Video game culture

The video game has established itself as the most popular cultural asset of the French and has naturally made its entry into the media libraries that offer a diversified offer with less known titles and accompanied practice.

Beyond a simple fun, the video game invites you to discover the world of graphics, stimulates the imagination and also promotes meetings, thanks to network or multiplayer games, among others. For example, the media library in Saint-Jean-de-Braye, near Orléans, has been offering a video games area where children, teenagers and adults can play, while creating social links. It is in the same spirit that the Capucins media library in Brest organizes online gaming tournaments with experienced gamers and simple amateurs, for the pleasure of mixing. Even at the BnF, all audiences can come to play together on the big screen and discover a hundred games on PC, tablets, consoles and even in virtual reality.

A dive into virtual reality

Who could have imagined, only ten years ago, to be able to explore parallel worlds with a simple virtual reality headset, just by crossing the doors of his neighborhood library? Today, many libraries offer this service, on site or on loan. The Patrick-Simon media library in Villers-Bretonneux, in the Hauts-de-France region, for example, allows you to visit museums remotely or dive into immersive networked games, without moving from your headquarters. The media library of Vaise, in Lyon, goes so far as to organize introductory workshops to this technology, per session of a quarter of an hour. The opportunity to be distracted, while appropriating the tools and codes of digital.

Fab lab, when ideas take shape

Manufacturing laboratories (from English laboratory manufacturingory, fab lab), equipped with machines such as laser cutting machines or 3D printers, are seeing more and more the day in libraries. Cyrille Jaouan is in charge of the bibliofab of the Marguerite Duras media library in Paris, which since 1^er June 2024 many DIY or tailoring tools. “ With this type of collective creation space, we facilitate an active dynamic where everyone can experiment with innovative tools and create objects. It is a place of knowledge sharing, inclusive, where the skills of some develop in contact with others ". In Provence, the Médiathèque des Carmes in Pertuis (Vaucluse) also offers manufacturing workshops that promote the learning of techniques such as welding or digital embroidery. How can vocations be born?

Questioning artificial intelligence

Libraries are no longer silent sanctuaries, but hubs of exchange and creativity. In these hubs Users are invited to reflect on the main questions raised by digital uses and, in particular, on the progress and risks associated with artificial intelligence. « On the occasion of Biblis en folie, we will question, through different workshops, a major topical topic: artificial intelligence. A choice that is part of the perspective of opening science to the city, to make the library an agora with debates of ideas ” announces Lola Mirabail, director of the Nantes municipal library.

Digital for all

Libraries offer many digital services and help reduce inequalities, both in terms of access to equipment and the ability to use it in an informed manner. They carry out important mediation work so that everyone can seize technologies to inform themselves, communicate, exercise their citizenship, develop cultural practices. “ Libraries are concerned with digital inclusion because they are primarily concerned with social inclusion. Indeed, digital fractures are not reduced to a question of materials, possession of digital objects, but they also affect uses ", analyses Malik Diallo, director of the Rennes libraries. Many of them welcomed France Service digital advisors. Support can take the form of practical workshops, conferences, knowledge exchanges...