"academics often approach books like 'sous-chefs gutting a fish'"
May 30, 2019 10:41 AM Subscribe
Buried in a slide deck about circulation statistics from Yale’s library was an unsettling fact: There has been a 64 percent decline in the number of books checked out by undergraduates from Bass Library over the past decade. Yale’s experience is not at all unique—indeed, it is commonplace. University libraries across the country, and around the world, are seeing steady, and in many cases precipitous, declines in the use of the books on their shelves.
Dan Cohen (previously) writes about the decline in university library circulation, and maybe the evolution of how libraries are used or how research is done, in The Atlantic.
Dan Cohen (previously) writes about the decline in university library circulation, and maybe the evolution of how libraries are used or how research is done, in The Atlantic.
The central library of my university system has systematically reduced the volume of floor space devoted to books in favor of study rooms, an "information commons", a coffee shop, etc. More and more books have been moved into off-site, long term storage, undermining the usefulness of shelf browsing for discovery and making those discovered online more cumbersome and time-consuming to get (their online catalog is also poorly-designed, dated-looking, and the UX for requesting a book through it laughably bad).
I'm a librarian and thus way more patient with poorly thought-out/functioning library systems than your average undergraduate, and even I find it trying - and I know we are not an outlier. The thing is, I still find print subject encyclopedias, older periodical indices, and monographs useful, and I know I'm missing material that would be helpful to me by not being able to put my hands on them in an easy and serendipitous way.
TLDR; make it clear that books are a secondary concern, don't regularly and compellingly highlight the usefulness of their content to new cohorts of users, and make them progressively harder to see and get ahold of, and this is not a surprising outcome.
posted by ryanshepard at 11:03 AM on May 30, 2019 [24 favorites]
I'm a librarian and thus way more patient with poorly thought-out/functioning library systems than your average undergraduate, and even I find it trying - and I know we are not an outlier. The thing is, I still find print subject encyclopedias, older periodical indices, and monographs useful, and I know I'm missing material that would be helpful to me by not being able to put my hands on them in an easy and serendipitous way.
TLDR; make it clear that books are a secondary concern, don't regularly and compellingly highlight the usefulness of their content to new cohorts of users, and make them progressively harder to see and get ahold of, and this is not a surprising outcome.
posted by ryanshepard at 11:03 AM on May 30, 2019 [24 favorites]
E-books are books. Complaining that people are reading fewer codices and more e-books is like a medieval complaining that people were reading more codices and fewer scrolls.
You can't fault STEM students for reading fewer books and more articles. STEM continually revises its body of knowledge, and only articles can keep up.
I would rather have books on shelves than collaborative study rooms, because I can't imagine why anyone would want to study collaboratively, but evidently people do.
posted by ckridge at 11:04 AM on May 30, 2019 [27 favorites]
You can't fault STEM students for reading fewer books and more articles. STEM continually revises its body of knowledge, and only articles can keep up.
I would rather have books on shelves than collaborative study rooms, because I can't imagine why anyone would want to study collaboratively, but evidently people do.
posted by ckridge at 11:04 AM on May 30, 2019 [27 favorites]
Reminds me when I got my first syllabus for a grad seminar. There was a topic and 6 books listed which we were to "read relevant portions of." I asked the guy next to me how we were supposed to read all this. He gave me the 1000-yd stare and said "You've got to gut books. You just have to gut books." I was then told read the intro, the conclusion and the chapters pertaining to the subject like a demon.
posted by Ironmouth at 11:06 AM on May 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
posted by Ironmouth at 11:06 AM on May 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
I was proud that when I was writing my senior thesis, I almost hit the undergrad borrowing limit of 100 books (and I would have, if I hadn't had to keep returning books that grad students placed on hold). This was partially because I took a kitchen-sink approach, where I'd go to the stacks and grab anything that looked like it might be useful (obviously, not everything was). I could do this online to some extent, because I could sort by call number online, but only in person could I actually pick up the books and thumb through them.
I also made extensive use of HathiTrust and the library's collection of ebooks. HathiTrust is great and I love it, but the ebooks kind of sucked -- because it's a license rather than a book, there were often major restrictions on access. The worst was when a book could only be viewed in-browser by one patron at a time. Then it's functionally no better than trying to view a book someone else has checked out, and in fact kind of worse, because at least we were allowed to photocopy books -- you can't do that with an ebook, so find what you need while you can get it.
Plus, I just find it harder to thumb through an ebook: I can weave my fingers into the pages of a book and instantly consult the index and a couple different spots, but with an ebook, you have to go back and forth, waiting for the page to load every time. It might sound minor, but it really made it much, much harder for me to parse the information. Reading an ebook novel for pleasure can be a very different experience than trying to use one for academic reference.
I think it makes sense to increase seating in libraries, but I worry about pulling stuff from shelves. I don't know what percentage of my university library's collection was housed off-site, but it was a barrier to have to request something online and wait a few days for it to show up. If you had to do that with a substantial number of books, it could be a real problem. Good cataloging goes a long way, but I'm sure I've missed relevant material because it just wasn't physically there when I looked in the section.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 11:09 AM on May 30, 2019 [9 favorites]
I also made extensive use of HathiTrust and the library's collection of ebooks. HathiTrust is great and I love it, but the ebooks kind of sucked -- because it's a license rather than a book, there were often major restrictions on access. The worst was when a book could only be viewed in-browser by one patron at a time. Then it's functionally no better than trying to view a book someone else has checked out, and in fact kind of worse, because at least we were allowed to photocopy books -- you can't do that with an ebook, so find what you need while you can get it.
Plus, I just find it harder to thumb through an ebook: I can weave my fingers into the pages of a book and instantly consult the index and a couple different spots, but with an ebook, you have to go back and forth, waiting for the page to load every time. It might sound minor, but it really made it much, much harder for me to parse the information. Reading an ebook novel for pleasure can be a very different experience than trying to use one for academic reference.
I think it makes sense to increase seating in libraries, but I worry about pulling stuff from shelves. I don't know what percentage of my university library's collection was housed off-site, but it was a barrier to have to request something online and wait a few days for it to show up. If you had to do that with a substantial number of books, it could be a real problem. Good cataloging goes a long way, but I'm sure I've missed relevant material because it just wasn't physically there when I looked in the section.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 11:09 AM on May 30, 2019 [9 favorites]
Oh yeah, and if the field is relevant to my anecdote, this was when I was an anthropology major consulting mostly Black history books. I imagine some fields, or in history, some areas or periods, are better represented online than others.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 11:13 AM on May 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 11:13 AM on May 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
I can weave my fingers into the pages of a book and instantly consult the index and a couple different spots, but with an ebook, you have to go back and forth, waiting for the page to load every time.
Yes. There are a prodigious number of hand skills that go with academic reading. One gets as dextrous as a card sharp cutting a deck. Much of the same effect can be gotten in ebooks by mindful bookmarking and using the search function to search for key phrases.
posted by ckridge at 11:17 AM on May 30, 2019 [4 favorites]
Yes. There are a prodigious number of hand skills that go with academic reading. One gets as dextrous as a card sharp cutting a deck. Much of the same effect can be gotten in ebooks by mindful bookmarking and using the search function to search for key phrases.
posted by ckridge at 11:17 AM on May 30, 2019 [4 favorites]
So here, just for the sake of discussion, is Yale's ORBIS online catalog, which has all the visual appeal and - as far as I can tell as a non-credentialed user - concern for UX as the one at my home institution. Bleh.
posted by ryanshepard at 11:19 AM on May 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by ryanshepard at 11:19 AM on May 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
all the visual appeal and - as far as I can tell as a non-credentialed user - concern for UX
Heh. I am sure your complaint is valid, but from my point of view that sounds like someone complaining that a hammer hasn't enough visual appeal or a good enough user experience.
posted by ckridge at 11:25 AM on May 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
Heh. I am sure your complaint is valid, but from my point of view that sounds like someone complaining that a hammer hasn't enough visual appeal or a good enough user experience.
posted by ckridge at 11:25 AM on May 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
The last time I had to go to MIT's engineering library to look something up, it was one equation along with two graphs and 3 paragraphs, in a 500 page textbook. Note I did not check the book out. I just copied what I needed by the shelf and reshelved it.
It was better than finding the same material online: the librarians had already done some work deciding that book merited placement on that shelf, and that a lot of dross did not. And once I walked over to that shelf, any random browsing I did there was bound to be productive and related to my visit.
But: I had to travel there in person during business hours. If that same book was available and searchable on a legal or pirated ebook site, I would not have gone there. Online is just too easy, even though it means trawling databases and wading past a lot of material that would neither merit nor receive the honor of purchase and placement in a college library.
posted by ocschwar at 11:39 AM on May 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
It was better than finding the same material online: the librarians had already done some work deciding that book merited placement on that shelf, and that a lot of dross did not. And once I walked over to that shelf, any random browsing I did there was bound to be productive and related to my visit.
But: I had to travel there in person during business hours. If that same book was available and searchable on a legal or pirated ebook site, I would not have gone there. Online is just too easy, even though it means trawling databases and wading past a lot of material that would neither merit nor receive the honor of purchase and placement in a college library.
posted by ocschwar at 11:39 AM on May 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
Heh. I am sure your complaint is valid, but from my point of view that sounds like someone complaining that a hammer hasn't enough visual appeal or a good enough user experience.
I used to teach in-person library instruction classes to undergraduates, and could see the looks of disdain on their faces when I showed them our library catalog, which looks and operates as if it was designed in the late 90s (which it was).
