In addition to books, many libraries have collected games of various kinds, making for a fascinating chapter in the history of libraries. Here is a special format–the 3.5 inch floppy disk–used for electronic games of the 1990s. Tara Peace, Blog Committee member and Program and Outreach Librarian at the Jacobs Family Library at La Jolla Country Day School, contributed a photo of these gems to the Virtual Museum. The game on these disks, Flashback, features a special agent in the future battling extraterrestrial beings who can shape shift. Interestingly, note that the disks, produced in 1999, were listed as “Y2k Compliant” (Y2k refers to a fear that computer equipment manufactured in the twentieth century would malfunction on January 1, 2000 due to a programming glitch).
Please see the Library of Congress blog to learn how conservation specialists are preserving floppy disk data.
