Books can get in the way

[Pure]

when i go to hang out at the university library, and try to move about on certain floors, i keep encountering thousands of books.
finally, a solution.


[Inside Higher Ed]

No Room for Books

April 27, 2011
While libraries have taken on numerous functions over the years, such as serving as places for students to study, meet with others, and interact with technology, one component that has always been central to their mission has been housing books.
But plans at the University of Denver to permanently move four-fifths of the Penrose Library’s holdings to an off-campus storage facility and renovate the building into an “Academic Commons,” with more seating, group space, and technological capacity, could make the university a flashpoint in the debate about whether the traditional function of storing books needs to happen on campus.

“We are not alone in this trend of increasing central campus space for study, services and student learning and decreasing central campus space for legacy collections,” said Nancy Allen, dean and director of Penrose Library, in an e-mail statement

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http://www.insidehighered.com/news/...f_denver_removing_most_books_from_its_library

 

[Boxlicker101]

Well, it's about time. I never could see what they need all those dumb old books for anyhow.

 

[ishtat]

I suspect Pure, that University libraries are not the most susceptible to this trend. Many towns, cities and suburbs have lending libraries which offer a limited range of material, yet occupy very valuable real estate. As the amount of material available electronically increases over the next few years, it will be a better use of resources to close down the libraries and increase investment in on line information.

If we can increase the volume, quality and access to information and library resources, I'm all in favour of it .

Denver may be making a mistake in assuming that people will travel to a technology 'access point.' It seems more logical to me to make this library material available to the client base, without asking them to travel: ie. via the internet.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

ISHTAT

I agree. The time is not far off when patrons will download material from library holdings. Ten years ago I drove 150 miles every weekend to examine old newspapers at the University Library; now all the old papers are online. No more driving, no more parking problems, no more surly student clerks who come to work late, etc.

 

[oggbashan]

ISHTAT

I agree. The time is not far off when patrons will download material from library holdings. Ten years ago I drove 150 miles every weekend to examine old newspapers at the University Library; now all the old papers are online. No more driving, no more parking problems, no more surly student clerks who come to work late, etc.

I belong to a county's library system over one hundred miles from my home. Why?

Because they have the widest access to scanned reference works anywhere in the UK that is FREE to use. They have archives of national and local newspapers from far beyond their county and their scope is increasing all the time as they buy in digitised archives.

Their notional membership is larger than any other county's library system in the UK. What will happen when their politicians discover that they are subsidising people who are not local voters?

Og

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

What will happen is what always happens, the politicians will find a way to make money from it AND toss a spanner (wrench) into the machinery at the same time.

 

[TxRad]

Put everything on the internet. Yeah, right. No more printed books except in storage. No place to house them if they are pulled out of storage.

Anyone see the plot bunny building here?

 

[oggbashan]

What will happen is what always happens, the politicians will find a way to make money from it AND toss a spanner (wrench) into the machinery at the same time.

That is why I avoided naming the library service. While hundreds of thousands of people across the UK know about it, the local politicians still seem ignorant of the range of the service. (Or, to be fair, perhaps they are willing for it to continue because it provides an excellent service for the local voters. The wide range of users keep adding to the archive's range by providing links and/or digitised media.)

I hope it stays like that.

Og

 

[oggbashan]

Put everything on the internet. Yeah, right. No more printed books except in storage. No place to house them if they are pulled out of storage.

Anyone see the plot bunny building here?

The growth of digitised books is from what the book trade sometimes calls "biblia non biblion" - books that are not books but reference material such as catalogues, directories, numerical tables, lists etc. Old ones can be invaluable to historians but useless for general reading.

My local newspaper is digitising its archive which goes back to the middle of the 19th Century. It will make their editorial research much easier and reduce damage to the archive. As the old newspapers are in broadsheet format, bound in heavy quarterly tomes, searching through them requires muscle as well as patience. Once digitised, they intend to sell the media to libraries and private researchers.

I used to have a large collection of the National Geographic Magazine. It ranged from the 1910s to the 1980s and took up 15 metres of shelf space on reinforced bookshelves. Now I have a set of DVDs that cover from the 1st issue in 1888. That takes up 15 cm of shelf space.

Og

 

[ishtat]

What will happen is what always happens, the politicians will find a way to make money from it AND toss a spanner (wrench) into the machinery at the same time.

An example is the British Census. The 1881 census was the first comprehensively available on line available through the Mormon Church website. It was free, and reasonably accurate, much of the work being done by volunteer church workers.

The second census to be put up was the 1911 census, which work was done by paid public servants, and the standard of transcribed data is execrable, with 50% of all entries seeming to have errors (often minor but they are errors). The UK government then decided to charge like a wounded bull for this woefully poor quality data, with no recourse when it is blatantly wrong.

 

[Pure]

questions

in the colorado case, it's unclear if the books will be available, onsite, in digitized, electronic form.

but let's assume that the future library contains only such 'books' (pdf or ePub files, or whatever), and you can go with your Kindle
and download them.

what substitutes for browsing the shelves? how are the available titles displayed? would it simply be a list on a monitor, "responses for search 'Thomas Pychon biography"?

of course it's clear that a 'visit' to such a place, this 'information commons,' has no rationale. i can stay home and call up the list above, and --in future, perhaps-- do the download from home. this actually is great in mid Canadian winter.

how do people picture libraries and using them, where no 'hard copies' are there?

 

[voluptuary_manque]

The greatest drawback to the digitizing of library contents is that electronic storage is ephemeral. Programs change, formats update and plastic DVD's deteriorate. Acid-free paper remains the most durable of record materials, having a lifespan over a thousand and a half years, according to the Getty Museum archivists. Without hard copies somewhere, information runs the risk of disappearing.

On the other hand, I know full well that vast numbers of books don't circulate from one decade to the next. In a public library this is of minimal concern. You just shelve the most popular titles and warehouse the rest. But in a university library? Where mining obscure tomes for revelations of the past is what scholarship is all about? Perish the thought!