There is a good body of UX research that suggests that, for many users, attractive, contemporary-looking page design is an important factor in whether they will see a site as useful, credible, and worthy of spending time and effort on.
Librarians have traditionally ignored this in site design, and tolerated it from our vendors. It makes a difference.
posted by ryanshepard at 11:41 AM on May 30, 2019 [25 favorites]
I used to teach in-person library instruction classes to undergraduates, and could see the looks of disdain on their faces when I showed them our library catalog, which looks and operates as if it was designed in the late 90s (which it was).
There is a good body of UX research that suggests that, for many users, attractive, contemporary-looking page design is an important factor in whether they will see a site as useful, credible, and worthy of spending time and effort on.
Librarians have traditionally ignored this in site design, and tolerated it from our vendors. It makes a difference.
posted by ryanshepard at 11:41 AM on May 30, 2019 [25 favorites]
I've been in my research field for 15 years, and one of the biggest things that's changed is the time it takes to do a literature review as a result of electronic access to journal articles. It's not uncommon to need access to 50-100 different articles to write a single article and 200-300 for a grant.* When I started out, maybe 2/3 of the articles I needed were online. For the rest, I'd take a trip to the library, and usually spend an entire afternoon there once every week or two, finding the journal volumes I needed and usually scanning the relevant pages. Although libraries are lovely and I certainly didn't mind being there, it took a LOT of time that could have been dedicated to the actual process of reading the articles, writing the paper, etc.
These days, I can find just about every article I need online thanks to my university affiliation, so I typically write the literature review sections of my papers in a day or two. I can also do a quick and thorough check of whether someone has already done the study I'm interested in, rather than just looking into the most obvious leads because of the time it would take to track them down, or skipping a paper because someone else checked out the volume. It helps the whole process of science go faster and be less redundant, which is in the public interest.
*Many of them are false leads and don't make it into the citation list in the final version
posted by quiet coyote at 11:44 AM on May 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
These days, I can find just about every article I need online thanks to my university affiliation, so I typically write the literature review sections of my papers in a day or two. I can also do a quick and thorough check of whether someone has already done the study I'm interested in, rather than just looking into the most obvious leads because of the time it would take to track them down, or skipping a paper because someone else checked out the volume. It helps the whole process of science go faster and be less redundant, which is in the public interest.
*Many of them are false leads and don't make it into the citation list in the final version
posted by quiet coyote at 11:44 AM on May 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
I am the library person for my small university dept. My institution buys e-books as the default option where one is available (or the licence is crap). I reckon they probably account for about 35% of our purchases now, so discounting them from the stats is quite misleading
posted by biffa at 11:54 AM on May 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
posted by biffa at 11:54 AM on May 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
" I know I'm missing material that would be helpful to me by not being able to put my hands on them in an easy and serendipitous way. "
John Hope Franklin, the eminent African-American historian who earned a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1941, related a story along these lines from when he was researching his Ph.D. thesis on African-American history (which basically jumpstarted the field as an academic concern). He had to go to a lot of libraries and archives in the South to get what he needed, and those libraries were all segregated. Some had never allowed a black scholar in before, but grudgingly allowed the Harvard student in because his mentors pulled strings to make it happen. Usually he was forced to use a separate, segregated room, or even a closet, so he wouldn't be working in the same rooms as white grad students. Anyway, there was one particular library he was at where, in the fashion of the times, you would look a book up in the card catalog, give a slip of paper with the book's information on it to a page, and a page would go fetch it from the stacks. The scholars themselves were not allowed in the stacks.
Well, this was a problem, the library's director awkwardly told Franklin, because some of the administrators at the all-white university were objecting to the white undergrad student pages fetching and carrying for a black man, and would Franklin mind terribly fetching his own books? Franklin was like "okay, I guess" but was secretly delighted because he got to go into the stacks and browse for his own books.
Everything went swimmingly for the racist administrators, right up until some of the white grad students figured out Franklin was being sent to fetch his own books from the stacks, and an uproar ensued where all the white grad students demanded they be allowed to fetch their own books TOO, because the administration might care a whole lot about race-mixing and proper roles for different races, but the scholars JUST WANTED TO BROWSE THE BOOKS IN PERSON. They were forced to let all the grad students fetch their own books and browse the stacks (undergrads still had to use pages), and the other grad students just decided Franklin could sit in their study room in gratitude for his stack-busting, and the administration decided not to fight it; Franklin would say he figured they decided that it was easier to let him sit in the white study area for two months until he moved on, than to attempt to kick him out and see what the grad students did THIS time.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 12:08 PM on May 30, 2019 [102 favorites]
John Hope Franklin, the eminent African-American historian who earned a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1941, related a story along these lines from when he was researching his Ph.D. thesis on African-American history (which basically jumpstarted the field as an academic concern). He had to go to a lot of libraries and archives in the South to get what he needed, and those libraries were all segregated. Some had never allowed a black scholar in before, but grudgingly allowed the Harvard student in because his mentors pulled strings to make it happen. Usually he was forced to use a separate, segregated room, or even a closet, so he wouldn't be working in the same rooms as white grad students. Anyway, there was one particular library he was at where, in the fashion of the times, you would look a book up in the card catalog, give a slip of paper with the book's information on it to a page, and a page would go fetch it from the stacks. The scholars themselves were not allowed in the stacks.
Well, this was a problem, the library's director awkwardly told Franklin, because some of the administrators at the all-white university were objecting to the white undergrad student pages fetching and carrying for a black man, and would Franklin mind terribly fetching his own books? Franklin was like "okay, I guess" but was secretly delighted because he got to go into the stacks and browse for his own books.
Everything went swimmingly for the racist administrators, right up until some of the white grad students figured out Franklin was being sent to fetch his own books from the stacks, and an uproar ensued where all the white grad students demanded they be allowed to fetch their own books TOO, because the administration might care a whole lot about race-mixing and proper roles for different races, but the scholars JUST WANTED TO BROWSE THE BOOKS IN PERSON. They were forced to let all the grad students fetch their own books and browse the stacks (undergrads still had to use pages), and the other grad students just decided Franklin could sit in their study room in gratitude for his stack-busting, and the administration decided not to fight it; Franklin would say he figured they decided that it was easier to let him sit in the white study area for two months until he moved on, than to attempt to kick him out and see what the grad students did THIS time.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 12:08 PM on May 30, 2019 [102 favorites]
I would rather have books on shelves than collaborative study rooms, because I can't imagine why anyone would want to study collaboratively, but evidently people do.
Not sure about other campuses, but I know at MIT the death of the computer lab has freed up more than enough space for collaborative study rooms and solo study carrels. No need to nip at the libraries.
posted by ocschwar at 12:25 PM on May 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
Not sure about other campuses, but I know at MIT the death of the computer lab has freed up more than enough space for collaborative study rooms and solo study carrels. No need to nip at the libraries.
posted by ocschwar at 12:25 PM on May 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
The last time I had to go to MIT's engineering library to look something up, it was one equation along with two graphs and 3 paragraphs, in a 500 page textbook. Note I did not check the book out. I just copied what I needed by the shelf and reshelved it.
Many libraries also track in-library use for this very reason as many students/patrons doing research don't need to check the resource out of the library. For the sake of our stats, please put them on the reshelving location and not on the shelves themselves. It's not because we worry about patrons putting the books in the wrong place (but yes, that's a concern too) but because that also improves stats.
posted by acidnova at 12:26 PM on May 30, 2019 [15 favorites]
Many libraries also track in-library use for this very reason as many students/patrons doing research don't need to check the resource out of the library. For the sake of our stats, please put them on the reshelving location and not on the shelves themselves. It's not because we worry about patrons putting the books in the wrong place (but yes, that's a concern too) but because that also improves stats.
posted by acidnova at 12:26 PM on May 30, 2019 [15 favorites]
The NC State Hunt Library represents one (immediate) future for academic libraries. We have a robotic book storage system that stores around 2 million books in 1/9th the space of open stacks, but can deliver a requested book in about 5 minutes (and you can shelf browse it from the comfort of your office). The building itself is a mix of all sorts of different collaborative and individual study spaces, with large rooms set aside for data visualization, immersive presentations, and virtual reality. I work in the much smaller branch at the veterinary school, and we recently transferred a huge chunk of our bound journals to the bookBot for long term storage to open up more collaborative spaces.
posted by Rock Steady at 12:35 PM on May 30, 2019 [9 favorites]
posted by Rock Steady at 12:35 PM on May 30, 2019 [9 favorites]
I use the library constantly but seldom spend any time there and never browse the stacks. I just request the book from the website and stop in for a minute to pick it up when they notify me that it's ready. Or I just borrow electronic books and read them on my phone.
posted by octothorpe at 12:43 PM on May 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by octothorpe at 12:43 PM on May 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
you can shelf browse it from the comfort of your office
That shelf-browse feature is pretty sweet.
posted by grouse at 12:45 PM on May 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
That shelf-browse feature is pretty sweet.
posted by grouse at 12:45 PM on May 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
When I was in university, and had a project to do, I would start with the CARD CATALOG, physical cards, one card per book, to look up a relevant title, subject, author, and then use its call number to find the place in the stacks where similar books could be found. After a freshman year of crawling through the stacks, I had a good mental map of the library, and many times just headed into the stacks to see what I could find. Serendipity was the rule. There was nothing digital. Browsing and exploring were easy. Discovery was commonplace. I still crawl through the stacks at the public library. And bookstores, which are disappearing. People raised in the now ubiquitous digital world, which tells them what they would like, where you have to know what you want before you can search for it, and delivers electronic texts that have been shown to be not a good way to acquire knowledge, have missed out. And because of their abandonment of physical texts, I'm loosing that world I like to explore and discover. Maybe that's why my apartment resembles a library with it's thousands of books.
posted by njohnson23 at 12:46 PM on May 30, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by njohnson23 at 12:46 PM on May 30, 2019 [5 favorites]
That shelf-browse feature is pretty sweet.
