answer 1734

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Lexis Academic, University News, Chronicle of Higher Education, past 2 years gets 13 hits for the search: video games. These don't come right out and mention libraries specifically, but it is clear that some voice pointed concern about video games interfering with student's work. For example, a letter in CHE Feb 24, 2006; "Disengaged' Students Are the Victims, Not the Culprits" says: "All too eagerly, colleges augment the [pop-culture] trend, handing out iPods and dignifying video games like Grand Theft Auto as worthy of study." In the September 2, 2005 issue, "Logging On, Tuning Out" quotes a few health officials and medical professionals on the question of students’ addiction to computer games. One article, "For Many Students, One Computer Is Not Enough", mentions the overloading of campus computer infrastructure.

University Wire gets 645 hits on the search: video games, but the search: video games and libraries is mainly "pro" video games – at least to the extent of collecting them as important social and cultural artifacts. Rather than plowing through 645 hits in hopes of finding something that implies disagreement with libraries’ collecting these games, I would try a number of other words. Video games and students cuts those 645 University Wire hits down to 186. A quick scan finds "Video games distract students from classes" Staff Editorial, Sidelines; SOURCE: Middle Tennessee State U. April 16, 2007.

To be sure, Library and Information Science & Technology Abstracts seems to include overwhelmingly "pro" articles and reviews. The 90 hits for the search: video games and collection* seem to have very little in the way of dissent. Even searching full text is tricky - TX video games AND TX problems gets only 8 hits. But the 27 hits for: TX video games AND TX student* may provide some "con" comments. Similarly, it may be useful to dig around in the 14 hits that ERIC gets for: TX video games AND TX librar*, to look for useful dissenting remarks buried among the general praise. Even if the dissent seems to be mostly in editorial remarks by older librarians, that in itself could be interesting for your paper.

Please note that the above searches are all in commercial databases. Virtually all academic libraries with an MLS program would get these, and make them available by remote password (student ID or barcode, for example) login to all current students and staff. Because of very strict license agreements, I only provided "snippets", mainly of titles and dates, to give you some idea if these are the kinds of things that will help your paper.

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