The Royal Danish Library has a double function as the largest university library in Denmark and as the Danish national library which holds and maintains the Danish national collections of published material. The collections are primarily based on legal deposit, a practice that has existed in Denmark since 1697. The collections – including the videogame collection – consists almost exclusively of Danish works.
In 1998 the Danish Legal Deposit Act was changed to include digital materials, including computer games and interactive software on physical media. The library has a videogame collection of about 1.500 games for a variety of platforms on physical media, not including online games. The library is continually engaged in a process of migrating computer game data from original data media to more sustainable long-term preservation platforms. Additionally the national collection of periodicals contains a number of cover discs from various video game magazines.
The Library is still focusing on collecting videogames. We still collect games through our legal deposit act. And in addition we try to track down and collect all Danish videogames, including games published exclusively online, games for mobile platforms, and console games. In total, the videogame collection comprises more than 4.000 titles.
Since 1998 the library has collected online publications, and from 2005 onwards we have been engaged in full-scale web harvesting of Danish web sites to the national web archive, Netarkivet. Our web archive presently comprises some 1.5 Pb. In 2011 the library began a systematical process of identifying harvested computer games in the web archive. An effort has been made to ensure that as much game data as possible is harvested, however this process is not always adequate, thus an effort is also made to identify and harvest material and web sites related to the games, i.e. community forums, videos, online reviews, blogs, etc.
In 2023-24 the library’s videogame collection was the focal point for a large in-house exhibition titled #DKGAME. This remains the most-visited exhibition the library has ever made”
In 2023-24 the library’s videogame collection was the focal point for a large in-house exhibition titled #DKGAME. This remains the most-visited exhibition the library has ever made”
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