It's really sweet because it is a notional "shelf" that actually combines items from all of our branches as well as online materials. This "shelf" features books that are physically located in three different spaces alongside e-books.
posted by Rock Steady at 12:51 PM on May 30, 2019 [7 favorites]
It's really sweet because it is a notional "shelf" that actually combines items from all of our branches as well as online materials. This "shelf" features books that are physically located in three different spaces alongside e-books.
posted by Rock Steady at 12:51 PM on May 30, 2019 [7 favorites]
because I can't imagine why anyone would want to study collaboratively
"Study collaboratively" was a euphemism for "break the homework problem set up into pieces and each work on one or two problems, then copy off each other", when I was in undergrad. I doubt that has changed substantially.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:53 PM on May 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
"Study collaboratively" was a euphemism for "break the homework problem set up into pieces and each work on one or two problems, then copy off each other", when I was in undergrad. I doubt that has changed substantially.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:53 PM on May 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
I wonder how much smartphones have been a part of reducing checkouts. In my own home, I have pulled a book from the shelf, taken a picture of the page or two that I wanted to look at, and immediately reshelved it (and Google Drive will OCR the page for me). I'm absolutely certain I would've checked out fewer books when I was an undergraduate, had it been that easy to make a copy.
posted by ddbeck at 1:15 PM on May 30, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by ddbeck at 1:15 PM on May 30, 2019 [5 favorites]
Something that may be contributing some is that many older books have been scanned and are available online at places like archive.org. Another contributer is being able to readily buy older books at reasonable prices at sites such as abebooks. This has reduced my trips to the research library. I have spent days just copying stuff at the research library in the past that I now have access to from my desk.
There are still the books that are in copyright and cost too much to buy, which requires a trip to the research library or a request through inter-library loan from the public library. I don't have check-out privileges at the University of Washington Suzzalo library anyway, so I just bought a book scanner so that I can quickly scan what I need and look at it at home. Just because a book isn't checked out doesn't mean it isn't being used. Libraries need a different mechanism than a count of check-outs to measure their use.
posted by Xoc at 1:18 PM on May 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
There are still the books that are in copyright and cost too much to buy, which requires a trip to the research library or a request through inter-library loan from the public library. I don't have check-out privileges at the University of Washington Suzzalo library anyway, so I just bought a book scanner so that I can quickly scan what I need and look at it at home. Just because a book isn't checked out doesn't mean it isn't being used. Libraries need a different mechanism than a count of check-outs to measure their use.
posted by Xoc at 1:18 PM on May 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
Faculty are the drivers of students' academic behavior. If they're not assigning research papers or have gone full case method, then students have little need for anything outside the materials in the syllabus.
When I was an academic librarian, I saw the writing on the wall - the library is becoming a commons, a place to work, sure, but not the storehouse of knowledge it once was. Faculty were not assigning the research papers we grew up with, and when they did, students looked increasingly to online sources or the custom textbook the professor assembled. It would sometimes take a week for a single cart to be filled enough to be taken up for reshelving.
When the administration would come by they would see a building full of students, which is great, but they wouldn't see many of those students in the stacks. We were an urban campus and every square foot had value, so the collection lost out.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 1:20 PM on May 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
When I was an academic librarian, I saw the writing on the wall - the library is becoming a commons, a place to work, sure, but not the storehouse of knowledge it once was. Faculty were not assigning the research papers we grew up with, and when they did, students looked increasingly to online sources or the custom textbook the professor assembled. It would sometimes take a week for a single cart to be filled enough to be taken up for reshelving.
When the administration would come by they would see a building full of students, which is great, but they wouldn't see many of those students in the stacks. We were an urban campus and every square foot had value, so the collection lost out.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 1:20 PM on May 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
I had a temp job in a University undergraduate library 20+ years ago, and even then, the students seemed to expect that everything relevant could be found online. In 1998, that was very much not the case; there were fields, like Health Sciences, where many of the journals were available online, but certainly they were the exception, and, of course, books were even less available as e-books then.
When I was an academic librarian, I saw the writing on the wall - the library is becoming a commons, a place to work, sure, but not the storehouse of knowledge it once was
That library where I worked has since been renovated, and, yeah, at least half the stack space is gone, converted to computer labs or study areas.
posted by thelonius at 1:28 PM on May 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
When I was an academic librarian, I saw the writing on the wall - the library is becoming a commons, a place to work, sure, but not the storehouse of knowledge it once was
That library where I worked has since been renovated, and, yeah, at least half the stack space is gone, converted to computer labs or study areas.
posted by thelonius at 1:28 PM on May 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
robocop - I'm not familiar with case method but have googled. Why does it involve less book use?
posted by lokta at 1:30 PM on May 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by lokta at 1:30 PM on May 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
Case method usually entails a dossier prepared for you. Whether or not you need to look outside that to complete the assignment depends on approach.
Relatively recently, I was in Ann Arbor with a little time to kill and stopped in at the UGLI (now called something else I can't remember) to do a little work. I was amazed and, frankly, appalled to discover that there was apparently nowhere left on the entire first floor where you could work quietly. It was all collaborative spaces and maker spaces, and quite the cacophony. Keep in mind that there is nowhere else you can go for guaranteed peace and quiet on campus.
If that's the future of libraries, count me out.
posted by praemunire at 2:33 PM on May 30, 2019 [7 favorites]
Relatively recently, I was in Ann Arbor with a little time to kill and stopped in at the UGLI (now called something else I can't remember) to do a little work. I was amazed and, frankly, appalled to discover that there was apparently nowhere left on the entire first floor where you could work quietly. It was all collaborative spaces and maker spaces, and quite the cacophony. Keep in mind that there is nowhere else you can go for guaranteed peace and quiet on campus.
If that's the future of libraries, count me out.
posted by praemunire at 2:33 PM on May 30, 2019 [7 favorites]
After coming back into research after a ~20-year gap, when I found out what I could access with JSTOR, I literally yelled. It would have been game-changing for me, ca. '95-99. I have since found out about LibGen and bought myself a portable wand scanner for anything else that I'd need.
When I was in university, and had a project to do, I would start with the CARD CATALOG, physical cards, one card per book ...
I recently had the experience of describing, to an undergrad, a serial bibliography. When we got into it, I let slip the phrase 'mine the bibliography', and she stopped me. I had to then explain how to actually use a bibliography, and how to continue the chain of inquiry on into those work's citations, and so on, etc. Apparently no one had ever told her about the exploratory aspect of the citation phenomenon - only the proof-and-attribution aspect, and she'd always assumed it had to do with copyright lawsuits. I didn't weep, but I wanted to. She was nonplussed by the whole thing, and said it sounded 'exhausting and tedious'.
posted by eclectist at 2:44 PM on May 30, 2019 [15 favorites]
When I was in university, and had a project to do, I would start with the CARD CATALOG, physical cards, one card per book ...
I recently had the experience of describing, to an undergrad, a serial bibliography. When we got into it, I let slip the phrase 'mine the bibliography', and she stopped me. I had to then explain how to actually use a bibliography, and how to continue the chain of inquiry on into those work's citations, and so on, etc. Apparently no one had ever told her about the exploratory aspect of the citation phenomenon - only the proof-and-attribution aspect, and she'd always assumed it had to do with copyright lawsuits. I didn't weep, but I wanted to. She was nonplussed by the whole thing, and said it sounded 'exhausting and tedious'.
posted by eclectist at 2:44 PM on May 30, 2019 [15 favorites]
A library without browsing is an invitation to narrow-minded, utilitarian mediocrity.
posted by Twang at 3:22 PM on May 30, 2019 [12 favorites]
posted by Twang at 3:22 PM on May 30, 2019 [12 favorites]
We have reached the point where printing something should no longer be the default but must instead be justified. New books, and journals, and monographs should only be printed for good reason, and "Professor Y is a sixty year old technophobe" doesn’t count.
Compare with the physical office memo, which is still clinging to life but has all but been replaced with email. When email first arrived there were years of stories about HR rejecting it as impersonal, or secretaries who had to print their computerphobe boss’s email out, but we all seem to have adjusted. It turns out people can read screens just fine.
Research libraries should be leading the way towards digital reference world. As is pointed out in the article virtually no one wants an entire book from a research library: they want a particular table, or a chapter here and there, or a single page with a single equation. "Dead tree" editions are an extremely wasteful way to provide that.
Finally, speaking of dead trees there is a real cost to filling libraries with wood pulp. 4 billion trees per year (2.47 million trees a day) are harvested to provide paper to the world. As lovely and tactile as physical books can be they are part of a real and pressing environmental problem. A solution exists in the form of digital texts and it’s time that they become the regular way to publish and store information.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 3:24 PM on May 30, 2019 [5 favorites]
Compare with the physical office memo, which is still clinging to life but has all but been replaced with email. When email first arrived there were years of stories about HR rejecting it as impersonal, or secretaries who had to print their computerphobe boss’s email out, but we all seem to have adjusted. It turns out people can read screens just fine.
