Video Games in Postsecondary Academic Libraries

By Stephanie Cadieux and Alexandre Beaupré-Lavallée.

Published by Ubiquitous Learning: An International Journal

Format	Price
Article: Print	$US10.00
Article: Electronic	$US5.00

Video games are an interest for many people in today’s world and this interest is sometimes translated in pursuing academic studies where they might play an important role. In that optic, to support these students, it is important that academic libraries offer video games in their collection. This article presents the result of a survey conducted in the beginning of 2010 to portray a situation of the presence of video games in academic libraries in Canada and in the United States. We found 23 libraries that had video games and 14 librarians filled the survey. The results showed that video games are not only computer science related resources and can be also used in a variety of field. Furthermore, the creation of the collection can be influenced by the support of professors. Finally, the impacts of this kind of collection are mostly positive, all money issues put aside.

Keywords:	Video Games, Academic Libraries, Canada, United States, Collection Development

Ubiquitous Learning: An International Journal, Volume 3, Issue 4, pp.87-96. Article: Print (Spiral Bound). Article: Electronic (PDF File; 840.890KB).

Stephanie Cadieux

PhD Student, Library and Information Science Department, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Québec, Canada

Stephanie Cadieux is a PhD student in Library and Information Science at the Université de Montréal, in Québec (Canada). She is currently working on video games collections in academic libraries to support programs and research. She specifically concentrates on the various criterias and effects specific to this kind of support and wishes to compare the different experiences libraries have had building this type of collection. She had published two articles in French about video games in libraries.

Alexandre Beaupré-Lavallée

Université de Montréal, Québec, Canada

Alexandre Beaupre-Lavallee is a PhD student in Higher Education Studies at the School of Educational Administration at the Université de Montréal, in Québec (Canada). His current work is centered around higher education management practices. More specifically, his recent studies have focused on middle management activity, regional delocalization of training and organization and assessment of university services, such as student services and libraries. He has published two articles about educational and higher education management.