Why Libraries are Important
The
digital age will wipe public bookshelves clean, and permanently end the
centuries-old era of libraries. As libraries' relevance comes into
question, librarians face an existential crisis at a time when students need
them the most. Despite their perceived obsolescence in the digital age, both
libraries and librarians are irreplaceable for many reasons. Nearly twenty
reasons, in fact. We've listed them here:
1. Everything
is Not Available on the Internet: The amazing amount of
useful information on the web has, for some, engendered the false assumption everything can be found
online. It's simply not true.
Google Books recognizes
this. That's why they take on the monolith task of digitizing millions of books
from the world's largest libraries. But even if Google does successfully
digitize the sum of human knowledge, it is unlikely that the sum of
contemporary authors and publishers will not allow their works to be freely
accessible over the internet. It is already prohibited by law to make
copyrighted books fully accessible through Google Book search.
2.
Digital Libraries are not the Internet: A fundamental
understanding of what the internet is and isn't can help clearly define the
role of a library, and why libraries are still extremely important. Online
library collections, however, are different. They typically include
materials that have been published via rigorous editorial processes and are
riddled with quantitative anaysis, instead of opinion.Types of materials
include books, journals, documents, newspapers, magazines and reports which are
digitized, stored and indexed through a limited-access database.
While
one might use the internet or a search engine to find these databases, deeper
access to them requires registration. You are still online, but you are no
longer on the internet. You are in a library.
3. The Internet isn't Free: Numerous
academic research papers, journals, and other important materials are virtually
inaccessible to someone seeking to pull them off the web for free. Rather,
access is restricted to expensive subscription accounts, which are typically
paid for by college libraries. Visiting a college library
in person or logging in to the library through your school account, is
therefore the only way to affordably access necessary archived resources.
4.
The Internet Compliments Libraries, but Doesn't Replace Them: The
internet is clearly a great resource to finding information, but it's not a
replacement for a library. There are clear advantages of libraries over the
internet for research, however the benefits of the internet, includes
"sampling public opinion", gathering "quick facts" and
pooling a wide range of ideas. Overall, the point is this: libraries are
completely different than the web. In this light, to talk about one replacing
the other begins to seem absurd.
5.
School Libraries and Librarians Improve Student Test Scores: A
2005 study of the Illinois School Libraries shows that students who
frequently visit well-stocked and well-staffed school libraries end up with
higher ACT scores and perform better on reading and writing
exams. Interestingly, the study points out that access digital technology
plays a strong role in test results, noting that "high schools with
computers that connect to library catalogs and databases average 6.2 percent
improvement on ACT scores".
6.
Libraries Aren't Just Books: Technology is integrating
itself into the library system, not bulldozing it. Pushing this trend to its
logical extreme (although it's likely not to happen), we could eventually see
libraries' entire stacks relegated to databases, and have books only accessible
digitally. So where does that leave librarians? Are they being overtaken by technology,
the timeless enemy of labor?
Technology
is integrating itself into the library system, not bulldozing it. Pushing this
trend to its logical extreme (although it's likely not go this far), we could
eventually see libraries' entire stacks relegated to databases, and only be
able to access books digitally.
7.
Mobile Devices are not the End of Books or Libraries: Predictions of
the "end of the book" are a predictable response to digitization and
other technologies, and the crystal ball of some in the pro-paper crowd seems
to also reveal a concomitant crumbling of civilization. One of the latest
dark threats to paper is e-books downloadable to mobile devices.
But
e-books are not an all-consuming transition for readers. Radio lives on despite
TV, film is still in high demand despite video, people still talk on the
telephone despite email. People who like paper books will continue to read
paper books even if mobile downloads prompt the majority of publishers to
release e-books instead of paper. After all, an immense backlog of printed
books will still be accessible to readers. The presence of the digital
library will continue to be extremely important role for college students in
their research, whether it's paper or electronically based.
8. Library Attendance isn't Falling, it's Just More
Virtual: With approximately 50,000 visitors a year, attendance at the
American History Archives at Wisconsin Historical Society has dropped 40% since
1987. This statistic, when set alone, may prove sufficient for anybody casually
predicting the Collapse of the Library. But it is only half the story. The
archives have also been digitized and placed online. Every year the library
receives 85,000 unique online visitors. The number of schools offering online
degrees is constantly on the rise as well. Many of these schools
are improving their virtual libraries by the day.
9.
Physical Libraries are Adapting to Cultural Change: Anyone
subscribing to the theories of 20th Century thinker Marshal McLuhan might
say that along with changed life patterns brought on by electronic technology,
knowledge that was once encased in books and compartmentalized by subject area
is now being liberally disseminated in an explosion of democracy, rendering
obsolete the austerity of the lonely, echoing corridors of the Library.
Interestingly McLuhan, who died in 1980, once even said: "the future of
the book is the blurb".
Indeed,
this cultural change predates widespread use of the internet. For decades
society has been seeking a more holistic understanding of the world, and
increased access to information. The search for new methods of organizing
educational structures (including libraries) has long been active. And while
libraries might not be on many peoples' "top ten cutting edge list",
they have been adapting.
Washington
State University director of libraries Virginia Steel, for example, is a
proponent of maximizing the social and interactive nature of physical
library space. Group study, art exhibits, food and coffee talking, not
whispering; this is the new library. It's not obsolete, it's just changing.
10.
Eliminating Libraries would Cut Short an Important Process of Cultural
Evolution: The library that we are most familiar with today a public or
academic institution that lends out books for free is a product of the
democratization of knowledge. In the old days, books weren't always so
affordable, and private libraries, or book clubs, were a privilege of the rich.
This started changing during the 1800's, with more public libraries popping up
as a result of government initiatives.
