Library Blogs

We recently had the opportunity to host a social event for the A2 GeekTour, whose aim is to create "a chance for geeks to get together and explore a physical space that has some claim to geekdom." Highlights included the group experiencing moments of nostalgia as they checked out our Atari games and some of the older equipment, as well as an opportunity for them to rock out with a few Rock Band songs, complete with the string guitar controller.

On July 27th, we went live with faceted search and relevance ranking based on both OCR and MARC metadata in Full-Text Search in HathiTrust.

For those who are interested in working at the archive, now is the time to apply! Go to the Student Employment website and apply using the online system (Job ID 21972).

Here are our top games from last month. A class project involving Okami and a fan of the Jak & Daxter series have brought some new names to the list.

The Hand Eye Society will be running two game incubators in Toronto over the next several months, both of which focus on making it easier for women to get involved in creating video games. The group aims to get more underrepresented groups involved in game creation, and is working to dispel certain myths about game development that prevent people from trying it out, such as the assumption that developers have to be experienced in programming and mathematics. According to their article in the Torontoist, anyone who has "completed a project in a creative medium" is eligible to participate.

Several months ago, the library’s Usability Working Group and User Experience Department completed a review of the way large academic libraries present combined search results on their web site. That review was the first phase in a process to help us revise the way we presented our combined search results with an end goal of deciding whether or not to include results from our article discovery environment in the mix with everything else.

In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Legend of Zelda series, our colleague Joe Dresch has put together an informative display for the archive that celebrates its legacy. Each smaller section shares a piece of the Legend of Zelda story.

The Supreme Court decision is out, but the issue still lingers. Many people feel strongly either way regarding the issue of whether minors should be able to buy violent video games, and their voices have carried long after the decision came out.

Here are our top played games for the month of June. The usual suspects are in the lead.

Another game of old has arrived still in the wrapping, this time from 1983. Oink! is for the Atari and explores the Three Little Piggies fairy tale from the wolf's point of view. Fortunately, we got another copy of the game as well, so this one will probably stay in the wrapping and be shown off in our display case. Sometimes you just have to blow the house down.