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 broader reconfiguration of libraries spatially, temporally, and institutionally 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, socialize and experiment outside of the utilitarian demands of work and home. But far from offering patrons an opportunity for detached leisure, this book illustrates how libraries are connecting games and play to broader 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.
About the Author: Dale Leorke is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies, based at Tampere University in Finland. His research focuses on the intersection of games, play and public space. His research interests include mobile and location-based games, participatory planning and civic engagement, and the transformation of public libraries in the digital era. His books include Location-based Gaming: Play in Public Space (2018), Public Libraries in the Smart City (2018) and the edited collection Games and Play in the Creative, Smart and Ecological City (2020). Danielle Wyatt is a cultural researcher at the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne. She writes and researches about the public life of culture, particularly the intersection between cultural spaces, networked technologies, arts practice and cultural policy. Recent work has been published in the book, Public Libraries in the Smart City (co-authored with Dale Leorke), in the anthology, Communicative Cities and Urban Space edited by Scott McQuire and Sun Wei, and in the International Journal of Cultural Policy. Other research has been published in the journals New Media and Society, City, Culture and Society, and Field: A Journal of Socially-Engaged Art Criticism.