GAMECIP spin off project this summer: hardware platforms

This project is a spin-off from the ongoing GAMECIP (Game Metadata and Citation Project) funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS).  We are planning to spin off and expand our work on controlled platform vocabularies with additional research and photography, then publish a definitive terminology and ontology for computer game platforms in a manner that will be useful for libraries, museums, collectors and scholars. We are beginning with the most used set as an initial set.

The two core components of the project are (1) review and photography of hardware in Stanford’s Stephen M. Cabrinety Collection in the History of Microcomputing, in order to complete our assessment and provide visual aids in the published terminology guide; and (2) collation, editing and design of platform and media description sheets that will be made available online and, eventually, be available for publication in a print format.  

Mitch’s work will also be of great benefit for researchers accessing or using the set of hardware platforms in the Cabrinety Collection as the re-housing and photographs will cover more platforms than those in GAMECIP’s initial controlled vocabulary and description sheets. Long range plans for the images of hardware platforms and peripherals in the Cabrinety collection are to publish them via SUL’s SearchWorks interface. This is planned for 2016. 

Mitch Mastroni, an undergraduate at UC Santa Cruz in Computer Science: Game Design, has been hired through September with funding from the Payson J. Treat Fund, awarded by the Stanford University Libraries. He will report to Henry Lowood in HSSG, with his work supervised by Charlotte Thai and others in the GAMECIP team, including Peter Chan, Glynn Edwards and Greta de Groat, and considerable input from our colleagues at UCSC.  Mitch will be traveling frequently between Green Library on campus and the Redwood City facility as needed.