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UCSD has acquired a number of Mac, PC & Playstation games - all are kept behind the art reference desk and must be checked out to be used.  

The Mac games can no longer be used in the library because they all run on a legacy operating system that none of the installed Macs have.

We've never owned a Playstation & see no reason to buy one. The student who requested specific Playstation titles for research (a PhD student) had his own player. We've never had a request for a player from anyone else.

All the PCs in the building have CD drives so presumably the games could be used there. But since we require that the games get checked out, it doesn't really matter to us where they are played.

So there are some questions you need to answer for your institution:

1. How do you handle other media? Do you provide self-serve stations for that? The only ones we ever had were an old Mac (now gone) and a video disk player for those old 12" video disks (no longer available for checkout). Do you have audio CDs? How are they handled?

2. If you do start by purchasing hardware, then do you have the obligation to keep a legacy version of the operating system to keep the titles running? We were given a large gift of games, some of which are DOS games on floppies. They are sitting in a box in my office because I don't know of anyone who can use them anymore, yet they are important to the history of computer gaming.

3. The last thing to consider is what is the purpose of your buying the games and what you would do if/when they become damaged or stolen. If you are buying them for preservation, you'd want to keep them in-house & not even let users load them themselves. If it's for recreation or class use, they really do need to circulate.

csj





On Jul 21, 2007, at 10:07 AM, Anandasivam Geraldene Kasthuri wrote:

Hi,

I would like to know the different views for having PC games in the library.  If any of your libraries have games, how do various libraries offer the use of these to the students?  Are individual games loaned out or are they for library use only. We have acquired 10 PC games; such as “War Craft”, “Prince of Persia”, “Far Cry” etc. and we are not certain if we should have a gaming station in the library on dedicated PCs or loan the games out to the users.

Would appreciate your views and suggestions.

Thanks.

Kasthuri Anandasivam
Art, Design & Media Library
Nanyang Technological University
ART 01-03
81, Nanyang Drive
Singapore  637458

 
 
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