Amazon. Libraries may indeed outlive their usefulness, but it hasn't happened yet.
"Government-funded" is a separate issue.
Your brain is not a computer.
Okay, where can I go to find free books, movies and music in physical formats, online? I don't want to download to a screen reader. I want an actual physical book. One I can take out on my lawn and shake at you kids, yelling, "Get off my lawn or I'll throw this book at you!"
Now, I have a further question. Name one single media technology that has killed off any previous media technologies. Okay, okay, the telegraph finally died a few years ago after a hundred and fifty plus year run. But I still read books, see plays, listen to radio, watch TV, and go to movies. All of which have been pronounced 'dead' by various prognosticators at one time or another. All of whom have been wrong. I don't think the Internet is going to kill anything off. And there is a sizable group of people for whom their local public library IS their Internet access point: low income and homeless people.
The purpose of libraries is to pay for an externality: an educated and cultured citizenry, one of the cornerstones of any democracy. Because every citizen gains value from having an educated and cultured populace, but baring government intervention only the individual pays for it, the price point of culture and information does not reflect its true value to society, and we need things like libraries and public schools.
Now, some people do not see the cultural or educational value in video games, but I ask you this: how will people who know nothing of video games vote correctly on issues regarding video games? Will they just listen to kooks who tell them video games are evil? If they have to buy or rent games, they may not bother to check them out for themselves. But if anyone can check out a game from their local library. maybe a few people will actually look for themselves when someone says so and so game is evil, immoral, and bad for kids. This is a good thing for society, and worth our tax dollars.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I'm not your guy, buddy.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You have no idea what its like to be poor, do you? Your anecdotal bullshit about 'inner-city' people with cellphones is ludicrous. Rich and middle class people do live in and visit inner cities. Did you count all the people without them? No. Of course not.
Let me ask you a question. Did you go to public school? If so, you received a public benefit that exists for the same reason libraries do. A democracy can't function without an educated populace. Would you deny that education to older people who may have missed out on a good public education for whatever reason? If so, you are cutting off your nose to spite your face. You benefit from being a part of a more educated populace. Therefore, your taxes should go to help pay for that benefit.
Over half of all low income families use the public library as their primary Internet connection. You try making ends meet with a family living on $30,000 a year, and that with two breadwinners both of whom probably work multiple jobs. See if you can afford that $100 computer plus $7 a month when you are already forced to choose between buying heat, medicine, or food this month. They don't have access. It is true. You can lie to yourself about poverty all you like, if that helps you sleep soundly at night, but it doesn't change the facts. Just keep telling yourself, "The world is fair. Good people are rewarded. Bad people are punished. Everyone gets a fair shot. The only reason people fail is through their own lack of effort." but don't be surprised when people of conscience do not respect you.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"Let's just hope that EA don't set the sue-monkeys on them."
Why would they? This library in St. Louis, Missouri offers Wii, Xbox360 and Playstation 3 games
Is this rare? Do other US libraries not offer the latest video games for consoles?
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
I'm not your buddy, friend.
All the Nordic countries have libraries like this, and only Norway has significant amounts of oil. As I posted above, in Finland, where the only natural resource is wood (and Brazil is beating us out on wood exports these days) and there isn't much to the economy besides Nokia, the libraries are just as good. It's simply a different use of citizen's taxes than in other countries.
I feel sorry for you, going your whole life, supposedly without using publicly-funded libraries. (Someone else already made the point about public universities, so I won't retread that.) Going your entire life...I'm guessing at least thirty years...without knowing the exquisite joys of the public library...to be able to obtain knowledge and entertainment without spending a ton of money each time you do so...to be able to read materials that are no longer in print (and not available on the Internet)...to know the pleasure that comes from simply browsing shelves upon shelves (and maybe floors upon floors) of well-kept, useful, well-organized books...I can't imagine how that's a good thing.
And really (full disclosure: I'm a graduate student in Library and Information Science) I would think that an engineer would be kinder, more knowledgeable, and more understanding about libraries (and, by extension, librarians) in general because your profession depends on information that is only available through library resources. And I don't just mean books - I mean expensive subscription-only electronic resources - journals, databases, technical data.... This sort of thing isn't available to just anyone - it's too damned expensive. But that's a big part of what libraries do. Large corporations like PPG have their OWN libraries to serve their employees. Check out the Special Libraries Association for more information....
Spekkio Master of War
Your model airplane hobby is not important to your function as a citizen of the US. Education is. Libraries provide a valuable function to society. Being a model airplane pilot does enhance your ability to contribute to society. It is not a positive externality like being educated is. Societies around the world have agreed on the value of public libraries for hundreds of years. You just don't feel like paying your fair share for the benefits you receive. Fortunately, we live in a democracy, and we can vote on things like libraries. And then you have to pay your fair share whether you want to or not. You don't get to be the freeloader you'd like to be, so very sorry.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton