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Games and Ludic Media

Games in the BPCL


Games are strongly tied to popular culture, as they have been a part of nearly every society in history. Due to their ubiquitous nature, games have the ability to act as cultural artifacts, revealing much about the values, interests, and anxieties of a culture through the objectives and themes of the games it played. For instance, the boom in the production and popularity of games in American culture during the 20th and 21st centuries speaks to, among other things, the increase in the amount of leisure time that many Americans enjoy.  What Americans do with this time says much about our cultural values and ideals. The predominance and popularity of capitalism games such as Monopoly show that even at play, money was and is very much on the minds of many Americans.

Explore the pages to the right to find out more about what kinds of games and resources about games that we have in the BPCL.

How to Use the BPCL & What to Bring With You

  • BPCL's hours are more limited than the main floor, but we're open late on Monday and Tuesday.
  • We're an archive/repository, so most of our materials cannot be checked out.
  • Most of our collection is not open for browsing. You need to request materials at our reference desk with your university ID or a photo ID. 
  • The reference collection is open for browsing! It's one of the best places to get started with popular culture research.
  • We have a copier and a scanner available for copying/scanning materials that cannot be checked out.  There is a fee for copying, but scanning is free.