The library as playground

This book examines the expanding impact of games and play on public libraries as manifested in their spaces, programs, design, and support for gamemaking communities. It reveals how the rise of play in public libraries is connected to a broader digital culture.

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Digital and analog games have long served modern public libraries as educational tools and as drawcards for new patrons – from dedicated gaming zones and children’s spaces to Minecraft gaming days, makerspaces, and virtual reality collections. Much has been written about the role of games and play in libraries’ programming and collections. But their wider role in transforming libraries as public institutions remains unexplored.

In this book, the authors draw on ethnographic research to provide a rich portrait of the intersection between games, play, and public libraries. They look at how games and play are increasingly spilling out of designated zones within libraries and beyond their walls, as part of a broader reconfiguration and “reimagining” of libraries in the digital era.

The library’s association with play has historically been understood through its classification as a “third place”: somewhere to relax, socialise and experiment outside of the utilitarian demands of work and home. But far from just offering patrons an opportunity for detached leisure, this book illustrates how libraries are connecting games and play to policies agendas around their municipality’s economic and cultural development. Attending to the institutionalisation of play, the book sheds new light both on the contradictions at the heart of play as a theoretical concept, and what libraries are in contemporary public life.