[game_preservation] The Library of Congress project, upcoming plans

[Henry Lowood]

All,

Well, as you know, the Library of Congress has funded the project, 
called "Preserving Virtual Worlds," to be undertaken by Stanford, U. 
Maryland, U. Illinois, and Rochester Inst. of Technology.   It will 
start on Jan. 1, 2008 and end at the end of 2009, a two-year 
project.  There are three foci: e-literature (historically, closely 
related to text games), digital games, and virtual worlds.  But 
rather than get into all of that in e-mail, I'm attaching a 
description of the project; there are no restrictions on distributing 
this. So please have a look and let's discuss it.

A few points relating to the project and some launch plans:

1. There are many project partners and there is room for more.  I'm 
happy to speak with anyone who feels they can contribute 
substantially to the project goals.  We have several options in terms 
of how we would recognize such efforts.

2. There will be some launch events just before and during GDC next 
year.   It's possible you heard it here first, but right now it looks 
like we will be hosting State of Play VI the weekend before GDC on 
the Stanford campus.   Our plan is that issues relating to the 
project will be in the program, e.g., legal issues around 
preservation of virtual world content.  Also, I will propose through 
GDC that we have a couple of roundtables and (hopefully, this will be 
approved) a Digital Game Canon session to add another ten games to 
the list.  Last, and this is still in flux a bit, we might try to 
offer a workshop on game preservation that speaks more to 
industry-related education, outreach, and interests.  Let me know if 
you have ideas on that or would like to help put a proposal together.

Please, feel free to discuss the project; I'm happy to answer 
questions.  It's out in the open now, no turning back, we're really 
going to do it!

Henry

Henry Lowood, Ph.D.
Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections
Curator for Germanic Collections; Film & Media Collections
HRG, Green Library, 557 Escondido Mall
Stanford University Libraries
Stanford CA 94305-6004
650-723-4602; lowood at stanford.edu; http://www.stanford.edu/~lowood 
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