[game_preservation] Cataloging Standards?

[Devin Monnens]

A catalogue system was something I had been thinking about myself. These
numbers would be something that all libraries would recognize and so they
could list their catalogue in an online database that could easily be
cross-referenced. Certainly, you could use a citation list with all the
information I listed, but it would be easier to reduce it down to a few
numbers. These should be pretty easy to recognize too. We could use any of
the common abbreviations for system (AT = Atari (or AT2 for Atari2600, AT5
for 5200, AT7 for 7800), GC =Gamecube, W98 = Windows 98, etc). Publishers
and developers would have numbers or abbreviations as well (I'd stand for
abbreviations though as they are easier to understand). You could probably
number games based on year of publication in case a new version was found
(that way, you're not adding new entries alphabetically). So you might say:

System.Number.Version.Developer.Publisher.Year

AT2.001.v1.US.Ata.Ata.1977


>From this, you could tell that this is an Atari 2600 game published in

1977, version 1 (it's a first print), it's
the US
region and the developer and publisher are both Atari, Inc. This
narrows it down. If you can't guess the sample game, it's Combat :)

NES.001.v1.JP.NCL.NCL.1985.9

First see how much of this you can recognize. This might be the entry for
the Japanese Super Mario Bros. Note that we can also add another number at
the end indicating the month (or even the day too).

DOS.143.v1.21.US.Bli.Bli.1995.2

Ok, here is a PC game. We can tell it runs on DOS and that the version (or
rather, patch) number is 1.21. It was published in the US and Bli stands for
Blizzard :P A Feb 1995 release date narrows this down to...*drumroll*
Warcraft.

However, we might want to list the patch separately. You could probably list
.pa for 'patch' or the medium (fl for 'floppy', CD, etc).

DOS.142.v1.US.Bli.Bli.1994.fl [Original Floppy]
DOS.142.v1.21.US.Bli.Bli.1995.2.pa [Patch]
DOS.142.v1.21.US.Bli.Bli.1996.CD [CD version]

This way, games get listed together based on whenever they are added to the
catalogue.

You can then
have extra fields in the extended catalogue entry that indicate any
special hardware
or software you need to run the game (maybe also if the entry actually runs
or has succumbed to bit rot?).

An online catalogue would make it necessary to indicate if the library has
box, manual, game, and inserts lines as
well (in case someone was looking for one of those).

Is this system closer to what you were thinking of? Is this level of
complexity too much? (you could probably just have say
DOS.142.v1.21.US.1996.CD and skip developer and publisher altogether). I
think maybe this privileges release date, too so that the name of the game
is associated with its release dates. You could divide these into genre with
say 1.XX as 1 (action), 2 (rpg), and then the second number is the entry
number.

-Devin

On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 8:11 AM, Andrew Armstrong <andrew at aarmstrong.org>wrote:


> With that being the case, standard archive and library systems can easily

> do "(Game) Name(s)" "Date" "Publisher" "Developer" "System" (or game type)

> and possibly "Credits", and maybe (a broad) "Genre" or "Category" one, as

> well as if it supports it a "Cover picture".

>

> What more do you think a library system catalogues? Looking at the

> University I'm working at, that's what they do for DVD's, books, etc. etc. I

> don't think archives would do much more, as a baseline for finding things in

> their collections. Perhaps someone working on one can tell us. The only odd

> thing would be the comparison to book's categorisations. Oddly, the

> University of Nottingham uses an American system, which is odd mainly

> because it has massive sections for "American History" but, say, UK history

> gets dumped into tiny categories in "World History" I think, which I found a

> tad silly, but hey ho!

>

> If we need to standardise those fields, well, are there any I've missed

> out? We can put up some suggested fields as to allow people to, for example,

> provide SQL database copies of what they have with those fields with

> standard field names so that, perhaps, they can be shared (or just searched)

> for historian's sakes if that was part of your intent.

>

> Do you want to write it up somewhat, with more what your intent is?

>

> Anyway, it's more fun talking about bigger databases, I'm glad it went off

> topic a bit :)

>

>

> Andrew

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-- 
Devin Monnens
www.deserthat.com

The sleep of Reason produces monsters.
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