Do we really need our libraries?
“The e-book craze will wipe out 90 percent of bookstores in a decade, the Journal forecasts. This message has apparently not hit home with the people trying to save our financially struggling libraries here in Mecklenburg County, but it’s one being asked in a serious way in even broker places like Illinois, where Fox Chicago News recently questioned whether the state needed all of its 799 library branches, or even half of them. It’s a question we should be asking here, where it costs roughly $40 million a year to keep the library system running. After cuts, a whopping 20 branches remain open in Mecklenburg.”
{Thanks to Carla for the link!}
- Next Public Libraries: No Longer for the Literate
- Previous The days of the law library being a showpiece of a firm are over
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Eh?
I don’t understand.
“The e-book craze will wipe out 90 percent of bookstores in a decade, the Journal forecasts. This message has apparently not hit home with the people trying to save our financially struggling libraries here in Mecklenburg County”. This sentence makes no sense unless you’re saying libraries do exactly the same thing as bookstores.
And we all know they don’t.
Bookstores don’t:
– provide information about local public services and community groups
– offer literacy and learning support
– provide business advice
– help people apply for jobs
– help people search for and analyse information
– provide equitable access to information, culture and the arts for free
– and like, a gazillion other things that aren’t BOOKS.
Do you really think that everyone will be able to afford ebooks? And that if suddenly everyone in the world (literate or not) had an ebook reader and unlimited access to free ebooks, that’d be enough?
So, er, yeah, we really do need our libraries. Because ebooks, like print books, are a vessel, not the solution to all our information needs as standalone objects.
Eh? times two
What the first guy said.
Libraries do not equal books. Anyone that thinks that has not been to a library recently.
Yesterday, a woman called looking for a pamphlet on bike safety. “There used to be one, and the guy from the County won’t answer my calls.”
After ascertaining that she knew about the PennDot site, I found some kid-friendly, list format sites that would be easy for her to use at her presentation that night. She was astounded and grateful. I told her, that’s what librarians do. She said, well, I’ll be calling the library more.
And that, my friends, is why if bookstores die (which, I don’t think so…), you will still need a library.
I love the quote that I saw in a library once, a quote I’m sure you all know: Libraries will get you through times of no money more than money will get you through times of no libraries.
It was a sign in the public library in the town where I went to college. Because as an undergrad, I wanted books that weren’t in my research based wonderful college library.
Preaching to the choir,
Suzi W.
Libraries do not equal books.
“Libraries do not equal books.”
I wish more of our staff would accept that. They’re holding on to that notion not realizing that they’re making themselves obsolete.
Too many dangerous
Too many dangerous assumptions in this current ebook craze.
Not everyone likes ebooks. Not everyone wants ebooks.
Ebooks are not ideal replacements for many kinds of books.
Ebook readers are not nearly as fast or adaptable as they need to be.
You cannot own or use an ebook as you do a regular book.
My regular book will work in fifty years or more, will never require an upgrade, will always look as intended, never be subject to arbitrary revisions or hacking or network outages or operating system or software errors, will never have to be downloaded or DRM’d or placed in a “cloud” with the hope my reading-device-of-the-moment can retrieve it the instant I need it.
Can ebook technology promise that kind of longevity and accessibility?
Ebooks have some advantages, but let us remember so do print materials.
The ebook is a medium. Paper is a medium.
There are numerous reasons on medium does not fit all.
There are excellent reasons information exists in a multiplicity of formats to serve different persons with different needs in different places and situations.
A future envisioned without book stores or libraries is indeed dark and dystopian: all the easier to censor, control, or rewrite information, for example.
Are people becoming so dumbed-down by technology and/or so misled by corporations interested in only one thing (profit) that they are prepared to willingly and eagerly give up such basic and essential things as book stores and libraries in favor of Amazon and Google?
I hope not. I hope more people take the time to realize what is at stake in the loss of these things.
Even from the standpoint of a consumer, you want options, do you know? You don’t like finding out that there is only one want to get something, do you? And yet we are not speaking just about losing some options here.
Ebooks could be “enough” for many readers out there, but for many it will never be, no matter how fancy gadgets become. So you can surf the Web while reading a book in an ereader: so what? Must we always allow ourselves to be so distracted?
Must reading become so impersonal and distant and susceptible to technical issues, wrapped in plastic and subject to interference, incompatibility, and battery failures?
Think of all the situations books work so well in, and not just the one-book-at-a-time scenario. Then consider how so much is lost in the electronic translation of a text.
It’s not only a transfer of words from one medium to another. The media in question are not insignificant considerations, swappable things that make no tangible differences. They directly determine how one receives and interacts with one or more texts.
Books are a proven and reliable format and far “greener” and sustainable than most electronic devices out there. Look up what goes into a tablet, an ereader, a computer, and see for yourself.