Research libraries should be leading the way towards digital reference world. As is pointed out in the article virtually no one wants an entire book from a research library: they want a particular table, or a chapter here and there, or a single page with a single equation. "Dead tree" editions are an extremely wasteful way to provide that.
Finally, speaking of dead trees there is a real cost to filling libraries with wood pulp. 4 billion trees per year (2.47 million trees a day) are harvested to provide paper to the world. As lovely and tactile as physical books can be they are part of a real and pressing environmental problem. A solution exists in the form of digital texts and it’s time that they become the regular way to publish and store information.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 3:24 PM on May 30, 2019 [5 favorites]
I am a middle-aged library science student and very few of my younger classmates browse the shelves. They know what book they want, they put a hold on it online, and pick it up and leave. They're not interested in exploring the shelves. A lot of them can't, because they are online students in another state and all of their research is done online, with some trips to local libraries (we want to work in libraries, after all). I wonder how many of those complaining Yale students actually take books out; if more if them did, there would be fewer books taken from the shelves and put into storage.
posted by ceejaytee at 3:26 PM on May 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by ceejaytee at 3:26 PM on May 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
I used to teach in-person library instruction classes to undergraduates, and could see the looks of disdain on their faces when I showed them our library catalog, which looks and operates as if it was designed in the late 90s (which it was).
There is a good body of UX research that suggests that, for many users, attractive, contemporary-looking page design is an important factor in whether they will see a site as useful, credible, and worthy of spending time and effort on.
I have a soft spot in my heart for the absolutely terrible card catalog computers I used as a kid in the mid 90s, which were monochrome green and probably from the mid 80s themselves. Objectively terrible, but I'd get a kick out of stumbling across one again in the wild.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 3:40 PM on May 30, 2019 [4 favorites]
Browsing shelves is a skill, but browsing interfiled virtual shelves of two or three libraries at once, switching into the catalog to look at books' subject headings, and ducking onto the web to look for reviews and excerpts is also a skill.
posted by ckridge at 3:47 PM on May 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by ckridge at 3:47 PM on May 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
As is pointed out in the article virtually no one wants an entire book from a research library: they want a particular table, or a chapter here and there, or a single page with a single equation.
This is not really accurate. If you are writing an article with a narrow focus, yes, you may not need more. If you are a humanities graduate student being trained in the process of scholarship, you need to read most or all of quite a few books. Which is...one of the main functions of a university.
posted by praemunire at 3:59 PM on May 30, 2019 [11 favorites]
This is not really accurate. If you are writing an article with a narrow focus, yes, you may not need more. If you are a humanities graduate student being trained in the process of scholarship, you need to read most or all of quite a few books. Which is...one of the main functions of a university.
posted by praemunire at 3:59 PM on May 30, 2019 [11 favorites]
I have a soft spot in my heart for the absolutely terrible card catalog computers I used as a kid in the mid 90s, which were monochrome green and probably from the mid 80s themselves.
I covered many a youthful expense coding card-catalog cards into the database used by my undergraduate university. Indeed, I discovered the primary sources for my senior thesis that way. I believe after I graduated they figured out ways to capture the information through scan.
posted by praemunire at 4:02 PM on May 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
I covered many a youthful expense coding card-catalog cards into the database used by my undergraduate university. Indeed, I discovered the primary sources for my senior thesis that way. I believe after I graduated they figured out ways to capture the information through scan.
posted by praemunire at 4:02 PM on May 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
You can't fault STEM students for reading fewer books and more articles. STEM continually revises its body of knowledge, and only articles can keep up.
It’s really more that STEM research can usually be described at article length while Social Sciences and Humanities need a lot more room to provide context since variables can’t be so easily pinned down. Regardless, I keep trying to get my STEM acquisitions budget moved out of books as much as possible, but it’s slow going.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:03 PM on May 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
It’s really more that STEM research can usually be described at article length while Social Sciences and Humanities need a lot more room to provide context since variables can’t be so easily pinned down. Regardless, I keep trying to get my STEM acquisitions budget moved out of books as much as possible, but it’s slow going.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:03 PM on May 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
Put me down as one who would like to see physical collections limited mostly to rare/antique books that are valuable objects on their own merits, and stuff that is, or can be, still in print should be in e-format. It’s just so much more accessible to practically everyone to have text in digital format. It’s easier to cross-reference, easier to store, easier to adjust the actual text in order to accommodate vision-impaired, etc. And if one really must have a printed copy, a copy can be printed. But I agree, it shouldn’t be the default. It’s very wasteful of paper, space, and the labor required to maintain them.
For my own personal experience, I graduated HS in 1991 and went to college immediately afterward, as one does. I dropped out 4 years later, but returned in 2013 to finish my degree, and graduated in 2016. The comparison with how ridiculously easy it was to perform research, obtain textbooks and haul them around, just blew my mind. I doubt I spent $300 in total in the 3 years (going half time) of my bachelor completion, unlike my 1990s self who easily spent that much per semester, not to mention not being able to sell them back because college bookstores are a fucking rip-off. My 2010s self only had to buy a few of my texts; the rest were e-books and most of those were rented for the duration of my term. And I didn’t have to break my back hauling them around, either, because I downloaded them onto my iPad.
I can appreciate the nostalgia and the physical association one can have with a paper book, but even as a voracious reader myself, I can still think of only a handful of books that are so valuable to me that I insist on keeping my hard copies (e.g. I have a couple first editions by my favorite author). The rest has all been quintessential mass-market fare and is just as well served by my Kindle as it would be in a paperback that wouldn’t survive a dip in the tub.
posted by Autumnheart at 4:30 PM on May 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
For my own personal experience, I graduated HS in 1991 and went to college immediately afterward, as one does. I dropped out 4 years later, but returned in 2013 to finish my degree, and graduated in 2016. The comparison with how ridiculously easy it was to perform research, obtain textbooks and haul them around, just blew my mind. I doubt I spent $300 in total in the 3 years (going half time) of my bachelor completion, unlike my 1990s self who easily spent that much per semester, not to mention not being able to sell them back because college bookstores are a fucking rip-off. My 2010s self only had to buy a few of my texts; the rest were e-books and most of those were rented for the duration of my term. And I didn’t have to break my back hauling them around, either, because I downloaded them onto my iPad.
I can appreciate the nostalgia and the physical association one can have with a paper book, but even as a voracious reader myself, I can still think of only a handful of books that are so valuable to me that I insist on keeping my hard copies (e.g. I have a couple first editions by my favorite author). The rest has all been quintessential mass-market fare and is just as well served by my Kindle as it would be in a paperback that wouldn’t survive a dip in the tub.
posted by Autumnheart at 4:30 PM on May 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
I don’t know. I think STEM materials work well in electronic format, because they chunk well. Longer form research in other disciplines are more cumbersome, as checking back and rereading are much more cumbersome in an electronic format.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:52 PM on May 30, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:52 PM on May 30, 2019 [5 favorites]
My partner reminded me recently that libraries LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE when people check out a ton of books,
As it happens, I get a bunch of stuff from Yale (and elsewhere) on a pretty regular basis, and am unspeakably grateful that as an outsider I am able to do so.
E-books are books.
And not so available for outsiders.
posted by BWA at 4:53 PM on May 30, 2019 [5 favorites]
As it happens, I get a bunch of stuff from Yale (and elsewhere) on a pretty regular basis, and am unspeakably grateful that as an outsider I am able to do so.
E-books are books.
And not so available for outsiders.
posted by BWA at 4:53 PM on May 30, 2019 [5 favorites]
I find hyperlinked references massively, massively easier than footnotes, and about a billion times better than endnotes. If we're basing the appeal of books on that, I'm not a huge fan.
On the other hand, the fact that moving to e-books generally does also involve a shift in rights management, as BWA mentions, seems like an important thing to acknowledge.
posted by sagc at 5:02 PM on May 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
On the other hand, the fact that moving to e-books generally does also involve a shift in rights management, as BWA mentions, seems like an important thing to acknowledge.
posted by sagc at 5:02 PM on May 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
My regional comprehensive doesn't have a "research" library, although it's extremely good for one of its type, and the eBook and journal subscriptions improve our access to scholarship immensely. However, for what I write about, I have to rely on GoogleBooks, archive.org, and HathiTrust, plus the occasional trip to the UK--and my own personal library. (I do try not to duplicate books we have in the library collection, but...we don't have a lot of the relevant books in the library collection.)
Teaching with electronic texts is often extremely difficult, because students are all using different technology (their phones, their tablets, their laptops) and that has unfortunate knock-on effects for pagination. Everyone may be reading the same text, but they are literally not all on the same page--so they have to punch in a search every time I say, "now, let's discuss this song that Rochester is singing to Jane Eyre." And the big free electronic libraries are clearly not much fun to use on a phone...which is a problem when more and more students are using their phones to access material.
posted by thomas j wise at 5:14 PM on May 30, 2019 [5 favorites]
Teaching with electronic texts is often extremely difficult, because students are all using different technology (their phones, their tablets, their laptops) and that has unfortunate knock-on effects for pagination. Everyone may be reading the same text, but they are literally not all on the same page--so they have to punch in a search every time I say, "now, let's discuss this song that Rochester is singing to Jane Eyre." And the big free electronic libraries are clearly not much fun to use on a phone...which is a problem when more and more students are using their phones to access material.
posted by thomas j wise at 5:14 PM on May 30, 2019 [5 favorites]
It’s just so much more accessible to practically everyone to have text in digital format.
