Why Students check out the Web instead of library

Students in libraries
The article raises some good points, and each one of these should be addressed by every library looking to get younger people into the stacks and off the computers. Sure the Internet is convenient, I use it all the time for reasearch purposes. But I find that, with a lot of things, I turn to the Net more and more for just quick fact type stuff and not in depth.

For instance, I’ve been doing some research on fashion and fashion design. I’ve used the Internet to get some examples of the latest styles, listings of top designers, colour coordination, etc. In other words, I’ve gotten some pictures, diagrams, and lists. No website I’ve ever been to has an in depth study about fashion. For the most part, very few websites have in depth anything. I’ve noticed that you’re lucky if you get more from a website than you would from a children’s book on the same subject. Want info on planes? Sure, there’s plenty of websites on planes and you can get pictures, specs, and stuff like that. But do you need a source that actually details the history of flight, different planes, how the planes were made, what innovations are present in a plane, what theatres the plane is used in? Good luck finding all that in one place, other than a book.

And folks, if your website is too hard for a majority of your patrons to use, don’t give me this “Well, the website and the information is difficult. You have to learn to use it.” Pardon the language, but that’s bullshit. People don’t want to learn how to use something, especially when there’s things like a paper or a grade involved. They want the information, they want it now, and to hell with your pretty interface. I would rather have a text only telnet session that I can easily use than a beautiful graphical environment that’s nothing but a pain in the ass. I think it’s time that this place looked at hiring a different web developer.

And while Google is the librarian’s best friend and worst enemy, it’s nowhere near exhaustive. We all know that, because we’re librarians. We never seem to stress it enough to our patrons though that yes, there is life after Google. I’ve had screaming matches with my computer because Google isn’t finding something that should be so simple, I should’ve been able to type www.(my subject here).com.

As for fines and fees, I hate ’em. We stared doing them over two years ago and they’ve been a thorn in my butt ever since. But ya know something? I’ve yet to see a better way to get our materials back. So I can agree with these people that are upset that they got charged a fine for a book they had to have and needed all throughout their report. But I have one more question for them: Ever heard of taking notes?

Barnes and Noble’s nice, and libraries that remove the book jackets from the books need to get over themselves. People are attracted by nice jackets with pretty colours and nice art. You want them attracted to your books, stop stripping them. The nice thing about libraries is that they don’t actually have to buy the books. We need to push for the fact that, even with overdues, it’s still cheaper than buying the book.

Re:Filters don’t make mistakes
This may be a bit off topic, but the Web did help me once in such a manner…

I took a human sexuality class in college and for the term paper I did a essay on stereotypes in the adult entertainment industry. For the paper, I had a chance to interview porn star and MENSA member Asia Carrera via e-mail.

The moral of the story, you can look at porn and still get an A in a college course!