Archive Hours

Bad news and good news:

The bad news is that the archive will be closed all next week, due to the intersession. Regular summer hours will resume the week of August 31, though we'll of course be closed on Labor Day.

The good news is that starting September 8 not only will we expand our daily hours to 10am - 9pm, we'll also be adding Saturday hours of 3pm to 9pm.

You can always find the hours for the archive online at http://www.lib.umich.edu/unithours/82.unit/

GISE Playing Games

Over the course of the summer, various camp groups from here at U-M have made use of the video game archive for their campers, including Camp CAEN and GISE (Girls in Science and Engineering) Summer Day Camp.

Here are a few pictures of the GISE campers playing games in the archive:















(more photos from the camp can be found on PhotoBucket)

Games Will Rot Your Brain

From the July 2009 issue of Scientific American:

“A pernicious excitement to learn and play [this game] has spread all over the country, and numerous clubs for practicing this game have been formed in cities and villages. Why should we regret this? It may be asked. We answer, [this game] is a mere amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind of valuable time that might be devoted to nobler acquirements, while it affords no benefit whatever to the body. [This game] has acquired a high reputation as being a means to discipline the mind, but persons engaged in sedentary occupations should never practice this cheerless game; they require out-door exercises—not this sort of mental gladiatorship.”

Another screed against video games? Hardly. SciAm is reprinting a paragraph from their July 2, 1859 issue, and the game in question is: Chess!

(The full article is available in an almost-legibile online edition from Making of America.)