Well, it can be, when accessibility isn't sacrificed in favor of obstructive watermarking or restrictive DRM. One of my major concerns about the move to digital is that it provides publishers with more avenues to squeeze out a profit: subscription models and so on.
DRM'd digital copies can also prevent you from doing the type of things that, while perhaps not always strictly legal, are a normal and often necessary part of managing one's reading as an academic.
For example, I audited a class last semester that assigned some chapters from a particular book. The library had access to a digital copy, but you could only download a limited number of pages, which prevented me from taking notes on it as I read. On top of that, only a limited number of people could access it at the same time - fewer people than were taking the class. It was a big pain in the ass.
If the book had been in hard copy, the professor would probably have scanned the relevant chapters and uploaded them to the course website. The other option would be to require students to buy it - but that's not feasible a lot of the time.
So, yeah. Digital is great until capitalism ruins it.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 5:29 PM on May 30, 2019 [11 favorites]
Well, it can be, when accessibility isn't sacrificed in favor of obstructive watermarking or restrictive DRM. One of my major concerns about the move to digital is that it provides publishers with more avenues to squeeze out a profit: subscription models and so on.
DRM'd digital copies can also prevent you from doing the type of things that, while perhaps not always strictly legal, are a normal and often necessary part of managing one's reading as an academic.
For example, I audited a class last semester that assigned some chapters from a particular book. The library had access to a digital copy, but you could only download a limited number of pages, which prevented me from taking notes on it as I read. On top of that, only a limited number of people could access it at the same time - fewer people than were taking the class. It was a big pain in the ass.
If the book had been in hard copy, the professor would probably have scanned the relevant chapters and uploaded them to the course website. The other option would be to require students to buy it - but that's not feasible a lot of the time.
So, yeah. Digital is great until capitalism ruins it.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 5:29 PM on May 30, 2019 [11 favorites]
Or you could all have chipped in a couple bucks, bought one copy, and printed out the pages you needed. Or bought a used copy. Or rented it. I mean, the book had to have an ISBN number, you could’ve gotten it from any bookseller that could order it. And if the book had been in hard copy, then probably someone would’ve checked it out for the whole term and everyone else would’ve had to find it somewhere else, which is exactly how it worked when books were only in print.
posted by Autumnheart at 5:57 PM on May 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by Autumnheart at 5:57 PM on May 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
I was at UVA, one of the libraries mentioned in the article, yesterday. I checked out four or five books but also read two online. I would have checked out several more but two were already checked out and one was "available to order," which means that the librarians put it into the catalogue but don't buy it till someone wants it.
I could be wrong, and this is the kind of thing that someone with my interests and training would think, but I believe that building education around screens is going to turn out to be like building mid-20c American cities around cars: an expensive and dehumanizing mistake, and one that's hard to undo.
posted by sy at 6:50 PM on May 30, 2019 [12 favorites]
I could be wrong, and this is the kind of thing that someone with my interests and training would think, but I believe that building education around screens is going to turn out to be like building mid-20c American cities around cars: an expensive and dehumanizing mistake, and one that's hard to undo.
posted by sy at 6:50 PM on May 30, 2019 [12 favorites]
As is pointed out in the article virtually no one wants an entire book from a research library: they want a particular table, or a chapter here and there, or a single page with a single equation.
The problem, of course, is that in scholarship - sometimes even by undergraduates - you very often may not know that something useful is available without stumbling on it while looking for something else. Many pre-digital library systems, such as the Dewey and LC classifications, are designed to facilitate exactly this kind of discovery. This is especially true in large or highly specialized research libraries that have yet to be wholly strip-mined in the service of technocratic fads in librarianship or under pressure from flat/declining institutional budgets.
Many of these older systems of indexing, cataloging and classification have yet to be, or have only very partially been, superseded by their nominal digital replacements (e.g. detailed print subject indexing of the many pre-21st century periodicals that have yet to be, and may never be, digitized - Stewart Brand called R.R. Bowker "a major pillar of Western civilization", and that's only a slight exaggeration.) The richness and, in a post-digital context, surprising and strange organic discovery possibilities in an environment where traditional research skills can still be put to use are something we've largely lost sight of, to the degree that what has been lost is barely even remembered at this point, except to be glibly dismissed as fusty and better off dead. Thomas Mann's essential, library-school-education-in-one-volume Oxford Guide to Library Research is an engaging, readable crash course in how information was organized and made accessible in the analog era, and how understanding these systems is still relevant to anyone doing serious scholarly research.
Ideally, they would exist in parallel to, and compliment, some of the genuine wonders of digital research (e.g. searchable, OCR'd historic newspapers and historical government documents and massive, full text article databases that are passably user friendly and reasonably priced enough that they're accessible to laypeople), creating even richer and more varied paths for searchers. Instead, what we're getting is something akin to a heavily logged, second-growth forest - useful, often beautiful in its own right, but with a great deal of its diversity, history, local specificity, and slow-growing, occult, optimal utility obliterated.
posted by ryanshepard at 7:54 PM on May 30, 2019 [8 favorites]
The problem, of course, is that in scholarship - sometimes even by undergraduates - you very often may not know that something useful is available without stumbling on it while looking for something else. Many pre-digital library systems, such as the Dewey and LC classifications, are designed to facilitate exactly this kind of discovery. This is especially true in large or highly specialized research libraries that have yet to be wholly strip-mined in the service of technocratic fads in librarianship or under pressure from flat/declining institutional budgets.
Many of these older systems of indexing, cataloging and classification have yet to be, or have only very partially been, superseded by their nominal digital replacements (e.g. detailed print subject indexing of the many pre-21st century periodicals that have yet to be, and may never be, digitized - Stewart Brand called R.R. Bowker "a major pillar of Western civilization", and that's only a slight exaggeration.) The richness and, in a post-digital context, surprising and strange organic discovery possibilities in an environment where traditional research skills can still be put to use are something we've largely lost sight of, to the degree that what has been lost is barely even remembered at this point, except to be glibly dismissed as fusty and better off dead. Thomas Mann's essential, library-school-education-in-one-volume Oxford Guide to Library Research is an engaging, readable crash course in how information was organized and made accessible in the analog era, and how understanding these systems is still relevant to anyone doing serious scholarly research.
Ideally, they would exist in parallel to, and compliment, some of the genuine wonders of digital research (e.g. searchable, OCR'd historic newspapers and historical government documents and massive, full text article databases that are passably user friendly and reasonably priced enough that they're accessible to laypeople), creating even richer and more varied paths for searchers. Instead, what we're getting is something akin to a heavily logged, second-growth forest - useful, often beautiful in its own right, but with a great deal of its diversity, history, local specificity, and slow-growing, occult, optimal utility obliterated.
posted by ryanshepard at 7:54 PM on May 30, 2019 [8 favorites]
Posting this a couple of decades too late, but shelf-browsing is an excellent research technique. You find the region/regions relevant to your thesis/paper, and pull out books, look at the indexes for relevance, and voila. You've got some unimpeachable sources, whether canonical or eccentric.
Yeah, prowling the shelves of obscure journals was certainly a waste of time compared to present-day e-techniques, but don't neglect printed books. They are curated, and they are also searchable, in an old-school kind of way. Some research is quicker browsing the stacks, especially as an undergraduate.
posted by kozad at 8:51 PM on May 30, 2019 [4 favorites]
Yeah, prowling the shelves of obscure journals was certainly a waste of time compared to present-day e-techniques, but don't neglect printed books. They are curated, and they are also searchable, in an old-school kind of way. Some research is quicker browsing the stacks, especially as an undergraduate.
posted by kozad at 8:51 PM on May 30, 2019 [4 favorites]
Research libraries should be leading the way towards digital reference world. As is pointed out in the article virtually no one wants an entire book from a research library: they want a particular table, or a chapter here and there, or a single page with a single equation. "Dead tree" editions are an extremely wasteful way to provide that.As several other commentators have pointed out, "virtually no one" is not accurate: many library patrons want and need the whole book, not a chart or a fact. But it's the other point here that I am more concerned about. Not so long ago, a friend of mine found a four-hundred-year-old book in the stacks of a major research library. That book had no business being in the stacks, but that isn't the issue. What is the issue is that books (especially books printed on rag paper) can survive for many centuries. I have little faith that any e-books now in existence will be readable in four hundred years. Long-term preservation of knowledge is one of the fundamental missions of the research library, and digital accessibility in the present needs to be balanced against that consideration for the future.
posted by a certain Sysoi Pafnut'evich at 9:07 PM on May 30, 2019 [11 favorites]
Or you could all have chipped in a couple bucks
Either you think the class was large, or you think it was an unusually cheap book. It doesn't matter - even if it was only a couple bucks, this solution is also a pain in the ass. Especially since it requires trusting other people who you might not know well to pay up or to be timely.
And if the book had been in hard copy, then probably someone would’ve checked it out for the whole term
As I said, the professor probably would have scanned the relevant chapters. I know that people checking out the book happens as well, but that does not mean my concerns about DRM getting in the way of accessibility are unfounded. The entire purpose of DRM is to make the work less accessible.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 9:53 PM on May 30, 2019 [4 favorites]
Either you think the class was large, or you think it was an unusually cheap book. It doesn't matter - even if it was only a couple bucks, this solution is also a pain in the ass. Especially since it requires trusting other people who you might not know well to pay up or to be timely.
