Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play at The Strong Archive

The Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play sits quietly on the third floor of The Strong above the excitement and joy of our museum guests. Most guests don’t realize that this library even exists or that it is one of the largest study collections on play in the world. The library collection is one central element to the museum’s mission to share the history and many meanings of play. The library helps the staff as they consider new exhibitions, […]

Continue Reading about A Research Library atop The Strong Museum—Powered by Donations Published on:
April 25, 2025

Contemporary travel is a special kind of pandemonium, an admixture of excitement, fear, consumerism, and intense security measures. It can be a rather playful experience too, particularly in the U.S. The stops that took me from Pullman, Washington, where currently I live and work, to The Strong National Museum of Play are a case in point. First it was Pullman to Spokane, then it was Spokane to Las Vegas, where I transferred to a flight to Rochester, New York. To […]

Continue Reading about Relational Play Published on:
March 28, 2025

Sometimes, the “a-ha” moment comes from what you don’t find. I came to The Strong Museum to search the earliest (1902–1929) issues of the toy industry journal Playthings for images and stories of the American past. I have spent the past two decades researching the American children’s literature industry, which regularly strived to convey this past to young readers in ways that served its moral and commercial interests. As a scholar new to the toy industry, I was surprised to […]

Continue Reading about Toys and U.S. History in Playthings Magazine Published on:
January 24, 2025

In August and September 2024, I had the chance to work in the exhibits and archives of The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. Coming from Switzerland, a country in which the historical study and preservation of video games is still in its early stages, I was impressed by the wealth and the diversity of objects held by this institution.
As part of my doctoral research, I’m working mainly on video games designed for the domestic space, i.e. […]

Continue Reading about Game Instructions: How Do You Learn to Play in an Arcade Room? Published on:
January 17, 2025

From Dungeons & Dragons (1974) to Elden Ring (2023), modern games have asked us time and again to crack our knuckles, dust off our wizard cloaks, and test our magical mettle against fantasy’s most fearsome foes. But for all the magic our in-game spellbooks may contain, it was the pages of video game magazines that had the power to skyrocket an obscure game to national acclaim—or rain financial ruin upon a decorated studio for its latest flop. But how did […]

Continue Reading about Let’s Talk About Something Fun—How About Magic? Published on:
January 10, 2025

When does play become personal? When does a person’s exploration of a dungeon or fantasy world turn into an exploration of themselves? For some, certainly the answer is “never.” The distance between the game world and the real world is enough to bar any introspection. Or perhaps their playstyle simply does not warrant it. Certainly, one would assume this was true for the fantasy tabletop role-playing games (TRPGs) in the 1970s when the wargame and simulation aspects of the hobby […]

Continue Reading about Playing with Sex and Gender in Fantasy Tabletop Games Published on:
November 1, 2024

When new collections are added to an archive, they need to be formally processed. Processing an archival collection consists of performing small preservation tasks, like removing staples and paper clips, going through every box and folder to learn about the contents, and describing the collection. This allows us to create a map of the collection for future researchers. As the archivist in The Strong Museum’s Brian Sutton-Smith Archives of Play, I learn something new every day in a lot of […]

Continue Reading about OMG, Becky: Gossip in the Archives Published on:
October 18, 2024

I came to The Strong Museum to study Carmen Sandiego, the shadowy villain who stars in one of the most successful educational game series in video game history, but I left knowing a lot more about the early days of the educational game industry.
I am a Latinx literature scholar and lifelong gamer, whose research has been focused primarily on AfroLatinx literature and culture (my first book came out in June 2024). My research on Miles Morales and the Latino legacy of […]

Continue Reading about Driven by Play: A Reflection on Carmen Sandiego, Freedom!, and Games between 1980 and 2000 Published on:
October 4, 2024

A crack of thunder. The rattling of chains. Roars of monsters in the depths. A song to guide your way. These words stoke our imaginations and illustrate how stories are told via the evocation of sound. When people imagine playing a tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) such as Dungeons & Dragons, they envision people in costume rolling dice, moving small, hand-painted figurines, and navigating sprawling maps of the dungeons that are being delved.
In addition to these material components, however, at the […]

Continue Reading about Role-Playing with Sound: A Sonic History of Tabletop Role-Playing Games Published on:
September 23, 2024