Introduction

As new formats have become available over the last century, libraries have gradually widened the range of media they hold. In addition to books, magazines and newspapers, many public libraries now hold CDs, DVDs, cassettes and videos. It is therefore not surprising that one of the newest, but widely marketed, forms of entertainment media – computer and video games – is appearing on the shelves of some public libraries, with librarians such as Scalzo (2006) successfully operating video game loaning schemes.

However, it isn't just in lending that video games are used within the library sector. Neiburger (2007a) and others have run video gaming events, workshops and tournaments within their buildings. National libraries are involved; since 1992, every video game distributed in France must have two copies deposited in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the French national library. An increasing number of conferences, such as the ALA TechSource Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium (ALA, 2007), are dedicated to analysing the ways in which video games can be used by the library sector.

Computer and video games and simulations are increasingly central to training and teaching, especially in the business, health, education and military sectors. However, their application to education in libraries has so far been negligible. One potential use for such games in this sector has been in the teaching and reinforcement of information literacy skills. This chapter examines some aspects of computer games which make them potential tools for instruction in this subject domain, and concludes with details of three ongoing projects to develop video games for the acquisition of such skills.

Digital games

How popular are video games? In short – very. Games console sales are measured in tens of millions, for example the Nintendo Gameboy series (200 million) and the Sony Playstation 2 (120 million). Sales of titles such as The Sims (16 million), Nintendogs (15 million) and Tetris (33 million) are comparable in magnitude to those of popular book franchises, such as Harry Potter. In the first day of release, Halo 3 for the Xbox 360 earned $170 million; as the BBC (2007) pointed out, ‘The game sets the record for the most money earned in a day by an entertainment product, topping figures set by the film Spiderman 3.’