Video game authorship for Libraries

 Smith, Eric

Cho, H., Hubbles, C. and Moulaison-Sandy, H. (2022), "Individuals responsible for video games: an exploration of cataloging practice, user need and authorship theory", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 78 No. 6, pp. 1420-1436. http://search.proquest.com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/scholarly-journals/individuals-responsible-video-games-exploration/docview/2720241279/se-2?accountid=10361

    For my 5th assignment, I chose to look at research articles regarding video games in the library. I began to explore both how they are used in programs and how they are used in the collection. However, since this is a class about collection development, I wanted to focus on that topic first and foremost. Through my research on the subject I came across an interesting article about video games and collections that I wanted to share with the class. The topic of the article is about authorship theory in regards to video games. As an avid video game play, I can attest to the normal ways we categorize video games. Titles are the most common way to organize video games, but we also use the date of release as well as the genre. In most cases, the company that published the game is one of the most well know aspects of how to categorize a video game. Sonic is made by Sega, Street fighter is made by Capcom, Mario by Nintendo, etc. This is a very unique aspect of video games that has just been accepted for the past several decades of video games' existence. This article begins by questioning this practice and seeks to define what a creator would be for video games. This is particularly challenging due to the fact that most video games area created by a large collection of people. 

    In the context of libraries, the metadata involving the authorship of an item is very important for classification. Currently, most libraries use the established method of authorship, crediting companies. Even Worldcat uses this standard. While it make sense from the perspective of the company commissioning a work, it is still important to note the actual humans that worked on the piece of media. One argument has been to classify video games just as one would classify a movie. However, this issue with this stems from the lack of uniformity of jobs in the video game space. For a game like Devil May Cry, you might include in the metadata the "combat lead" because that person was important to the game. But if you play a puzzle game without any combat, whose name do you put in the "combat lead" category. This is why I find this article to be so interesting, to deals with this conundrum, how it's been tackled in the past and suggestions for the future. 

    To begin, the article defines authors and auteurs. Authors are those directly responsible for a work. With books, and even some specific indie games, this is very clear and obvious. Auteurship starts to come into play when more people work on a piece of media. An auteur is defined as a single person who's decisions shaped the work. With a lot of movies, the director is credited as being the auteur behind a film. This phenomenon is already present in the video games industry. Auteurs such as Shigero Miyamoto (Mario) and Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear) as examples of this. As useful as this method of authorship is, it also does still discount all of the other creatives that worked on the same games. 

    Ultimately, a user should be able to find, identify, select, obtain, and explore the video games they are looking for at the library. The authors of the article gave some suggestions to ensure that they are able to do this, regardless of the complexities of cataloging a video game. For one, further research should be developed to understand the commonalities between video production studios and what jobs commonly appear. Developing a controlled vocabulary for this would be helpful. Additionally, there should be a focus on looking at user generated data for video games and seeing how they do it. Wikipedia currently has a system that identifies programmers, artists, directors, composers, etc.  The website, Mobygames.com acts as a sort of IMDB for video games and has an abundance of standard parameters that they use.

I find this to be a very interesting conundrum. I'm a massive fan of the medium and I love to see further acceptance of it. From day 1 I've been an advocate for adding them to the collection and I'm happy to see more research and discussion surrounding it. 

Cartoons?! Digitizing and Cataloging Challenges...

Nguyen, Jennifer

 

Citation:

Dyer, M. A. (2014). Full Speed Ahead: The Challenges of Cataloging a Historic Editorial Cartoon Collection. Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, 33(2) 279-294.

Summary/Notes:

This article is about the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Libraries digitizing [the Charles Henry Sykes Cartoon Collection] of original editorial or political cartoons from the 1940s. Multiple library departments and staff involved in the project included the digital collections systems librarian, the digital specialist, the Digital Scanning Unit, and the metadata catalog librarian. There were cataloging issues due to missing or lack of information about cartoons donated. Image cataloging issues surrounding what the image is of versus what image is about. Scholars scrutinize the lack of cultural context provided with image digitized. And Dyer, wants us to note importance of text used in cartoon, as there aren’t many text used to begin with. Some solutions found were to obtain original newspaper and editorials the cartoons were printed in, document and note front pages of newspaper that contains cartoon to figure out the context of the cartoon. Only with context would we understand the humor of the cartoons drawn by Sykes’.

