About Me
I am a librarian at Cal Poly Pomona. I have an M.S. in library and information science and an M.A. in English. This weblog reflects my interests in library & information science, literature, language, culture, and the arts. Click for my full profile.
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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
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Will libraries be extinct by 2019? Slashdot readers respond (3/22/2008) These are the same arguments that I've heard librarians make, but it's so much more heart-warming to hear them coming from tech-savvy non-librarians. Since I started my studies, I spent exactly 0 hours and 0 minutes in the university libraries. I access all the scientific material online ... (and by online I mean in our university's electronic library) ... I am a Computer Engineering student ... and I have spent many hours in the library. Many books I use are available electronically but I prefer to have the actual paper version because I find them easier to read and easier to search through. Growing up, I used the library to be able to freely read books. I think this remains the fundamental and most important role of a library. Equalizing access to information that the public could not otherwise get to ... As long as there is an underclass, the role of a library will remain important. I agree on public libraries needing longer hours. Another great thing,at least where I live,is that if you spend some time at the library they quickly develop a more personal relationship with you ... when I go into the local library the librarian is often greeting me with "Hey, I got some books that are right up your alley!" [I]n my field (English), many research resources are still in print and not available online. It's not clear if or when University Presses will start making criticism online en masse, and even if they do, so much of the twentieth century's critical output will remain in dead tree form that, at least for some, the library isn't going anywhere. A library serves as a filter in a very important way: the material there was "good enough", in some way, to get published. Right now, I have about two dozen books from the university library. Only a couple of them would be available online. Intensive reading is also much easier with physical books. There are a hell of a lot of people for whom libraries are the only form of access to high-quality information. The internet hasn't changed that very much, because most of the best information still costs money. The Extinction Timeline is total garbage. I think libraries will still need to exist. The heart of the concept exists in free (or at least cheap) public access to information. Best thing about libraries is they are quiet places to study, read, write etc. I use them for research and when I need to get away from the internet. we still have colisseums, we don't feed christians to lions in them. we still have public squares, we don't have gallows in them. true, we don't really have forts with cannons and we don't have stables, but we do have military installations, and we do have garages. so its not like the need for a public place for information storage and retrieval will go ever go away, just how it is accessed will change and evolve. The death of the library is a harbinger of the death of free education. Being able to search the library catalogue, and reserve books, online has increased my library usage. One of the handier things web access has given me. Someone once described the Internet as a library with all the books dumped at random in the middle of the floor. What makes the library different is an organized body of knowledge with people assigned to help you. The people in public libraries generally have a Master's degree in Librarianship, and in academic libraries a second masters degree in their subject area ... If you're one of these people who believe 'well-educated' means being able to search Google, read a blog, and search Wikipedia, then may God have mercy on your soul. You fail at information literacy ... The internet has "answers", Libraries have reference materials, sources, and most of all hard data. Digitization is nothing but a boost to libraries and Librarians. I'm an academic working in the field of medieval culture. While I can access facsimiles (print and electronic) of medieval manuscripts, it's sometimes essential to look at the originals ... there are two ways of treating books (and other sources of printed information). The first is to see them as simple repositories of information ... The second is to see them as objects of study or artefacts in themselves ... this second category of book is one reason why libraries will never entirely disappear. (Via DrWeb's Domain) |
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Copyright 2003-2008 Julie Shen