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Can Architects Save Libraries from the Internet?
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Mar 02, 2008 05:13 PM
from the it-would-be-kind-of-awesome-to-live-in-a-library dept.
from the it-would-be-kind-of-awesome-to-live-in-a-library dept.
theodp writes "Slate has an interesting photo essay exploring the question of how to build a public library in the age of Google, Wikipedia, and Kindle. The grand old reading rooms and stacks of past civic monuments are giving way to a new library-as-urban-hangout concept, as evidenced by Seattle's Starbucks-meets-mega-bookstore central library and Salt Lake City's shop-lined education mall. Without some dramatic changes, The Extinction Timeline predicts libraries will R.I.P. in 2019."
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The better question is: should they? (Score:4, Insightful)
For antique books, sure, libraries will always exist, but even there I'd prefer to see them as conservation points where they are transferred into electronic format(s) made available online. Being an antique book collector myself, I would hate to know that precious antique books are being touched by people who don't wash their hands, or worse.
So basically, I don't think libraries have much reason to exist in their current form. Perhaps something like a public study-and-discussion place, with refreshments and internet access?
Re:The better question is: should they? (Score:5, Insightful)
I like going to the library just to browse and to see what I can find. I would be quite sad if libraries were to disappear.
Parent
why not provide some improvements (Score:5, Insightful)
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. Sure, as a professional, I can afford to pay for things, but it seems that costs are proportional. The specialized texts I want now are considerably more expensive than the texts I had wanted earlier.
As long as there is an underclass, the role of a library will remain important. Given trends in society, the underclass is growing and the divide between those with access to information will only further it. Granted most people with access to resources don't use it, but every now and then it will make a huge difference.
Furthermore, one has to consider the library in question. A community library serves a very different purpose than a university library. I think that a community library would be better off avoiding trying to provide large amounts of space towards computers. Should they have them? Yes, its important to provide a complete set of services for those who may not otherwise be able to have them.
What needs to be done to ensure the relevance of libraries? How about longer hours? With changing work schedules, knowing that the library will be open would be useful. I hate having to leave an hour after arrival because the place is going to close. How about an in library mirror of the Gutenberg free text collection to ensure availability despite loss of internet connectivity. Libraries have been known as warehouses of information; just because the data is digital, this should not change.
Printing services for this information. How about being able to select a text from the Gutenberg (or other) online collection and paying X dollars to have a copy printed and bound in some fashion for pickup. This can be both a revenue generating and role preserving improvement to a library.
A coffee shop. I think that Barnes n' Noble have done more to "hurt" libraries than any other place. They're open longer and I can drink some coffee.... Its a huge improvement.
Club meetings - chess, reading - local competitions for the kids. There are many services that can be provided through a library that many libraries have already adopted.
My main request would be that they mirror important literary texts locally. Given the questionable and temporary quality of electronic media, its important to have as many copies distributed as widely as possible.
done ranting... need to find another task to avoid reading.
Parent
Re:why not provide some improvements (Score:5, Interesting)
Honestly, the library would be a much more practical place to study if they were open until 23:00 on Friday-Sunday. They don't need to staff the A/V department, they don't need to staff the reference department, they don't need to staff their computer center (they have public 802.11G) -- they just need to have a guard and a few people to handle checkouts.
Just my $0.02 USD.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Cue the MAFIAA saying this guy is a thief for not paying for his reading.
Re:why not provide some improvements (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:why not provide some improvements (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:why not provide some improvements (Score:4, Interesting)
as someone else has said certain university libraries already do this for students.
i live in a a small town, and they have limited library funds, virtually every magazine in the library is 'sponsored' by an individual or a company in town, and the books they buy don't tend to be in the genera i prefer. when major cities are able to digitize vast libraries of books, then rural small town libraries will be able to take advantage of this vast knowledge of wealth, by simply accessing the book that a well funded library was able to purchase for digitization, without having to buy a copy of their own.
even if you can only access these books online at that local library, all I'd have to do is get a cheap wireless enabled laptop, plug into the library's power, and read books as long as i wanted. (if you use their computers your time is limited, but not if you use their wi-fi)
even if they locked up the digital books with drm and such, this would vastly improve access to books in rural America. instead of having to go on a wait list to ship the book from a library that is in partnership with your local library, you could just download it. basically instead of your local library having 10 or 20 thousand books on hand with maybe 200,000 thousand on inter library loan you could download and read one of millions of books... bandwidth is way cheaper than the gas to do Interlibrary loans.
