![]() ![]() Daria Labinsky, records and information specialist for the U.S.Marie Force, director of archives for the Delta Flight Museum and author of “Reference Services and Access: Making Collections Relevant to Business Needs,” in Managing Business Archives (SAA, 2022).Elaine DeNiro, archivist for the Roswell Historical Society.Cheryl Oestreicher, author of Reference and Access for Archives and Manuscripts (Archival Fundamentals Series III, vol 4) and head of Special Collections and Archives at Boise State University.Registration required for this FREE event. Panelists will explore the challenges and successes of providing reference and access services in recent years, the creative ways they’ve connected with new and existing users, and emerging opportunities and trends in this central area of archival practice. Tune in on May 23 for a lively discussion followed by a time of Q&A. In this virtual event, Cheryl is joined by four panelists working in a variety of repository types to build on the ideas in her book. ![]() Alongside this, archivists will need to revise how we think about what we collect, who our audiences are, how we serve and engage patrons, and what efforts will make archives more accessible. So I suppose the fact that I'd have appreciated further chapters on other games is less of a criticism, and more of a glowing review for a first time author.In Reference and Access for Archives and Manuscripts, author Cheryl Oestreicher notes that as more people encounter archives for scholarly and avocational research, as part of creative pursuits, or to exercise their rights as citizens to access records, the possibilities for how collections are used will continually evolve. Those points aside, I found it to be an edifying read, and felt it taught me as much about politics, as it did about the games themselves. It's also very niche, but that shouldn't really stop anyone from trying it, if you've read this far. You should also be aware of the fact that the book carries a number of weighty spoilers for each of the games it examines. So while there aren't that many pages, depending on either your familiarity with the subject, or your skills as a reader, this book can take a little work to grok. While it would make a lot of sense to describe this book as one about video games, it's probably better thought of as an introduction to neoliberal ideology for people who like video games. Then finally, using a collection of 4 well known 'open world' games (GTA5, No More Heroes, Persona 5 and Saints Row 4), demonstrates how these titles, through their design and narrative structures, echo and illustrate these ideological responses to neoliberalism. The book then goes on to describe some of the more commonly identified responses to this prevailing political ideology. This book begins with a brief description of neoliberal capitalism as it's currently understood. Since reading it, its themes have often come to mind as I have been reading the news and while I have been playing videogames set in similar depictions of the real-world as in the book I have noticed examples of how the narratives and gameplay relate to the themes of the book - it has certainly been thought-provoking.Ī short but engaging book on the subject of overt and subconscious responses to neoliberalism in modern video games. I personally felt like I got a lot out of this book. However, politically aware videogame fans are likely to find this book interesting and it does make a good introduction to its topic. Like those books, this one is short and packed full of ideas, but isn't oriented as much towards the absolute lay-person and while it does touch on game mechanics, it is not an exploration of game design as such. ![]() ![]() My closest comparison for this is the books in the Playful Thinking series by MIT Press. Many videogame fans will already be familiar with the games selected, making the analysis easier to relate to. before I read this book, I had never previously taken the time to read anything dedicated to the subject before, so as a videogame fan I found it quite useful for expanding my knowledge of the subject. I'll be honest and say that while I understood the concept of neo-liberalism through inference from reading the news, etc. The four games each represent a different type of response to neo-liberalism - hedonism for Saints Row IV, cynicism for Grand Theft Auto V and so on. Obviously, the four mainstream videogames selected for analysis are not dedicated to exploring neo-liberalism as a theme - the idea is that neo-liberalism is such a pervasive background element of our society that the narratives of these games are implicitly responses to neo-liberalism. Ideology and the Virtual City is a short but quite dense book exploring how neo-liberalism (the market-oriented value system that dominates our modern society) is represented in four different videogames set in city environments. ![]()
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