"I’VE EXPERIMENTS TO RUN, THERE IS RESEARCH TO BE DONE”: VIDEO GAME ART WITHIN ACADEMIC ART LIBRARY COLLECTIONS

This master’s paper examines how research-focused academic art libraries conceptualize video games as an art form. Academic art libraries are shaping the future of video game art by virtue of what they deem relevant for inclusion in their collections. Using content analysis, this paper examines the catalog and item records of nine purposefully selected, research-focused, academic art libraries. The findings show that academic art libraries both reinforce and resist the larger art world’s conceptualization of video games as art. This paper argues that some reinforcement of this conceptualization is necessary to provide research support to art scholars and artists, but that the art world’s conceptualization of video games is limiting and damaging to video game art and artists. By presenting areas where art libraries are already forming their own counter-conceptualization, this paper calls for art libraries to be more proactive in shaping an inclusive, representative definition of video game art.