Traditional books are truly in it for the long-haul, unmatched in their endurance and dependability.
We should not abandon printed books unless we want to sacrifice a big part of ourselves, our history, our informational future, and our humanity in the process.
Books are more than books, while ebooks are, at their best, but semi-reasonable facsimiles, which will be probably good enough for some people, but never for me.
I know others feel the same and rightly prize their printed works.
Here We Go Again
Once again “THE LIBRARY IS DYING” articles seem to be coming out of the woodwork. I remember back in the 1990s when people started buying personal computers that people said the library would die; then when people got smartphones, ipods, etc the library was going to die, now people are saying that since e-books are gaining popularity means the library is going to die.
They’ve been saying for 20 years now that the library is dying yet libraries are busier than ever, circulation is increasing dramatically at many branches, more and more businesses and state agencies are sending people to the library to answer questions, and our computers have long waiting lists. I’m sure 5, 10 another 20 years from now there will still be “THE LIBRARY IS DYING” articles out there even though many libraries will remain a strong force in their communities.
Sorry, but the library is now the internet
Why go to the library when you can find everything on the internet including everything on the first posters list (job help, etc)? I haven’t been to a library in years.
Those of you who cling to old fashioned books, will be phased out by nooks, tablets and Google. I just finished war and peace on my computer. I can look up words in an instant with my virtual dictionary and barely slow the pace of my reading. I can even look up the French in the book for a translation. Those of you old-fashioned die hards will eventually have no choice. The library will go the way of the CD store and bookstore and you’ll have to buy your books at antique shops.
I do feel sorry for my friends who work at the library, but as Jack Welch put it, it’s “change or die”.
Cheer up, maybe they can convert it to a coffee house or community center 🙂
re: Sorry, but the library is now the internet
Went to the ‘internet’ the other day for storytime with my four-year-old. Didn’t work so well.
Went to the ‘internet’ the other day to ask an information expert about some good resources for starting my own home-based business. A guy named ‘John9788’ told me that I could get some tax info if I just “Google it.” Seven million results later, I’m no closer to finding authoritative info relevant to me, or my county and my or state.
Went to the ‘internet’ the other day to research some more into my family history. I found that if I pay $39.95 each month for three months, I can get into some genealogy web site.
OR
I can just go to the library…
For storytime with my kid;
To talk with a reference librarian, either in person or via live chat, to get my small biz tax info;
To access an expensive genealogy database that the library has already paid for;
Or even, yes, to check out a book, a CD, a DVD, an e-book…all kinds of things.
I’ve already helped pay for these services with my taxes. Why wouldn’t I take advantage of ALL of the things I use my library for?
I’m fine with the library being a community center. It already IS the center of MY community.
“Why go to the library when
“Why go to the library when you can find everything on the internet ”
…because you can’t find everything on the internet?
As someone who works in an academic library I continually find it amazing how many people believe that libraries are a dead entity because of the almighty Google. Part of my job is helping researchers, students and academic staff locate the material they need for their work, and I can assure you that not even a fraction of the available resources are available freely online (and the ones that are are usually not the ones you’d want to use). Those good ones that can be accessed electronically are usually available because they are *paid for* by – you guessed it – the library. When do you think ‘the internet’ is going to give you free access to hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of high-quality subscription content?
Or how about those hundreds of people I deal with each week because they need someone to show them how to search for information? How to use the computer or different computer programs? How to write an assignment? What about those people who don’t have or can’t afford internet at home? Heck, sometimes all they want is a quiet, comfortable, safe place to sit and work/study/Facebook/chat/play WoW/whatever. We can provide that for them too.
Anyone who thinks libraries are a) dying or b) only about being a book warehouse obviously haven’t set foot in a library in a long time. Just because the common wisdom would have you believe we’re dark institutions full of dusty tomes and dustier staff doesn’t make it true; libraries are vibrant, changing places, and we’re nowhere near extinction.
Will libraries stay the same? No, of course not. We’ll continue to evolve as technology, society and customer expectations do. But to write us off as irrelevant and unnecessary devalues all the hard work that we do and simply dismisses all the value that we continue to provide to millions of people around the world.
Ignorance
I work in a library system where we have electronic materials available for download… yet the library where I work, I’m never asked about them. The population that we serve just doesn’t have an interest, and that’s okay.
#1 The author of that article has absolutely no idea what a library really is if she thinks it’s all about books. Just as she stated in her article, even she was in a library for a program for her child. My library is constantly filled with people both checking out books/ dvds AND using the computers. There is a constant group of children and teens who need/want our attention, this is their place to go.
#2 Not everyone can afford electronic readers OR has any interest in them. Just because that’s the way technology is going doesn’t mean it’s going to be the end all be all of libraries.
#3 Not everyone knows how to use the technology available, some don’t even know how to use a computer. That’s what we’re here for.