Can Architects Save Libraries from the Internet? 270
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."
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?
Extinction Timeline (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Not holding breath (Score:-1, Insightful)
And I mean any periodical, the microfilm of a 1972 NY times to a book thats been out of print for 20 years.
However I don't see that happening anytime by 2019.
There is still plenty of material at the library that is not available on the web.
Re:Is it a bad thing? (Score:4, Insightful)
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
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.
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.
Re:Is it a bad thing? (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 the buildings and staff to store the information in book form? Doesn't make sense to keep libraries around just for posterity. Billions of dollars each year are put into libraries, if they are underused and no longer a viable model for public service, why not just eliminate the concept? If we did enough of that, it would change our tax returns.
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
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.
Free Education (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Extinction Timeline (Score:2, Insightful)
I think copyright (2020) would have to go before libraries (2019), because a lot of the point of libraries is getting physical copies of things you can't get electronically because of copyright.
And "Beyond 2050: Uglyness" is absurd, because a lot of the body mods and "improvements" people make tend to increase their ugliness. The more choices some people get, the uglier they get. "Bad taste" will have to go before "Uglyness" will!
Stick to the original mission of libraries (Score:2, Insightful)
If we find that people seem to be getting dumber, libraries are partially to blaim since they haven't stuck to their original mission.
Libraries are meant to lift up the community. To push knowledge into the dark corners that exist everywhere, not just in the minds of the poor. Funded by tax revenue, they increase the buying power of the average citizen and lower the cost to access knowledge. They increase demand for that knowledge by stocking it in warehouses. They make that knowledge easier to access by organizing it and providing assistance in finding it.
Some libraries have lost their way because they thought it was all about the paper. Some have simply become centers for the poor while the rest of the community is increasingly satisfied by the deluge of cheap, easy but often lower quality information found online. Notice how most of the information in wikipedia is pop culture? Where is the depth? The trend is towards the dumbing down of the citizenry.
Libraries have a mandate by the tax payers to continue to be booster for knowledge. Don't think installing a bunch of internet workstations is the going to be enough. They need to come to us, here on the internet. They need to put up websites where knowledge that normally costs extra, requires physically driving to a certain place or otherwise is difficult enough to access that more and more people simply ignore it, is made easily accessible. There is a lot of information on the internet but it lacks depth in key areas. Libraries have that information and can put it on the internet using public funds. The net result is that the average citizen is once again encouraged to delve deeper into the depths of knowledge and not be satisified by the common knowledge available on the street.
This boost of knowledge in a community can occur by:
1. Provide access to paid information services on the internet (newspapers, etc) for no extra charge
2. Scan and digitize information on a ongoing basis and make it available online. negotiate copyright access for the community
3. Organize information so that it is easier to find. this means developing websites that are easy to use and provide quick access to democratizing knowledge
And I am sure there is more, have to go before I can finish writing this...
Re:why not provide some improvements (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:The better question is: should they? (Score:3, Insightful)
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 finding what you wanted.
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.
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: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.