And if the book had been in hard copy, then probably someone would’ve checked it out for the whole term
As I said, the professor probably would have scanned the relevant chapters. I know that people checking out the book happens as well, but that does not mean my concerns about DRM getting in the way of accessibility are unfounded. The entire purpose of DRM is to make the work less accessible.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 9:53 PM on May 30, 2019 [4 favorites]
because I can't imagine why anyone would want to study collaboratively, but evidently people do.
I'll hope someone jumps in who's read the book* (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking) (wikipedia's summary).
Apparently since the development of popular media (radio, etc.), extroverts have remade the world in a way that appeals to extroverts, and now you often have group study which keeps everyone from deeply engaging a problem.
Especially the introverts.
* For the last two weeks I've been hearing tidbits from a someone who's reading it, but they since returned it to the library. I'd bring this thread to their attention but they've got an academic conference starting tomorrow. Which will take up all their energy.
posted by sebastienbailard at 10:58 PM on May 30, 2019
I'll hope someone jumps in who's read the book* (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking) (wikipedia's summary).
Apparently since the development of popular media (radio, etc.), extroverts have remade the world in a way that appeals to extroverts, and now you often have group study which keeps everyone from deeply engaging a problem.
Especially the introverts.
* For the last two weeks I've been hearing tidbits from a someone who's reading it, but they since returned it to the library. I'd bring this thread to their attention but they've got an academic conference starting tomorrow. Which will take up all their energy.
posted by sebastienbailard at 10:58 PM on May 30, 2019
My best research papers were due to being able to see all the collected books in the section when i went to it. I still ooh and ahh every time. With online databases, I'm too much of a focused person to even contemplate looking for similar things. Don't gut libraries!
posted by yueliang at 3:17 AM on May 31, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by yueliang at 3:17 AM on May 31, 2019 [1 favorite]
I just copied what I needed by the shelf and reshelved it.
Way upthread but PSA: please don't reshelve your books, thanks.
posted by aspersioncast at 7:35 AM on May 31, 2019 [5 favorites]
Way upthread but PSA: please don't reshelve your books, thanks.
posted by aspersioncast at 7:35 AM on May 31, 2019 [5 favorites]
John Hope Franklin, the eminent African-American historian who earned a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1941, related a story along these lines from when he was researching his Ph.D. thesis on African-American history (which basically jumpstarted the field as an academic concern).
this is a movie, the kind that wins big deal awards. Why hasn't it been made yet?
posted by philip-random at 7:41 AM on May 31, 2019
this is a movie, the kind that wins big deal awards. Why hasn't it been made yet?
posted by philip-random at 7:41 AM on May 31, 2019
As lovely and tactile as physical books can be they are part of a real and pressing environmental problem.
I've heard similar reasoning a few times and it really doesn't follow - wood is super-renewable. Any environmental negative incurred from big collections of books is coming from keeping them in climate controlled environments or physically transporting them.
The infrastructure required to store and provide access to the modern internet consumes enormous amounts of energy; I don't think the comparison is particularly damning for physical books.
posted by aspersioncast at 7:43 AM on May 31, 2019 [9 favorites]
I've heard similar reasoning a few times and it really doesn't follow - wood is super-renewable. Any environmental negative incurred from big collections of books is coming from keeping them in climate controlled environments or physically transporting them.
The infrastructure required to store and provide access to the modern internet consumes enormous amounts of energy; I don't think the comparison is particularly damning for physical books.
posted by aspersioncast at 7:43 AM on May 31, 2019 [9 favorites]
Posting this a couple of decades too late, but shelf-browsing is an excellent research technique. You find the region/regions relevant to your thesis/paper, and pull out books, look at the indexes for relevance, and voila. You've got some unimpeachable sources, whether canonical or eccentric.
This is true, but it can present problems as well. For example my library is a very specialized library - we serve a college of veterinary medicine. Students will often come in and ask where the "Radiology section" is. We have a lot of books on veterinary radiology in SF757, but we also have a lot of very useful stuff under (human) radiology in RC78, which are in completely separate aisles.
posted by Rock Steady at 7:59 AM on May 31, 2019 [1 favorite]
This is true, but it can present problems as well. For example my library is a very specialized library - we serve a college of veterinary medicine. Students will often come in and ask where the "Radiology section" is. We have a lot of books on veterinary radiology in SF757, but we also have a lot of very useful stuff under (human) radiology in RC78, which are in completely separate aisles.
posted by Rock Steady at 7:59 AM on May 31, 2019 [1 favorite]
I have little faith that any e-books now in existence will be readable in four hundred years. Long-term preservation of knowledge is one of the fundamental missions of the research library, and digital accessibility in the present needs to be balanced against that consideration for the future.
I have a lot of faith that e-books now, as disseminated in various forms including torrenting sites, will by that dissemination reach infinitely more people than any one book at any research library. This number will only grow as the centuries pass.
posted by avalonian at 8:03 AM on May 31, 2019 [2 favorites]
I have a lot of faith that e-books now, as disseminated in various forms including torrenting sites, will by that dissemination reach infinitely more people than any one book at any research library. This number will only grow as the centuries pass.
posted by avalonian at 8:03 AM on May 31, 2019 [2 favorites]
I believe that's true of e-books in general, avalonian, but I have my doubts about whether that's true when it comes to specialized academic nonfiction - most of the books I used for my thesis, for example, are definitely not books I would have been able to find on torrenting sites because even if someone strips the DRM and uploads the book, too few people ever download it to keep the file active.
posted by Jeanne at 8:26 AM on May 31, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Jeanne at 8:26 AM on May 31, 2019 [1 favorite]
Just as a side note, I was reminded today that history is one of Yale's largest majors. The "flight to STEM" exists but is much less pronounced at elite universities than elsewhere.
posted by praemunire at 8:45 AM on May 31, 2019
posted by praemunire at 8:45 AM on May 31, 2019
most of the books I used for my thesis, for example, are definitely not books I would have been able to find on torrenting sites because even if someone strips the DRM and uploads the book, too few people ever download it to keep the file active.
That's fair, but also sounds like cause for libraries to scan and decentralize storage of digital academic nonfiction. The result would be more egalitarian and individual researchers could store copies themselves.
posted by avalonian at 9:54 AM on May 31, 2019 [1 favorite]
That's fair, but also sounds like cause for libraries to scan and decentralize storage of digital academic nonfiction. The result would be more egalitarian and individual researchers could store copies themselves.
posted by avalonian at 9:54 AM on May 31, 2019 [1 favorite]
There would have to be significant changes to copyright law in order for that to happen. And it doesn't seem likely in the near future, what with corporate capture of the legislative process.
And if you're talking about scanning older books that aren't digitized yet, that's just a lot more work than people realize. We would have to signficantly increase library funding, because it requires a lot of personnel hours and infrastructure. There are a lot of prime candidates for digitization (e.g. rare works out of copyright) that haven't been digitized yet just because of how involved the process is.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 10:50 AM on May 31, 2019 [7 favorites]
And if you're talking about scanning older books that aren't digitized yet, that's just a lot more work than people realize. We would have to signficantly increase library funding, because it requires a lot of personnel hours and infrastructure. There are a lot of prime candidates for digitization (e.g. rare works out of copyright) that haven't been digitized yet just because of how involved the process is.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 10:50 AM on May 31, 2019 [7 favorites]
At the risk of TMI, I feel compelled to add, though, to my earlier comment, that during those early years at grad school (ca. 95-99), that I was going through crippling depression, and often the only thing that got me out of bed on some days was the fact that I needed to do work, and work required sources, and the sources were at the library, so, up-and-at'em, sport. I honestly believe that the only thing that got me through those years was that I needed groceries and books/journals. Class days were their own particularly anxious hell that required a generous medication of caffeine before and alcohol/weed after, but those empty days were just a black maw of self-loathing and inflicted worthlessness.
I love the digital turn that academia has taken because it's just so easy. I can do work in my bathrobe, now. I can put a 500 page book on a tablet and take it to the park, along with all the other books that I need to reference it, as well as a notation system if I want to take the time - it's glorious. But if I hadn't had to get up, take a shower, eat something, and go into the library to work, I probably wouldn't have survived the process. It was a major factor in why I didn't go on to get my PhD. There's definitely an aspect, not social but approaching it, to a library full of books, that can't be ignored, and we abandon it at our peril.
To say nothing of the smell. You can't get that smell anywhere else, and there's nothing like it.
posted by eclectist at 7:45 PM on May 31, 2019 [5 favorites]
I love the digital turn that academia has taken because it's just so easy. I can do work in my bathrobe, now. I can put a 500 page book on a tablet and take it to the park, along with all the other books that I need to reference it, as well as a notation system if I want to take the time - it's glorious. But if I hadn't had to get up, take a shower, eat something, and go into the library to work, I probably wouldn't have survived the process. It was a major factor in why I didn't go on to get my PhD. There's definitely an aspect, not social but approaching it, to a library full of books, that can't be ignored, and we abandon it at our peril.
To say nothing of the smell. You can't get that smell anywhere else, and there's nothing like it.
posted by eclectist at 7:45 PM on May 31, 2019 [5 favorites]
Holy cannoli, a post I can comment on almost completely.
Data point: undergrad degree in business admin, graduated 2016. My use of the stacks for research was directly impacted by what class I was studying for -- anything English/literature/philosophy, yes. Absolutely anything else - no. Those were also the instances that browsing was helpful. (they also maintained a nice "leisure reading" wall display that kept me from losing my mind.)
