I was a library junkie when I was a kid. I grew up spending my summers with the Chicago Public Library, first completing the summer reading program and then as a volunteer. I love the smell of books and browsing the shelves for a new find. I still do.
I saw the headline “Is a Bookless Library Still a Library?” on the Time website. Colleges are now creating bookless libraries with lots of seats and computers that have access to the library’s collection of electronic materials.
I suppose this was bound to happen with the advances in technology, but it poses a few great questions. What happens when a server goes down or a power outage happens? How do you access any materials? How do you archive your materials?
I’m old school and I know it. I like being able to make notes on paper and highlight things. Those techniques are what helps me write and outline the point I want to convey to others. Sure you can do all of that on the iPad and the Kindle. Some of you would probably call me a tree killer.
As I wrote in an earlier post, I still love to write drafts out on a legal pad or a journal to outline my thoughts. I couldn’t think of being in college and not having books to put notations with Post-It notes.
What do you guys think? Is a library a library without books? Or is it just a study room? Do you think that bookless libraries are going to be the new trend? Leave me a comment below or tweet me.
I don’t think that you could have a university library without books, mostly because there are still tons of specialized materials that aren’t digitized. I did a lot of Russian history papers, and none of the books that I needed access to to do my work were digitized (as of two years ago). Electronic databases are important, but until everything’s online, you can’t replace paper sources.
I agree! The next question then is how long will it take to digitize everything? And can you digitize really fragile materials? Thanks so much for your comment!
You can digitize fragile materials, but digitizing everything that’s out there takes a long time. =D
I would say ‘no’. Perhaps far, far in the future, when people don’t keep, buy or read physical books…but right now, I would feel like I wasn’t in a library at all! And I think some things, no matter what, will never really work in an electronic format.
I think libraries will gradually evolve into some format where both physical and digital books are supported. At the end of the day, there’s something important about exactly what you mention – the post-its, underlines, notes in the margins. Holding an actual book is still an experience, especially when the content is meaningful.
But I think digital has its role in books that need to be more portable, or when you need to cover wide variety of content about a subject without the depth of a lot of details. Another benefit of digital formats I think is being able to better analyze the language and its connections to other works & context from that time period.
That is the one nice thing about an ebook. Carrying around those 4,000 page books are over.
I can definitely see the benefits of going digital. An e-reader or mobile device lets you carry around a huge amount of information in a small electronic device. I have a Kindle, and I’m extremely pleased with the amount of material that’s available to me. I love the cost savings factor; I have tons of books on my Kindle, but have spent less than $10 on digital copies. My Kindle has inspired me to get into the habit of reading again.
However, as a book lover, I do feel sad that physical copies of books are probably going to be phased out in my lifetime. There’s no way that every book ever created can be converted to a digital copy, but as our world towards a more mobile, digital world, libraries will start to become obsolete.
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