and yeah since it could be used on library owned pcs, then yes it would be accessible to even the poorest Americans. i think that ultimately its the best way for libraries to go. having to keep books on hand is costly, even if people donate books to libraries, many public libraries are too small to shelve many books. this takes away the problem of how to give people more access to reading materials without having to store them all, or to have to build brand new libraries in many counties that don't have the cash for it...
best of all, if it's electronic you don't need to 'return' it, although if they have drm policies you may need to prove that the file was deleted... i don't really care about that, it would make me very happy to learn i could read all sorts of books people have recommended, or that i thought i might want to read...without having to wait a week for an interlibrary loan and then have to return it a week later...
Parent
Re:The better question is: should they? (Score:5, Informative)
Hi, I'm a librarian.[1] I appreciate your response, and I'm glad you find us useful. I'd just like to elaborate on one of your points. You wrote "I like going to the library just to browse and to see what I can find." (Emphasis added). This is one point where physical libraries still have a distinct advantage over the Internet.
People who are trying to retrieve information have three basic types of queries.
The Internet is pretty good for known-item searches. Especially if the item has indexable text in it. Other types of information are harder. Quick! Using Google Images, find me a picture of a sheep facing left at sunset.
The Internet is less good at delivering focused results for a known class search. It can retrieve relevant documents, but there's a good chance that it will also retrieve lots of unrelated or only tangentially related things. Which means you have to spend ages sorting through a giant list of search results to find what you really want. Specialized databases tend to produce much more focused results, of course, but most of those aren't freely available.
And lastly, the Internet is lousy for browsing. Browsing is about finding out what's available within a very broad class of stuff. Search engines can tell you that documents share keywords; they can't tell you for certain that the documents are actually about similar things. And within the search results, they're organized according to (roughly) how popular they are, as measured by how many sites link to them. They're not organized based on their similarities to or differences from one another. Compare to a library, where you can start at the beginning of a shelf and scan the titles. Because librarians have invested a TON of time and effort into classifying the books, you can count on finding many documents about the same topic stored in the same location. There've been efforts to classify the web, but so far nothing really good has popped up. Wikipedia helps in some ways, but it still relies heavily on searches. The contextual navigation from one article to another helps a little, but a lot of the time the articles are linked to one another simply based on the words appearing in the article rather than on whether the articles are strongly related to one another. It does promote serendipitous discovery of information, but it's not so good for finding out a comprehensive list of what's available.
We aren't going away any time soon. Plenty of change a' comin', I reckon, but we're going to be around for a while yet.
[1] Well, technically, I'm a librarian-in-training. Close enough, though.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Quick! Using Google Images, find me a picture of a sheep facing left at sunset.
While your point is taken, my experience in looking for items with similarily stringent requirements is that libraries aren't any better. Just to use your example, searching for "sheep facing left at sunset" on google would likely involve looking through hundreds of pages of search results with a good chance of never finding what you wanted, while searching for the same image in a library would involved flipping through hundreds of pages of books on sheep and photography with a good chance of never findin
Re:The better question is: should they? (Score:5, Insightful)
The web OTOH has the garbage as well as the "good stuff", and many cases only the garbage since the good stuff (book contents) is usually copyrighted and not placed on the web. (Yes, Google Books can help you find some things, but you can't browse through the book.) The web has its place - a very important place - but it serves a different kind of need. Like Wikipedia, the web as a whole can be good for getting an idea of the subject matter of interest, but once you get in-depth and serious, the library becomes almost indispensable, for me at least.
For specialized scientific and mathematical work, virtually everything I do is based on peer-reviewed publications, and I don't have expensive access to the online versions. Sometimes I can find preprints on arxiv.org, but I need the real thing for referencing in my own work, and much of it is from the 70s/80s before arxiv.org existed. And even arxiv.org is a dangerous place with crackpot theories unless you know exactly what authors/articles to look for. So yes, I spend many hours in the university library to get authoritative and reliable material that I can trust.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The better question is: should they? (Score:5, Funny)
Can jealousy save biscuits from a motorbike?
Can mice protect oscilloscopes from Scientology?
Should tardigrades steal tarte-tatin from the middle-eight of Lynyrd Skynyrd's Freebird?
Tune in next week, same bat-time etc. etc....
