Videogames on Library Shelves 82
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.'"
News ??? (Score:3, Interesting)
I suppose it's the same in most countries.
Backlash? (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
This is what libraries are about (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
The first thing I thought when I read TFA was... (Score:4, Interesting)
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 [the-underdogs.org] would be super-cool...
Re:Transient? (Score:1, Interesting)
I know it seems that way because you have your books, and your books last, but in the library system any popular book lasting is really an anomaly.
An ordinary paperback book will survive seven to ten readings from an average reader. A library bound copy of the same book will survive twenty to fifty, depending on chance. Usually somebody has an accident far sooner than that.
That means when the library buys a copy of Harry Potter, they know it will only get read by a certain number of people. The late fees help absorb the cost of buying a replacement, the taxpayer covers the rest, but it's not some eternal object that's going to be in the library for fifty years.
This has an interesting effect of library stock... if a book is continually popular, the library keeps replacing it, so they have a new copy of something like To Kill a Mockingbird. If the book isn't very popular, it may stick around for decades before wearing out, so they have copies of science textbooks from 1972. The books that are only moderately popular don't get replaced. The result is that the books at a library which are physically older tend to be amusingly bad or essentially useless.
After a book has lived out most of its useful life at the library without being lost or catastrophically destroyed by spilled milk, it's sold in the discard bin.
The pace of technological obsolescence isn't going to compare with the pace of wear and tear. A console's lifespan tends to be in the five year range... a CD which has been at a library for five years is a mess. Don't worry about it. If fifteen people get to play a fifty dollar game, that's pretty good usage.
Re:Transient? (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Transient? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.