On the other hand, the digital side of the library was key all the time. Finding a specific topic, coming up with alternate keywords to look up, and figuring out what exactly a boolean was and how to use it -- those are all research skills I use today, and I also crawl the shelves at my local library.
As for the classes that didn't require me to browse the stacks, y'all. I was still there, because the library is the only place on a college campus where students are 99% guaranteed to not behave like goons at all hours. The university library divided up floors by sound level, so I could usually be found on 6, which I can compare favorably to a crypt in terms of distraction. Another aspect I liked was that on another floor, there were double monitor desks available for you to connect with your laptop. Having extra visual real estate when you're juggling about a 10+ articles or 6+ spreadsheets is just really nice.
The library also got frequent use from student orgs, students who disliked their living situation, tutors, groups of friends in unrelated classes who wanted some hang time but couldn't get away from the work, students assigned to dreaded group projects, and, last but definitely not least, students going out of their gourds the week before finals. this may have been unique to my alma mater, but nobody studied in their dorms for finals. the temptation to lie on your bed and cry was just too much to get anything done at home. I've been all of these.
So I hear those of you mourning the "downsizing" of academic libraries. There is definitely something special about a building for books. But there's so much more to a library. They are as alive as you make them through participation. That includes, if the collection is too small, asking a librarian for help and having them ship in a book from another library for you.
There is a good body of UX research that suggests that, for many users, attractive, contemporary-looking page design is an important factor in whether they will see a site as useful, credible, and worthy of spending time and effort on.
This this this this this. On the other hand: our library search page from the university home site got updated such that you had to scroll down to find the search bar. It was more aesthetic, but also a pain the ass.
And if you're talking about scanning older books that aren't digitized yet, that's just a lot more work than people realize.
A quick breakdown of this, courtesy of my time doing this exact thing for our student accommodations office:
1. Procure book. Preferably a book that we can butcher. Depends on how expensive/rare it is.
2. If the book is disposable: take it to a special machine that cuts away the spine. If the book is not disposable, go to 3.
3. Scan in every single page as a pdf and have them emailed to you by the copy machine. Obviously easier if the book is loose leaf.
4. Download every single pdf image and compile them into a single document.
5. Run that single document through a program called ABBYY, which you can have pick out different types of info (text, images, tables, etc) and compile into a document. note: ABBYY doesn't do well with older books, because of differences in font and ink thickness.
6. Spell check the hell out of it, line-by-line making sure that the text in the document matches the actual text in the book.
The absolute worst thing to digitize are textbooks. If we got lucky, the publisher would provide the flat image of the textbook's pages, so we didn't have to scan in but still had to go through with ABBYY and pick everything out and double check. Also, textbook publishers are really keen on throwing in random pictures and captions with unnecessary info. ("This picture of a golden retriever running illustrates the concept of 'momentum.'") The frustrating thing is we couldn't make a call on not uploading those tidbits, because who knows if the student actually needed them or not. Like, maybe those tidbits were helpful to some students? Maybe the golden retriever thing is key for an assignment? Unlikely in my experience, but, here's your digitized textbook, have a good one!
tl;dr: libraries good! libraries important, even if books not the most important! ui important! textbook publishers need to step it up, both with providing accessible versions AND scaling down the stupid side illustrations!
posted by snerson at 8:36 PM on May 31, 2019 [3 favorites]
Data point: undergrad degree in business admin, graduated 2016. My use of the stacks for research was directly impacted by what class I was studying for -- anything English/literature/philosophy, yes. Absolutely anything else - no. Those were also the instances that browsing was helpful. (they also maintained a nice "leisure reading" wall display that kept me from losing my mind.)
On the other hand, the digital side of the library was key all the time. Finding a specific topic, coming up with alternate keywords to look up, and figuring out what exactly a boolean was and how to use it -- those are all research skills I use today, and I also crawl the shelves at my local library.
As for the classes that didn't require me to browse the stacks, y'all. I was still there, because the library is the only place on a college campus where students are 99% guaranteed to not behave like goons at all hours. The university library divided up floors by sound level, so I could usually be found on 6, which I can compare favorably to a crypt in terms of distraction. Another aspect I liked was that on another floor, there were double monitor desks available for you to connect with your laptop. Having extra visual real estate when you're juggling about a 10+ articles or 6+ spreadsheets is just really nice.
The library also got frequent use from student orgs, students who disliked their living situation, tutors, groups of friends in unrelated classes who wanted some hang time but couldn't get away from the work, students assigned to dreaded group projects, and, last but definitely not least, students going out of their gourds the week before finals. this may have been unique to my alma mater, but nobody studied in their dorms for finals. the temptation to lie on your bed and cry was just too much to get anything done at home. I've been all of these.
So I hear those of you mourning the "downsizing" of academic libraries. There is definitely something special about a building for books. But there's so much more to a library. They are as alive as you make them through participation. That includes, if the collection is too small, asking a librarian for help and having them ship in a book from another library for you.
There is a good body of UX research that suggests that, for many users, attractive, contemporary-looking page design is an important factor in whether they will see a site as useful, credible, and worthy of spending time and effort on.
This this this this this. On the other hand: our library search page from the university home site got updated such that you had to scroll down to find the search bar. It was more aesthetic, but also a pain the ass.
And if you're talking about scanning older books that aren't digitized yet, that's just a lot more work than people realize.
A quick breakdown of this, courtesy of my time doing this exact thing for our student accommodations office:
1. Procure book. Preferably a book that we can butcher. Depends on how expensive/rare it is.
2. If the book is disposable: take it to a special machine that cuts away the spine. If the book is not disposable, go to 3.
3. Scan in every single page as a pdf and have them emailed to you by the copy machine. Obviously easier if the book is loose leaf.
4. Download every single pdf image and compile them into a single document.
5. Run that single document through a program called ABBYY, which you can have pick out different types of info (text, images, tables, etc) and compile into a document. note: ABBYY doesn't do well with older books, because of differences in font and ink thickness.
6. Spell check the hell out of it, line-by-line making sure that the text in the document matches the actual text in the book.
The absolute worst thing to digitize are textbooks. If we got lucky, the publisher would provide the flat image of the textbook's pages, so we didn't have to scan in but still had to go through with ABBYY and pick everything out and double check. Also, textbook publishers are really keen on throwing in random pictures and captions with unnecessary info. ("This picture of a golden retriever running illustrates the concept of 'momentum.'") The frustrating thing is we couldn't make a call on not uploading those tidbits, because who knows if the student actually needed them or not. Like, maybe those tidbits were helpful to some students? Maybe the golden retriever thing is key for an assignment? Unlikely in my experience, but, here's your digitized textbook, have a good one!
tl;dr: libraries good! libraries important, even if books not the most important! ui important! textbook publishers need to step it up, both with providing accessible versions AND scaling down the stupid side illustrations!
posted by snerson at 8:36 PM on May 31, 2019 [3 favorites]
I would rather have books on shelves than collaborative study rooms, because I can't imagine why anyone would want to study collaboratively, but evidently people do.
There are a heck of a lot more group projects being assigned these days.
posted by Shark Hat at 5:00 AM on June 1, 2019 [1 favorite]
There are a heck of a lot more group projects being assigned these days.
posted by Shark Hat at 5:00 AM on June 1, 2019 [1 favorite]
My entire graduate degree was a group project.
posted by octothorpe at 6:00 AM on June 1, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 6:00 AM on June 1, 2019 [2 favorites]
>> As lovely and tactile as physical books can be they are part of a real
>> and pressing environmental problem.
>
> I've heard similar reasoning a few times and it really doesn't follow - wood is super-renewable.
Renewable doesn't mean inexhaustible. Humans can easily use wood faster than it can be replaced and we're headed that way if we're not there already.
> The infrastructure required to store and provide access to the modern
> internet consumes enormous amounts of energy; I don't think the comparison
> is particularly damning for physical books.
The network infrastructure is already in place and is continuously in use (unlike, say, library shelves). In any case, data storage is not the big cost of the internet. In fact the big tape drives use very little power, and three 8 petabyte drives (one master and two backups) will handily store 500 copies of the library of congress.
In my opinion three 8 petabyte drives in exchange for all the paper that will ever be used for printing would be a pretty good trade.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:59 AM on June 1, 2019
>> and pressing environmental problem.
>
> I've heard similar reasoning a few times and it really doesn't follow - wood is super-renewable.
Renewable doesn't mean inexhaustible. Humans can easily use wood faster than it can be replaced and we're headed that way if we're not there already.
> The infrastructure required to store and provide access to the modern
> internet consumes enormous amounts of energy; I don't think the comparison
> is particularly damning for physical books.
The network infrastructure is already in place and is continuously in use (unlike, say, library shelves). In any case, data storage is not the big cost of the internet. In fact the big tape drives use very little power, and three 8 petabyte drives (one master and two backups) will handily store 500 copies of the library of congress.
In my opinion three 8 petabyte drives in exchange for all the paper that will ever be used for printing would be a pretty good trade.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:59 AM on June 1, 2019
Semi-related note: my daughter worked in a Vermont public library a few years ago. Every week she complained that me that very few people checked out books. Instead, the overwhelming majority of circulating items were DVD: mostly tv shows, followed by movies.
posted by doctornemo at 1:02 PM on June 1, 2019
posted by doctornemo at 1:02 PM on June 1, 2019
Good for Dan on publishing this piece.