 

Reflection:

I was looking for ways and how librarians digitize images while researching for presentation 4. I tried to understand the process of digitization so that I can mention it in the digitization of a collection at the academic library I have been studying all semester. This article showed a whole other dimension of digitization that I hadn’t thought of before: cataloging and digitizing dated materials. It wasn’t as simple as I had thought of it. Apparently, it isn’t as easy as scanning and inputting the metadata information. Dyer does a great job explicating how cartoons work, the context and information to catalog, and additional research needed to fully catalog one cartoon image.

This makes me think about how Instagram functions. Images are often posted, but the source, creator, or information isn’t mentioned, just a partial caption underneath the image. Instagram will make it hard for information professionals to categorize or search for images there. But Instagram has hashtags. Some hashtags often used have nothing to do with the image, but more about what the person posting the image has done. Heck, even I have had trouble searching for a restaurant or place I randomly found an image of on Instagram. It takes me an extra 2 to 20 minutes following hashtags, tagged profiles, and locations to find an art exhibit.

            Overall, read this article if you’re thinking about cataloging, digitizing, and working with images during your librarianship. Dyer writes an easy and coherent article about VCU, Sykes, and the struggles of cataloging historical editorial cartoons.

Sacred Stacks: The Higher Purpose of Libraries and Librarianship by Nancy Kalikow Maxwell, MLS

St. Jerome in his Study, 1480 - By Domenico Ghirlandaio - 
Italian Artist - Ognissanti, Florence, Italy - SAINTS - 1480 - fresco

DiBello, Amy

Maxwell, N. (2006). Sacred stacks: The higher purpose of libraries and librarianship. 

Chicago: American Library Association.

Nancy Kalikow Maxwell, MLS, M.A., is a Jewish librarian who maximized

her time during her tenure at the Catholic University, Barry University,

by getting a degree in Catholic theology.Her book Sacred Stacks: 
The Higher Purpose of Libraries and Librarianship is a treatise about the 
spiritual and sacred qualities of libraries and librarianship.

Maxwell begins with an examination of how many Americans identify as

"spiritual, but not religious". The sacred and secular blend of libraries is something

most library patrons have identified and expressed to me over the years.

I also consider libraries to be sacred and feel blessed to have meaningful work

in our admirable profession.

There are the patron saints of librarianship to look up to St. Jerome,

St. Catherine of Alexandria, and most notably St. Lawrence,

who would not surrender the archives to Imperial Roman officials in 258 BCE,

which resulted in his being grilled alive. St. Lawrence is famous for telling

his torturers that he was done on one side and to turn him over.

Sacred Stacks equates librarians as confessors through the art of the reference

interview and social justice warriors fiercely protecting patrons' privacy.

Melvil Dewey, creator of his famous Dewey decimal classification system

referred to the education of librarians as “the suburbs of the holy field.”

Librarians do not have supernatural powers, such as parting the Red Sea,

but their knowledge and instincts with cataloging, classification and

saving patrons from drowning in fruitless Google searches, earns Maxwell’s

accolades of “Representing the universe of knowledge through organized systems

for thousands of years.”

Genrefying a High School Library

Deligencia, Nick

Minton, C. (2014, May 4). "Genrefying" a high school library: A detailed planning document [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://christyminton.wordpress.com/2014/05/04/genrefying-a-high-school-library-a-detailed-planning-document/

Summary:  This planning document details multiple facets of the process of genrefying one high school library.  The author provides the rationale and context for the project, basically to make the library more patron-centric and match how students actually search for books (by genre, not alphabetically by author). The library expects to see increased circulation, as “non-reader” patrons will more quickly find books in their interest areas and as “reader” patrons discover new authors writing in the student’s preferred style.

The actual process is outlined in five steps: (1) assigning a genre to every title, (2) applying new spine labels to every book, (3) color-coding, (4) shelving, and (5) signage.  Each subset of the process is described, including time-saving tips and strategies for “subject integrity.”  A video and several pictures provide visual content for visual learners.  The actual 14 categories used are listed in the article, along with examples of signage for each section and a poster/visual guide to the color codes.

