The colorful carved wooden whale above is a game. You can CLICK on the whale to view detailed photographs of the components of this game, discover how this game is played, who played it, where it was played, and find out about the artist who created the components of the game.
Established in 1971, a museum at the Universiy of Waterloo was dedicated to research and the collection, preservation, and exhibition of games and game-related objects from around the world. There were over 5000 objects in the museum collection, and a large number of archival documents about games. This museum was closed in 2009 and its collection was transfered to another museum.
This Virtual Museum Website was begun in 1993 and continues to be hosted by the University of Waterloo. On over 700 Webpages, the site includes videos, photographs, diagrams, other graphics, and textual information about games.
Clicking on one of the Menu items in the left panel will take you to the other pages on this Website.
The Virtual Collection item takes you to a clickable list of Webpages about objects, such as Boxed Games, Playing Cards, Electronic Games, etc. Pages are organized as exhibits. An exhibit will have one or more Webpages concerning the games in a particular category.
The Papers About Games item contains scanned documents of published papers by game ethnologists and historians. Many of these include photographs and explanatory diagrams of how certain ethnographic games were played.
Games: Facts and Theories includes pages dealing with ethnography and diffusion of games in general. Answers to general questions which viewers have asked about games are included in this section. The final item concerns conditions for those wishing to copy material from this Website.
Last update December 22, 2009