If we're offering personal academic library stories, I did my undergrad (Soviet studies, history, literature) in the late 1980s and grad work (lit) in the 1990s, all at the University of Michigan. I knew the UGLi well, praemunire, in addition to the grad.
In the 80s I worked the card catalog closely. I knew which floors and aisles held the topics I needed to access. I learned which copying machines were most reliable for copying journal articles.
At the same time I worked in one of Ann Arbor's best-known used bookshops (it was underneath Schoolkids Records, if that means anything to some of you). That helped me grow my knowledge and collection of print books, including antiquarians (for years a tiny booklet of first edition info was always in one of my pockets).
By the 90s things were shifting to the digital. I used CD-ROMs for some bibliographies, and print for others. I hit some articles online, but still copied others from bound journals.
Subsequently I followed scholarship online, from JSTOR to the open web. I worked on information literacy for some years, connecting with multiple libraries and library organizations.
Now? My research is largely online. I am now fortunate enough to be affiliated with a research university, so I can access all kinds of proprietary databases. I also check out books there - and yeah, always by ILL or reserve, now. I haven't browsed Georgetown's stacks yet. The informal world of pdf sharing is one I used often (hello, #ICanHazPDF).
Thanks to the awfulness that is home selling, my book collection's been in storage for almost two years. I wrote my newest book entirely from digital and library resources.
My students generally do a lot of their work online. Several prefer digital editions. None have yet mentioned libraries to me.
posted by doctornemo at 1:15 PM on June 1, 2019
If we're offering personal academic library stories, I did my undergrad (Soviet studies, history, literature) in the late 1980s and grad work (lit) in the 1990s, all at the University of Michigan. I knew the UGLi well, praemunire, in addition to the grad.
In the 80s I worked the card catalog closely. I knew which floors and aisles held the topics I needed to access. I learned which copying machines were most reliable for copying journal articles.
At the same time I worked in one of Ann Arbor's best-known used bookshops (it was underneath Schoolkids Records, if that means anything to some of you). That helped me grow my knowledge and collection of print books, including antiquarians (for years a tiny booklet of first edition info was always in one of my pockets).
By the 90s things were shifting to the digital. I used CD-ROMs for some bibliographies, and print for others. I hit some articles online, but still copied others from bound journals.
Subsequently I followed scholarship online, from JSTOR to the open web. I worked on information literacy for some years, connecting with multiple libraries and library organizations.
Now? My research is largely online. I am now fortunate enough to be affiliated with a research university, so I can access all kinds of proprietary databases. I also check out books there - and yeah, always by ILL or reserve, now. I haven't browsed Georgetown's stacks yet. The informal world of pdf sharing is one I used often (hello, #ICanHazPDF).
Thanks to the awfulness that is home selling, my book collection's been in storage for almost two years. I wrote my newest book entirely from digital and library resources.
My students generally do a lot of their work online. Several prefer digital editions. None have yet mentioned libraries to me.
posted by doctornemo at 1:15 PM on June 1, 2019
I was at UVA, one of the libraries mentioned in the article, yesterday.
I wonder what's happened to Alderman? I used to really love hiding out in the stacks there. Clemons had some books, but even in the late 80s and early 90s most of the floor space was devoted to multimedia workstations, study rooms, computers, et al. Alderman was where the books lived, peaceful and quiet and with various carrels and the occasional old fashioned lounge with leather furniture scattered around.
posted by tavella at 2:51 PM on June 1, 2019
I wonder what's happened to Alderman? I used to really love hiding out in the stacks there. Clemons had some books, but even in the late 80s and early 90s most of the floor space was devoted to multimedia workstations, study rooms, computers, et al. Alderman was where the books lived, peaceful and quiet and with various carrels and the occasional old fashioned lounge with leather furniture scattered around.
posted by tavella at 2:51 PM on June 1, 2019
data storage is not the big cost of the internet
Oh heck this is a pet peeve of mine. Scaling out from just books for a sec, it's actually a big cost environmentally, especially if we want to talk about, say, rare earth minerals or labor conditions in Thailand, both of which are relevant.
But instant accessibility is the big cost. A single tape drive without an amazingly complex separate tool with which to read it is useless (also tape media actually degrades pretty quickly, like a couple decades or multiple consecutive reads quickly, but whatever).
You can say hey, "The network infrastructure is already in place and is continuously in use," and I can say hey, that continuously in use is responsible for something like 70 Billion Kilowatt hours of electricity use per year in the US alone. Just to run the internet, not accounting for all the (multiple, power-consuming) devices accessing it.
So back to books, three 8 petabyte drives containing all the world's knowledge are useless without this massive network of redundant copies and an enormous globally-indexed system of distribution and a whole bunch of labor to actually copy all the existing books to the drives and deal with messy things like copyright and a whole bunch of redundant, always-on systems on which to read them.
Physical books have an infinitesimally teeny impact on the environment compared to most human activity, even compared to other paper products. How much paper do Whole Foods shoppers throw away every day? Do we need to literally be wiping our asses with tree products? If you use paper towels and complain about the environmental impact of printing books, I'm gonna give you some serious side-eye.
In my opinion three 8 petabyte drives in exchange for all the paper that will ever be used for printing would be a pretty good trade.
Then your opinion, with all due respect, could bear some further consideration.
posted by aspersioncast at 10:00 PM on June 1, 2019 [8 favorites]
Oh heck this is a pet peeve of mine. Scaling out from just books for a sec, it's actually a big cost environmentally, especially if we want to talk about, say, rare earth minerals or labor conditions in Thailand, both of which are relevant.
But instant accessibility is the big cost. A single tape drive without an amazingly complex separate tool with which to read it is useless (also tape media actually degrades pretty quickly, like a couple decades or multiple consecutive reads quickly, but whatever).
You can say hey, "The network infrastructure is already in place and is continuously in use," and I can say hey, that continuously in use is responsible for something like 70 Billion Kilowatt hours of electricity use per year in the US alone. Just to run the internet, not accounting for all the (multiple, power-consuming) devices accessing it.
So back to books, three 8 petabyte drives containing all the world's knowledge are useless without this massive network of redundant copies and an enormous globally-indexed system of distribution and a whole bunch of labor to actually copy all the existing books to the drives and deal with messy things like copyright and a whole bunch of redundant, always-on systems on which to read them.
Physical books have an infinitesimally teeny impact on the environment compared to most human activity, even compared to other paper products. How much paper do Whole Foods shoppers throw away every day? Do we need to literally be wiping our asses with tree products? If you use paper towels and complain about the environmental impact of printing books, I'm gonna give you some serious side-eye.
In my opinion three 8 petabyte drives in exchange for all the paper that will ever be used for printing would be a pretty good trade.
Then your opinion, with all due respect, could bear some further consideration.
posted by aspersioncast at 10:00 PM on June 1, 2019 [8 favorites]
I want to add to what aspersioncast wrote above. Digitizing is not the same as preserving. One should consider digitizing a work as an act of copying and access but it alone cannot preserve anything because ALL digital media is prone to degradation. It is NEVER a one and done process.
So one must have multiple digital copies stored in multiple locations in case of some kind of failure or damage. And the files must be monitored at regular intervals to be sure that they haven't started to degrade. And technology changes so quickly, so files must be transferred to newer formats or risk becoming inaccessible. How many of us have material on old floppy disks and no way to read them? That's assuming they would still be readable even if we had the drives that can use them.
And that's not including issues with proprietary vs non-proprietary formats and the sheer expenses regarding equipment and personnel to do all of this.
Digitizing is a wonderful tool. It is not the end-all, be-all solution.
posted by acidnova at 11:26 AM on June 2, 2019 [3 favorites]
So one must have multiple digital copies stored in multiple locations in case of some kind of failure or damage. And the files must be monitored at regular intervals to be sure that they haven't started to degrade. And technology changes so quickly, so files must be transferred to newer formats or risk becoming inaccessible. How many of us have material on old floppy disks and no way to read them? That's assuming they would still be readable even if we had the drives that can use them.
And that's not including issues with proprietary vs non-proprietary formats and the sheer expenses regarding equipment and personnel to do all of this.
Digitizing is a wonderful tool. It is not the end-all, be-all solution.
posted by acidnova at 11:26 AM on June 2, 2019 [3 favorites]
I'm going to finish my PhD program soon, so I was just looking at alumni library memberships.
I can pay $125/year to borrow physical books as long as I remain in town, but there's no way to maintain access to digital resources. So, once I finish my PhD, I'll be cut out of most recent scholarship in my field, until (unless) I find a job that gives me institutional access elsewhere.
I mean, digital resources are great, but it's not the utopia of affordable, easily-accessed information that we could have.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 9:10 AM on June 6, 2019 [4 favorites]
I can pay $125/year to borrow physical books as long as I remain in town, but there's no way to maintain access to digital resources. So, once I finish my PhD, I'll be cut out of most recent scholarship in my field, until (unless) I find a job that gives me institutional access elsewhere.
I mean, digital resources are great, but it's not the utopia of affordable, easily-accessed information that we could have.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 9:10 AM on June 6, 2019 [4 favorites]
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Also, libraries are more than just books. I went recently after having not gone for the last 10 years (I feel a bit ashamed about that), and my library has free streaming services, video-games to rent (switch, ps, xbox), and a shit ton of other cool things.
Libraries are cool.
posted by Fizz at 10:50 AM on May 30, 2019 [26 favorites]