Parent
Public Spaces & City Planning (Score:4, Insightful)
University libraries are one thing; public libraries another. The local public library is very popular. Students do their homework there, access the Internet, or hang out after school. They have children's programs and other events. The building looks out over a sports field, with a view of mountains beyond: it's the sort of place people like to be. I drop by there several times a week. I borrow a lot of DVDs, but I also peruse the books. The key, I think, is that it's close by - I can walk there or drop in on my way somewhere else. If a library is integrated into the community, somewhere nearby and convenient, I don't see any reason why it shouldn't thrive. Books, movies, forums about the future of copyright, whatever - it will find a role. Unfortunately most of our communities are planned so that activities are isolated and reachable only by car. A library treated as a warehouse, to which patrons must trek to take out and return materials, is likely doomed.
Parent
Re:The better question is: should they? (Score:5, Interesting)
Like most people, I'm not at university (any more), so libraries are the only access I have to a wide range of textbooks, scientific journals etc. I do buy books and the odd journal, but I couldn't hope to afford a collection even remotely close to what is on offer even at the public library, let alone the local university libraries (which the public can enter for free and join for a modest fee).
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.
Parent
Re:The better question is: should they? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The better question is: should they? (Score:5, Informative)
FWIW, your experience is not entirely typical right now, because the sciences are well ahead of the other fields of study in terms of online material. A lot of this is because there is so little use in most sciences for older material (i.e., an paper on Shakespeare from 1950 might still be relevant, a biology study from then almost definitely won't be). So if there are only the last 10 years online that's just great, especially to someone like a medical student who won't (or shouldn't) look at much with a copyright date more than 5 years old. Another factor is that science publishing has become extremely centralized, especially journals. So when Elsevier went online, a huge percentage of medical journals are suddenly electronic. Finally, the article really talks about public libraries, which don't really have the same function as a university library, and certainly don't have the same resources. A university library can pay licensing fees for it's 10-50,000 students and employees; the Chicago Public Library probably has less funding and potentially millions of people who could use it, making licenses much more difficult.
For antique books, sure, libraries will always exist, but even there I'd prefer to see them as conservation points where they are transferred into electronic format(s) made available online. Being an antique book collector myself, I would hate to know that precious antique books are being touched by people who don't wash their hands, or worse.
Ha! I work at an archive cataloging American books published between 1750 and 1920. I wash my hands regularly after handling them, but it's more to get me clean than the books, because 19th century texts, especially if they were bound in leather, just shed crap all over everything. As for storage and transfer, that clearly is the future. A lot of libraries will go from being what are called "dim" archives (with things physically accessible, but closely controlled) to being "dark" archives (things stored offsite, or at least away from patrons and accessible in a matter of days and not minutes), at least for older/rarer/valuable material.
BUT, and this is a big but, librarians will tell you that there is not yet a tried-and-true method for electronic storage. The world is full of old storage media that are basically unreadable. What can we put things on that will still be good in a few hundred years? Or will there be some sort of reliable upgrade method? And are we really going to trust someone like Google to effectively be the repository of the world's knowledge?
Another issue is that of storing physical things. Libraries work right now as basically distributed storage. No library is encyclopedic, but if you can look at all of them (through something like OCLC's WorldCat) then you can find most everything. If, as we assume, the number of libraries storing physical things goes down, then it becomes more likely that the last remaining copies of a lot of texts are going to disappear. We can argue if this is a bad thing or not, but it definitely needs to be considered.
Parent
Libraries are important. (Score:5, Insightful)
should public money be used for this? Can't it go to feed the homeless instead?
No! Public libraries can and must continue their roll as repositories of verifiable information. Copyright law in it's current form makes this impossible and must be changed. It is not good enough for us to trust primary historical documents such as newspapers to their original publisher. We must allow libraries verbatim copy, and distribution. If we don't, what we will have is an Orwellian memory hole instead of a library. The same kinds of things can be said about all periodicals, journals and even books. We as a whole must never allow private interests to control information. Information must remain free and it will have to be truly liberated if it's going to be that way. DRM and dissapearning media have no place in free societies. Don't worry, if publishers don't want to play ball authors will. Universities are full of people working on "labor of love" textbooks and other material they expect no financial return on. B and N can keep their paper and coffee shop megaplexes, the rest of us want knowledge. Free societies require it.