The post concludes with a reference list.  

Comments:  This was absolutely the “best of the best” that I read for INFO 266.  There has been a fair amount of discussion among teacher librarians in my district about the value of genrefication in a school library.  Perhaps the most useful content of the post was related to how much time to expect such a project to take.  The poster’s collection is much smaller than the one in my library but since information about how much work could be accomplished in an hour, it is possible to adjust the timeline for the scale of your own library.  For example, the author processed “30-35 records every hour” in the library catalog, which provides a method for estimating how much time such a project would take (just the cataloging part, not the re-labeling).

This article is a must-read if a genrefication project is on your horizon.

Getting into Play: Cataloging Toys, Games and Puzzles

Washechek, Evan

BASTIANSEN, C. Y., & WHARTON, J. (2015). Getting Ready for Play!. Children & Libraries: The Journal Of The Association For Library Service To Children, 13(4), 13-29.

This article goes into great detail to show the positive effects which “free play” or allowing children unstructured time with games, puzzles or toys can have. There has been a serious reduction of the time that children have to discover things on their own. The article goes on to state all of the benefits of free play and talks specifics with regard to studies that have been done on children who have had notable increased “exploration skills, language skills, social skills, physical skills, and creativity activity”. These skills, the study goes on to note are even more important for those in poverty settings. This compounds with the sad reality of a lack of money for such toys, games and puzzles in poverty situations. The Public Library is shown to be an example for a possible solution. The Author also note just how much of the budget was spent toward the collection of the studied library. It was particularly relevant to myself as a public library employee and someone who feels strongly encouraged to help specifically those economically disadvantaged patrons.

Reflection

By expanding the collection and adding (or simply barcoding existing) toys, games and puzzles to the collection we would facilitate and foster these outcomes that are so valuable to the community. There is a certain amount of person hours which goes into a project such as this, which would be cataloging items, creating shelving/space, labeling the items as well as creating policies for their lending. This would be in addition to extra time that would be spent keeping these items sanitized. Germs would be a major factor in some libraries not lending out these kinds of items. All libraries have some responsibility to maintain the cleanliness of their items on a professional level, but items specifically for children (some of which are at high risk for disease) is even more important. 

KARR, J. (2015). A CATALOG OF THE ADDENDA TO THE RICASOLI COLLECTION HOUSED AT THE DWIGHT ANDERSON MUSIC LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE. Notes, 72(1), 23-75.

 

Summary

 

This paper discusses the Ricasoli collection, which is the largest collection of Tuscan sacred music and concertos in the world (Karr, 2015). The collection was purchased in 1987 and through the help of donations the library was able turn this into the collection it is today. The full catalogue is displayed in the paper and its helpful in seeing how the items are organized. There are many pieces that are anonymous that still remain a mystery to whom the owner is. 

 

Evaluation

 

This collection identifies all the pieces available for patrons at University of Louisville, pertaining to the Ricasoli collection. Its thorough and it gives the entirety of index. Looking this over, it would be helpful with Vocabulary design and exposure to the Library of Congress catalogue structure. Also, it is impressive how this collection came to be and the history on how it was made possible.

 

 

 

10,000 Zines and Counting: A library's quest to save the history of Fandom!

          

       Ward, Tyler

         Robertson, A. (2015, September 4). 10,000 zines and counting: a library’s quest to save the history of fandom | The Verge.  from http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/4/9257455/university-iowa-fanzine-fan-culture-preservation-project  Retrieved September 13, 2015,

      Summary: This blog posts details the Special Collection of the University of Iowa and their current project: saving fanzines. First question, what is a fanzine? A fanzine is a magazine usually for a specific fandom (Superman, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, you get the picture), but a fanzine is done usually by the community, and by amateurs. A modern online example would be TORN (TheOneRing.net) a fandom website that is 100% dedicated to keeping the Tolkien fandom updated on goings on in publishing, cinema, or other related Tolkien news. This tracks some of the earliest cases of "fandom" and how the communities developed

     Evaluation: Fanzines are important and show the different ways that users of information can collaborate on a single project. It's certainly interesting historically because we can see how fandoms have changed through the century and how communities developed and interacted with information. It's also interesting because it shows how the average user can be a creator!