The colorful whale above is a photograph of a game in the Museum's Collection and serves as the Museum Logo. CLICK on the photograph to view detail photographs of the components of this game, and how this game is played.
Established in 1971, the Museum is a public institution dedicated to research and the collection, preservation, and exhibition of games and game-related objects from around the world. The Museum Website was first begun in 1993 and continues to evolve. Photographs, other graphics, and pages with new information are periodically added to this site, offering a "virtual visit" to the Museum. The Website includes over 700 pages. Each Webpage is part of a "virtual" Museum exhibit. The Museum collection is extensive and the University offers Web viewers access to as much of its collection as resources will permit. As new "Virtual Exhibits" are added, indices are updated.
Clicking on one of the Menu items in the left panel will take you to other pages on this Website. The Virtual Exhibits item takes you to a clickable list of collection objects, such as Boxed Games, Playing Cards, Electronic Games, etc. organized as Museum Exhibits. An "exhibit" will have one or more Webpages concerning the games in that particular exhibit. Nevertheless, a viewer can go directly to a Webpage about a specific game of interest by using the Google Tool Bar at the top of each page, inputting the name of the game, and clicking the "search" button. While the collection includes over 5000 objects, not all of these are included on the Website at this time.
About Games includes pages dealing with ethnography, origins, and diffusion of games in general. The Archives item contains scanned documents of published papers by game ethnologists and historians. FAQ answers general questions which previous viewers have frequently asked.
The Museum item includes a number of pages about the "physical" Museum rather than the "virtual" one on the Web. These items include pages about the collection which is cared for by Museum personnel, and about the On-Campus Gallery in which the collection is exhibited. The Museum's resources for researches who come on campus to conduct research on games is explained in this section. Information is provided about where the Museum is housed on the University campus along with the available parking and public transportation facilities. Blank collection catalogue forms like the ones used by Museum personnel are offered in this section as an example for game collectors. The final item concerns conditions for those wishing to copy material from this Website.
Last update October 31, 2007