The good news is that libraries of the future will be cheaper than those of the present. When you liberate yourself from paper you eliminate most of the costs of libraries - shelving, circulation and all that. The difference will be put to good use and free economies tend to minimize financial ruin.
Parent
Extinction Timeline (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Land-line telephones gone by 2011? Can anyone see that happening?
Retirement? Gone before 2020? What does that even mean? We're going to pull people out of nursing homes and stick them back into their factory jobs?
Lunch will be gone by 2030?
The phrase "thank you" will be gone by 2013? Are they anticipating us all switching over to LOLCAT talk by then and en
Re: (Score:2)
Self Appointed Prophets (Score:3, Funny)
Here is my prediction: By 2020 people will finally get sick of these self appointed prophets and will hook them up to the Matrix to use as power sources.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No More Mouse (Score:2, Interesting)
My webcam should be tracking my eyes, and know exactly where I am trying to click.
Just transfer the left / right mouse buttons & scroll wheel onto the keyboard and I can stop moving my hands!
Seriously, does no one else think it's impractical we have to keep taking our hands off the keyboard?
Re:Extinction Timeline (Score:4, Informative)
I strongly suspect sock-puppetry is somewhere at the root of this "article".
Parent
Mending Things (Score:3, Interesting)
That the Internet provides inspiration for D.I.Y. projects is a big factor, too. Sometimes, I'm inspired by the World Wide Web to go to a library, even. Having library services available on the Web makes using a real library all the more worthwhile.
I think calling the Extinction Timeline garbage is an understatement. Sometimes I can make cool stuff out of garbag
Is it a bad thing? (Score:4, Insightful)
I also remember the first time I dialed into a BBS and discovered volumes of reading material I could freely download... next came my first exposure to the Internet through USENET and later the WWW. My excitement grew with each new advance in information sharing. These technologies were all logical stepping stone extensions to what came before them, and enabled me to access worlds of information that simply weren't attainable before.
Would I mourn the death of physical libraries where I can walk up and down the aisles? Yes, but for largely sentimental reasons. While the dreams a "paperless society" have largely been unfulfilled to date, the time is rapidly coming when many of the core concepts will be a reality. I'm an optimist in that I like to focus on learning about new ways to share information.
Re:Is it a bad thing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Is it a bad thing? (Score:4, Interesting)
Libraries are funded by tax dollars.
If this means Free internet AND Free coffee, I am in. And they should have a comfortable place to sit. And a comfortable place to discuss ideas with others.
As silly as it sounds, the greatest thing about public libraries during my college years was the chance to privacy for my studies and meeting with course project groups.
So, while libraries won't need to be a place to store books/information, they SHOULD be preserved as a public place to (a) find peace and quiet or (b) gather and discuss interesting issues.
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Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
While this is probably a sad reality, this kind of thinking is definitely part of the problem with our modern tax system. Our tax returns, sales tax bills we pay on every purchase, gas tax, etc... are all impacted by thousands of government projects that don't seem to add up to that much individually. I have nothing against libraries, but if all this information could be available electronically, why are we putting tax dollars into supporting
Libraries becoming extinct (Score:3, Insightful)
(sorry, just had to get it in)
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.
So it looks like they are going to try to produce something that will be state of the art and competes with electronic media. This will be doomed from the start as technology changes so rapidly, any library built will probably be obsolete before it is finished. Probably the best thing to do is figure out a libraries strengths and play to them instead.
my
seems more about money (Score:3, Insightful)
"education mall"? really? only a politician who is trying to line his pockets could come up with something like this.
this has less to do with making libraries urban hangouts than subsidizing the shops that are now going into them.
even knowledge/education is a commodity/industry in america.
teachers will be called "knowledge technicians"
mr c
Re: (Score:2)
Books reading off a computer screen (Score:4, Insightful)
It would be terrible if we lost libraries and books. I can't imagine a generation of kids downloading books and printing them out or staring at a computer screen all day reading one. I know that when I was a kid I couldn't afford to get my own books and my parents seldom bought them for me (well, once I grew out of books they liked me to read) so the library was my salvation. I never would have gotten into a great number of authors and subjects if not for libraries.
Good riddance. (Score:2)
Just because some neo-luddite English teachers freak out at the mere sound of the word "Internet" and consider it an abomination that destroys "proper education" doesn't mean the rest of society should care. A certain amount of significant libraries (such as the Library of Con
I doubt it (Score:2)
urban hangout? try indigent hangout (Score:2, Funny)
As opposed to the library-as-indigent-hangout concept, which has been around for decades or maybe centuries.
