Indiana University Media Relations News Release section announced that the Lilly Library will be home to the world’s largest collection of mechanical puzzles. Excerpt: “Puzzle enthusiast and author Jerry Slocum has announced his intention to donate his prized collection of more than 30,000 puzzles and nearly 4,000 puzzle-related books to the Lilly Library. Beginning Aug. 3, approximately 400 of the puzzles will be on display in a refurbished exhibition space named in Slocum’s honor.”
Read the full article at: IU’s Lilly Library will acquire world’s largest collection of mechanical puzzles.
Books and catalogs are less relevant
There is no doubt that the “digital age” is rendering books and catalogs not obsolete but less relevant since people have more choice and not exclusively restricted to books and libraries. So get used to it, you librarians out there, people choose what they want to use. This may be hard to take for those control-freak librarians who still cannot get over their overrated self-perception of self-importance.
Comments
Furthermore Mann is not arguing from a position of ludditism or a desire to cling to the “dying book”. On the contrary, if we read his past works, Mann praises the computer as allowing new avenues for finding information that researchers would not found otherwise. However, Mann does call for caution against digital searches taking the place of traditional methods of browsing; rather, the two are naturally complimentary.
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Re:Books and catalogs are less relevant
Yes, it is easy to deny that libraries have lost the monopoly and that there are other players in the field and doing it better in some respects.
Re:Comments
The two are naturally complimentary but in practice libraries are not forthcoming in embracing technology, they tend to be rather hostile to it, and fear technology like it was a plague.