Gearfuse Technology, Science, Culture & More
The British Library is the original deposit library: as with the Library of Congress in the United States, publishers are required to deposit copies of works distributed under their imprint. Now, according to a report in The Independent, the British Library is considering extending the 350-year-old idea from books to video games, creating a permanent record of the gaming industry in Britain.
With consoles, controllers, and software, along with action figures and other ancillary products, the gaming world presents challenges to the traditional archive. It’s an interesting case: museums have gotten very good at curating unwieldy technologies, while libraries and archives manage the text-based culture residuum; amalgams of hardware and code, videogames are a blend of the two.
A National Videogame Archive already exists in Britain, hosted by the National Media Museum at Nottingham Trent University. The Videogame Archive collects all kinds of gaming-related material�like the Starlight Fun Center, a Nintendo game center for children’s hospitals:
The National Videogame Archive also boasts a Games Lounge where visitors can play console games in their original formats; such would be a striking addition to the British Library’s sprawling, scholarly, and inviting home on Euston Road in London.