Libraries
began blossoming under the watch of President Franklin Roosevelt, in part as a
tool to differentiate the United States from book-burning Nazis. This increased
interest in building a more perfect, liberal society culminated in 1956 with
the Library Services Act, which introduced federal funding for the first
time.Today there are tens of thousands public libraries in the United States.
The
notion that libraries are a thing of the past and that humankind has sprouted
wings and flown into a new era of self-guided. Unfortunately, it's this same
notion that could lead to the notion of libraries as stuffy and out-of-date. In
reality, the quality of the web depends on guidance from the library model.
While moderators do have brush to clear in the new and savage cyber-scape,
librarians have trail blazed significant parts of the journey.
11.
Wisdom of Crowds is Untrustworthy, Because of the Tipping Point: The
high visibility of certain viewpoints, analysis and even facts found online
through social networking sites and wikis is engineered ideally to be the
result of objective group consensus. Google's algorithm also hinges on this
collective principle: rather than an in-house "expert" arbitrarily
deciding what resource is the most authoritative, let the web decide. Sites
with higher link popularity tend to rank higher in the search engines. The
algorithm is based on the principle that group consensus reveals a better, more
accurate analysis of reality than a single expert ever could. Writer James
Surowiecki calls this phenomenon "the wisdom of crowds."
In
a vacuum, crowds probably are very wise. But all too often we see the caveat to
James Surowiecki's crowd wisdom in Malcom Gladwell's "tipping point",
which, in this context, explains that groups are easily influenced by their
vanguard those who are the first to do something and who automatically have
extra influence, even if what they are doing is not necessarily the best idea.
The
highly social nature of the web therefore makes it highly susceptible to, for
example, sensationalized, low-quality information with the sole merit of being
popular. Libraries, in contrast, provide quality control in the form of a
stopgap. Only information that is carefully vetted is allowed in. Libraries are
likely to stay separate from the internet, even if they can be found online.
Therefore, it is extremely important that libraries remain alive and well, as a
counterpoint to the fragile populism of the web.
12.
Librarians are the Irreplaceable Counterparts to Web Moderators: Individuals
who voluntarily devote their time to moderating online forums and wikis are
playing a similar role to librarians who oversee the stacks and those who visit
the stacks, minus the Master's degree in library sciences. The chief
difference between librarians and moderators is that while the former guides
users through a collection of highly authoritative, published works, the
moderator is responsible for taking the helm as consensus is created. While the
roles are distinct, each is evolving along with the fast paced growth of the
internet and the evolving nature of libraries. Both moderators and librarians
will have a lot to learn from each other, so it is important that they both
stick around.
13.
Unlike Moderators, Librarians must Straddle the Line between Libraries and the
Internet: Admittedly, libraries are no longer both the beginning and
ending point of all scholarly research. The internet is effectively pulling
students away from the stacks and revealing a wealth of information, especially
to one who is equipped with the tools to find it. Indeed, the dream of cutting
out the middleman is possible to attain. But at what price?
Media literacy, although an extremely important asset for
scholars and researchers, is far from universal. Who is going to teach media
literacy? Many argue that librarians are the best fit to educate people about
the web. After all, web moderators are concerned primarily with the
environment which they oversee and less so with teaching web skills to
strangers. Teachers and professors are busy with their subjects and
specializations. Librarians, therefore, must be the ones who cross over into
the internet to make information more easily accessible. Instead of eliminating
the need for librarians, technology is reinforcing their validity.
14.
Library Collections Employ a Well-formulated Citation System: Books
and journals found in libraries will have been published under rigorous
guidelines of citation and accuracy and are thereby allowed into libraries'
collections. These standards are simply not imposed on websites.They can
show up in search results whether or not they provide citation. With enough
research, the accuracy of web resources often can be
determined. But it's very time consuming. Libraries make research much more
efficient.
15.
Libraries can Preserve the Book Experience: Consuming
900 pages on the intellectual history of Russia is an experience unique to the
book. In general, the book provides a focused, yet comprehensive study that
summarizes years of research by an author or team of authors who have devoted
their academic to a particular subject area.
But,
even when the internet does provide actual content, the information is
often snack-sized or the overall experience cursory a sort of quick-reference
browsing. Knowledge can be found, but the experience of delving into a book for
hundreds of pages just doesn't happen online. The preservation of stacks,
therefore, will help preserve access to this approach to learning and the more
traditional form of scholarship can continue alongside the new.
16.
Libraries are Helpful for News Archives: Libraries
continue to subscribe to and stock a vast list of newspapers, academic
journals, and trade publications, and archive the back issues. This effort may
seem humble alongside the lengthy lists of online news aggregators and
instantaneous access to articles published within the minute.
This
news cataloging can provide a number of advantages. For starters, many
publications continue to exist offline. For someone seeking a specific article
by a specific journalist, a library could yield better results even if the
publication had to be tracked down through inter-library loan.
Libraries often provide freely accessible issues of major
periodicals that would otherwise require online subscription, like many
sections of The New York Times. In addition, archives often
disappear offline, or become increasingly expensive online. This can leave
libraries with the only accessible copies.
Society
is not ready to abandon the library, and it probably won't ever be. Libraries
can adapt to social and technological changes, but they can't be replaced.
While libraries are distinct from the internet, librarians are the most suited
professionals to guide scholars and citizens toward a better understanding of
how to find valuable information online. Indeed, a lot of information is
online. But a lot is still on paper. Instead of regarding libraries as
obsolete, state and federal governments should increase funding for improved staffing
and technology. Rather than lope blindly through the digital age, guided only
by the corporate interests of web economics, society should foster a culture of
guides and guideposts. Today, more than ever, libraries and librarians are
extremely important for the preservation and improvement of our culture.
Source: http://www.collegeonline.org/library/adult-continued-education/librarians-needed.html
