Anderson & Turpin wrote:
I'll give you an example. Remember that MPL is both a research and a popular library. I looked up Soren Kierkegaard on the internet. There were 17,201 citations. In the first 30 citations, it was a mishmash of stuff, some of very little value. Had I not known something about the field, I would have been lost. There was no reliable provenance for the citations. Luckily, I could scroll down until I found Robert L. Perkins, one of the handful of Kierkegaard scholars internationally. That gave me something to go on. However, the citations still had no context.Wizard Marks said:Wizard - Could you please send the long answer?WM: It would take a very long replay to answer this. Suffice it to say that the notion that the internet can serve all one's information needs is too simplistic for words.
Had I gone to the library, a reference librarian could have helped me wade through the do-dah to find the information. Also, shelf reading is a large part of finding a context for a particular writer (except in fiction). A library's net catalog cannot give one context. Reading the titles of books around the Kierkegaard books on the shelf in a library can give some context, particularly for the casual reader and the student wading into a new area of study.
Too, the digital divide is very wide in several areas of the city--and not just among the poor.
Also, remember 10 or 12 years ago when computer supporters were saying that within five years we would have the "paperless office?" With the internet we have more paper than ever and it looks to continue in that vein for a long time.
There is also the fact that people adapt to change, but not very swiftly unless they are forced to. MPL patrons want to come to a library, want to read actual books without the interface of a computer, palm pilot, whatever.
The Director of the San Francisco Public Library, advancing the notion of a bookless library, tossed books will ye, nil ye, and was fired. It would be a long time before many of those books would be digitalized--if ever. The people of San Francisco took it very unkindly that he had tossed the books.
Further, many of the books in libraries across the world--the Bodlean, the Bibliotech Nationale, the Vatican Library, the Library of Congress, etc. are too delicate to be subjected to digitizing without some very stringent rules of operation which have not, as yet, been developed.
Libraries don't just lend books, that have conservator responsibilities.
There are myriad other reasons, these are the ones on the top of my head.
WizardMarks, Central
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