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Re: Pokémon Release Day
Nov. 20th, 2021 08:21 amQ: BUT UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES ARE ELITIST CAPITALIST INSTITUTIONS THAT
A: I teach a class called “Video Games and Japan,” and the first three class meetings are essentially a long, annotated tutorial on how to use emulators and pirate video games. This is unnecessarily difficult because my access to technology is limited by my finances, as is the access of many of my students.
If we’re going to teach university classes about video games – which we absolutely should! – it would be extremely useful to have institutional support. What I would love to see is an intelligently curated digital archive of games that is fully accessible and downloadable through the library website. Not only would an accessible library archive facilitate scholarship, it would also elevate the status of games as a medium.
I’m not saying that independently run archives should stop existing. Rather, I think a large university can afford to make this happen in a way that pays librarians, library science students, and student workers for their time and expertise while also legitimizing the enterprise.
While there are currently a few video game libraries attached to universities in the United States, they are considered to be “special collections” of physical materials and thus not accessible to anyone except librarians, which defeats the purpose. I want games to be as accessible as books and films.
Q: BUT YOU SEE THERE ARE MANY PROBLEMS, STARTING WITH
A: Yes yes, you are very clever and intelligent. I just think it would be neat.
A: I teach a class called “Video Games and Japan,” and the first three class meetings are essentially a long, annotated tutorial on how to use emulators and pirate video games. This is unnecessarily difficult because my access to technology is limited by my finances, as is the access of many of my students.
If we’re going to teach university classes about video games – which we absolutely should! – it would be extremely useful to have institutional support. What I would love to see is an intelligently curated digital archive of games that is fully accessible and downloadable through the library website. Not only would an accessible library archive facilitate scholarship, it would also elevate the status of games as a medium.
I’m not saying that independently run archives should stop existing. Rather, I think a large university can afford to make this happen in a way that pays librarians, library science students, and student workers for their time and expertise while also legitimizing the enterprise.
While there are currently a few video game libraries attached to universities in the United States, they are considered to be “special collections” of physical materials and thus not accessible to anyone except librarians, which defeats the purpose. I want games to be as accessible as books and films.
Q: BUT YOU SEE THERE ARE MANY PROBLEMS, STARTING WITH
A: Yes yes, you are very clever and intelligent. I just think it would be neat.
