Bevaring av spelkulturen : En undersökning av spelkulturen på Kungliga biblioteket

The aim of this paper is to examine the National Library of Sweden's ability to preserve the gaming culture. It will also look at what the subjects gaming culture and cultural heritage means. The source materials of the essay are mainly previous research of cultural heritage and gaming culture, plus some texts fom the National Library of Sweden and other offical laws and text, which makes this essay mainly a litterature study with some description theory. Through my studies of these earlier texts, the questions that emerged for me are the following: - How is culture heritage defined according to the academic world and the cultural world? - How can gaming culture be defined as a concept and a cultural heritage? - What does the preservation of the gaming culture look like at the National Library of Sweden? The results show that cultural heritage is a difficult to specify subject, much like culture itself. In the end no two persons specify it the same, but I myself fell for the Swedish National Heritage Board's definition: all material and immaterial expressions of humans. Gaming culture is also quite difficult to specify, since many people see it as different things. Something all seems to agree on is that includes all kinds of expressions from humans. Hence, it should be obvious that it is a part of the cultural heritage. The Nation Library of Sweden includes several departements. For the one I interviewed it is not quite possible for them to preserve the gaming culture because of various laws. They want to, but cannot. Other departments might be able to collect those parts instead. So they might be able to preserve a complete picture of the gaming culture. So, I propose that citizens step in and take over the responsibility for preserving the parts of the gaming culture that parts of the National Library simply cannot access at the moment. Maybe the citizens can collaborate with local archives, or even the National Library of Sweden, and the gaming culture will still find a place in the archives in the end