Imminent Death of the Library?
Public-Access Computer Systems Forum
3 Messages, 174 Lines
*-----
From: k...@bluehighways.com (Karen G. Schneider)
Subject: Re: The imminent death of the library?
Ed Sperr wrote,
>One question though -- why do we have this idea that books are going to
>disappear? Think about it: books are lightweight, portable, require no
>power and are infinitely more legible than even the most advanced
>computer display. In addition, they require no special "navigation"
>skills other than basic literacy, and most all the copywrite issues
>involved in their use were worked out decades ago.
Ed, in our lives, books aren't going to disappear. We're unapologetic
bookaholics, you and I. If I remember anything from last week, it is that
I received through ILL, and promptly devoured, _Midnight in the Garden of
Good and Evil_, and as the book ended felt that particular bittersweet pang
of knowing that I will never read that book again for the first time. When
I have spare cash, it flows toward Borders or A Different Light or any
other bookseller with things I love. I would no more walk out of my house
without a book to read than I would walk out of my house wearing dirty
underwear. For me, a vacation is marked, not with, "what did I see," but
"what did I read?"
But consider this: Jane Austen and Fanny Burney did not write epic poems.
Why not? The epic poem was compact. It had a beginning, a middle, and an
end. You could carry an epic poem in your pocket. Even better, you could
memorize them and recite them to your peers. Folks understood how they
were organized and what it took to create and publish them. Sounds like a
sensible format.
But the printing press led to the novel as the digital press is leading to
still other forms. What people can do, they will. And once they can do
it, however crudely, they will force the technology to meet their needs.
The novel--oh, a remarkable form! With the printing press, a writer could
tell one very long story, and even make sport with chronology, and bring in
all kinds of characters and subplots, and introduce lengthy dialogue, and
swell pages with rhapsodic description, and the presses could handle it.
Look at prodigious Richardson, spending over a thousand pages to wrong the
ravishing of Clarissa. This was insupportable without the printing
press--and Richardson's success no doubt added a measure of pressure to the
technological advances required to support the huge industry in fiction the
19th century would see. And as for Fanny Burney--she filled a room with
paper. And do we need to ask ourselves if Austen would have written six
novels had she lived one century earlier?
Will books disappear? Well, will epic poems disappear? No. Will books
become, for the most part,anachronisms, replaced by new media you and I,
Ed, lack the vision to anticipate? Oh, I do think so--and as committed
readers, you and I should rejoice in that. As Edmund Spenser wrote, "for
all who moveth doth in change delight."
Karen G. Schneider * k...@bluehighways.com * http://www.bluehighways.com/
Cybrarian * Columnist, American Libraries
Author, The Internet Access Cookbook (e-mail Neal-S...@icm.com)
These opinions strictly mine and those of Blue Highways
*-----
From: Chris Hodge <ho...@utkux.utcc.utk.edu>
Subject: Re: The imminent death of the library?
As a biblio- and a technophile, I never have been able to understand why
people see this as an either-or black-or-white problem.
> One question though -- why do we have this idea that books are going to
> disappear? Think about it: books are lightweight, portable, require no
> power and are infinitely more legible than even the most advanced
> computer display. In addition, they require no special "navigation"
> skills other than basic literacy, and most all the copywrite issues
Whenever I hear this argument, I think, "Well, that makes sense for the
latest John Grisham, but what about something like, say, the Corpus
Inscriptionem Latinarum?" Neither lightweight, nor portable, and no
navigational tools whatsoever. A CD-ROM version would be a godsend.
> involved in their use were worked out decades ago. Not to mention the
> fact that all this comes on the cheap -- of the 11 bucks your great-
> aunt Thelma spent on her paperback John Grisham novel, mere pennies went
> to the actual printing. Most of the money went for copyediting, office
> space and to pay for Mr. Grisham's new yacht. You know what? _Those_
> costs aren't going anywhere in the digital future.
I don't understand -- I have to pay the full $11, not the cost of
printing the paperback; where are you shopping? The cost of copyediting
and office space are _not_ going up in the future? Do editors know this?
> Quick, name the three internet features that have the highest
> visibility right now. I would guess 1) Relatively unsophisticated
> search engines 2) Anything Java(tm) (which at the moment means "chat"
> applications and animated ads) 3) Multitudinous browser ad-ons that
> threaten to turn the web into just a _really_ slow version of your
> TV set.
Search engines are getting better, and the online ones are I think as
good as the card catalogs I remember; the limitation here is a human one,
IMHO, and not a machine one. As for Java, I have recently seen an
application that allows you to represent musical notation in HTML and
another one thatr allows you to discuss conference papers online; perhaps
Java is overhyped, but some of its applications are and will be
substantial ones. I've also watched a number of video conferences, and
yes, they do look like really slow versions fo TV; but radio adn TV
transmissions used to fuzzy too -- we didn't discard those technologies
either. Finally, "chat" applications are what you make of them; I for one
am quite thrilled to have the opportunity to participate in "chat"
applications and listservs, such as this one; my library doesn't offer
anything comparable to the colloquia I find online.
> Right now, the web isn't just a "library where all the books have been
> dumped in a pile on the floor", it's a library that consists almost
> solely of low-rent paperbacks (_Loose weight in 30 days!_) and
> advertising circulars.
There is junk on the Internet, and junk in the public library (ours has a
number of weight-loss books, and the patrons eat them up.) Perhaps the
ratio is lower on the Internet, but that's changing too, and to
characterize the work that groups like Project Gutenberg and Project
Libellus are engaged in as "low-rent paperbacks" is unfortunate.
> there _is_ a lot of neat stuff there, but not everything. One can't
> find everything (or even a small _subset_ of everything) on the most
> hellaciously expensive pay-per-peek fulltext database.
>
> If I want to to lean how to build a deck, check out a new mystery novel
> or do any sort of broad-based, _serious_ research, I still have to go
> to the library. This is not going to change anytime soon. Remember,
Well, I have a decent public and university library at my beck-and-call,
but they don't meet all my needs, and I say, "Thank God for Dialog" every
chance I get. And if I were isolated in some rural area, as many people
here in East Tennessee do, the Internet provides a service no library no
matter what its budget could possibly provide.
Sorry if this sounds shrill; books are not fetishes, they are tools; so
are computers. The question librarians need to ask is which tools best
meet the needs of their patrons?
Chris Hodge
*-----
From: Erik Steiner <er...@dra.com>
Subject: RE: The imminent death of the library?
Sorry, Ed - but you asked for it:
1) How to build a deck:
http://ggwww.ncook.k12.il.us/TREE/projects/s-robber/Deck/construction.html
2) "Check out" a new mystery novel:
Try http://www.amazon.com/ - they'll sell at a discount and ship FedEx...
They'll also let you know when similar novels matching your profile
become available...
3) Serious research:
Lexis / Nexis is available online, from the comfort of your private
study... albeit by telnet for now...
http://www.lexis-nexis.com/lncc/general/subscribe.html
There is also full-text archived for over 3,000 dailies and
magazines/journals - available for free...
I love books - I'm a bookaholic... My private collection doubles every
year (so in about twenty years I should have the largest collection in
the world - or something like that...) - and I don't think books will go
away - not within our lifetimes, anyway - however, one has to realize the
limitations as well as the benefits of each medium. The Web is no
Videotex...
Erik