libraries

This can quickly get into legal assistance, which would require at least a legal aide society or Law school volunteer assistance, if there is an issue that is affecting you personally. But you can also do quite a bit of research on your own, if you want to read laws or news articles about this. For example, there are state sites such as Maryland Law Library, which links to Maryland laws. You can either browse categories or search, which gets 180 hits for: privacy, and 5 hits for: privacy and library. You can find some local ordinances in city of county sites, but that seems more hit-or-miss. Federal laws can be searched at uscode.house.gov, which gets 3 hits for: "library records" and 180 for: library and records. Other words to try would be: privacy, confidentiality, and maybe even "identity theft", which gets 21 hits. But also, you would probably want to search for POLICIES in your library's website, possibly under administration or staff - IF those pages are publically available. University libraries, especially public ones, may be more likely to have policy documents open to public view - for example, the University of Maryland Libraries' Administrative Memos, which in turn link to University Policy But if the particular library you are dealing with does not seem to have an easily findable policy (not even via its "site search"), you can either go to the next higher level (the county or state page) to see if they have policies linked. If these suggestions don't work out, a reference librarian at your specific library should not object at all about helping you locate such a policy - which could well be different at that library than it is here at a big public university.

As another example, in New Mexico, the Santa Fe Code, has a search function. Administrative Section 2.17 covers the library:

"2-17.3 Librarian and Other Personnel. A qualified head librarian, other librarians, or other personnel necessary for the operation and maintenance of the library shall be regularly employed by the city. (Ord. #1962-13, §8; Code 1973, §15-3; Ord. #1979-34, §15.1-3; Ord. §1980-41, §4; SFCC 1981, §8-1-4) 2-17.4 Duties of Librarian. The duties of the librarian shall be such as are usually imposed on persons in like employment. The head librarian shall be considered the staff liaison to the library board, serve as the board's secretary, and shall have sole charge of the administration of the library under the direction and review of the department head and city manager. The librarian shall be responsible for the direction of the staff, the efficiency of the library service to the public, the operation of the library and the financial condition set forth in the annual budget. The librarian shall attend all library board meetings. (Ord. #1962-13, §9; Code 1973, §15-4; Ord. #1979-34, §15.1-4; Ord. #1980-41, §5; SFCC 1981, §8-1-5)"

New Mexico has a Librarian's Toolkit that includes Library Laws of New Mexico This very long page has many links to plow through, so you can use CTRL-F to find words such as privacy. One of the privacy hits is: 18-9-4 "Release of patron records prohibited."

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.

My earlier answer was focused more towards academic libraries, which could be expected to be less enthusiastic about collecting video games, especially because of frequent shortage of funds for what are perceived as more "core" academic subjects.

For more focus on public libraries, try databases such as Masterfile (Ebscohost). Masterfile Premier gets 56 hits for the search (in full text): video games and public libraries and oppos*, and 42 hits for TX(video games AND public libraries AND censor*), for example.

You might also approach this from a psychological research perspective - TX (video games AND attention deficit) gets 8 hits in PsycInfo and 13 hits in PsycArticles, for example. Both of these commercial databases would be available at most large university libraries, and at some larger public libraries.