More Doomsday Vaults (Score:2)
Perhaps what's called for is a book vault, in the spirit of the recently built Norwegian seed vault [wikipedia.org].
I'm reminded of something from Max Headroom (a truly brilliant show for anyone who is not familiar with it, on par with greats like [imdb.com] Blade Runner [imdb.com] and Demolition Man [imdb.com] for its crisp and witty vision of a possible future dominated by television). In the series, nearly everyone has given up all their privacy information to the computers, of course, except for a small few who refused, a long time ago, and have
Not just the architects' responsibility (Score:2, Informative)
Check out Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge (Score:3, Funny)
libraries are never going to go extinct (Score:5, Insightful)
this is even hinted at in the story summary
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
Free Education (Score:4, Insightful)
The internet has increased my library usage. (Score:3, Interesting)
800% ROI isn't so bad for a public library. (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone said the online resources are never used and are there to make administrators feel good?? How ignorant! Statistics show double digit increased use every year, from live homework help to academic magazine indexes, you can't get that at home without a subscription. Instead, the library pools its resources and buys subscriptions for the entire community. That's what government SHOULD do, leverage your taxes rather than simply tell you what to do. The average Return on Investment of a public library is over 800%, i.e.: If you had to purchase the information that a library gives out every year year and compare the purchase cost to the library budget (paid by taxes), you'd pay 8 times as much for the same thing. In my state the average cost to a homeowner for their local public library is about 25 cents per thousand dollars of value. In other words, a $400,000 house costs you $100 per year for the public library, less than $10 a month. What's that? Three lattes? It's not like the library breaks your taxpaying back. Look to the public schools for that. The library is flat out the best deal the taxpayer has, period.
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. These folks are more familiar with your subject than you are and they've been doing database searches since well before you were born.
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. (Score:3, Insightful)
Say you're Brock Sampson and you need a copy of the Chilton's repair guide for your '69 Dodge Charger, since your copy was destroyed when the Guild of Callamitous Intent assaulted the Venture Compound. Used to be there was no way in Hell a local library would have something that specific. Maybe a book on general auto repair, but no way you get detailed info. If you were really lucky, maybe you could mail-order a copy from somewhere, get it in 4-6 weeks. Now, even the smallest library can have access to *every single Chilton's manual every published.* EVER. Every revision, every edition. Not only that, but the authors/publishers are properly compensated for their work, and not one tree had to die.
(and yes, you could probably buy the Chilton's guide through Amazon, eBay, etc, get it overnighted. That still doesn't trump free (nothing out of pocket) and instant.)
Even if that particular library doesn't have access to the data pimps....er....publisher's databases, the inter-library loan system has advanced to a point the local librarian can tell you if any library in the state / region / sometimes nation has a copy, or if the copy is available and probably get it to you within a few days.
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. (Real Librarians anyway. Not bespectacled old bitties with their hair in a bun, a pocket full of "Shush", and an axe to grind because someone took away their perfectly good card catalog and replaced it with a solitaire machine.)
Re:Not holding breath (Score:5, Interesting)
To expand on your point, it's good to remember that just because something is available on the Internet, it does not necessarily follow that it is automatically better/easier to view than something that it available at your library.
For example, most (if not all) of the New York Times archives are available on-line... but for a fee. The New York Times charges $3.95 for a single archive or $15.95 for a ten-pack of articles. Compare this to a archive of the newspaper in a bricks-n-mortar library which will allow you to look through their records for free as long as your willing to work the microfilm reader.
If, for example, you're a sports writer who is researching contemporary coverage of the 1972 Mets, you'd end up paying quite a lot more to do your research over the Internet as things stand now.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The problem (Score:4, Informative)
You don't mean entirely electronically, do you?
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. You can't rely on a facsimile to tell you whether pages have been removed, or whether two texts were originally bound together or created separately. A facsimile won't always show up erasures from the text.
What I'm trying to get at is that there are two ways of treating books (and other sources of printed information). The first is to see them as simple repositories of information, whose content can be translated into electronic form without any loss of meaning. The second is to see them as objects of study or artefacts in themselves. Some books can be treated in the first way without any problems; others must be treated in the second unless we're prepared to lose a lot in understanding them. For me, this second category of book is one reason why libraries will never entirely disappear.
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