Sunday, May 15, 2005

Bookless Libraries?!

I still can't wrap my head around the idea of bookless libraries. According to the vice-provost of the University of Texas at Austin's libraries, the reason they are emptying their undergrad library of books is:
"In this information-seeking America, I can't think of anyone who would elect to build a books-only library." Am I wrong in thinking that you can get information from books? Or that it is higher-quality information than you might get from Wikipedia? Or that a librarian might agree with that?
A senior in Business Management with some sense said:
"Well, this is a library - it's supposed to have books in it. You can't really replace books. There's plenty of libraries where they have study rooms. This is a nice place for students to come to. It's central in campus." Right. Nor can you replace readers.
An architect tells us that the "challenge" with designing these new "libraries" is to adapt them to what she called "the Barnes & Noble culture, making reading and learning a blurred experience." Ah, yes. I'm glad that someone who can use a phrase like "making reading and learning a blurred experience" is justifying doing away with books.
Trust me, learning is a blurred experience for most undergrads these days. As is every other experience they have.
The, ahem, president of the Association of College and Research Libraries reminds us:
"This is a new generation, born with a chip. A student sends an e-mail at 2 a.m. and wonders by 8 a.m. why the professor hasn't responded."
Right, and there's nothing wrong with that? A generation that can't read and that believes everything should be done to serve them and we're supposed to placate that mentality? How about we add "adult" masseuses to the "libraries" to do to the students what the profession requires these days?
The article notes:
Significantly, librarians are big supporters of the trend.
Okay, I'm open. Why would librarians be big supporters of the trend?

1 comment:

daisy said...

I read this (the article and your post) with great interest.

It seems to me that what they've done at University of Texas is to move the books away from the undergrad library and into the stacks at the main library. I can't say I think that's a great idea, but I sort of get it. What they've done is turned the undergrad library into something between a library and a computer lab, but not quite either. It's a place where students can get computer help but also one-on-one help with online databases, catalog searching, etc. That's a wonderful idea, actually, although I don't think I'd call it a library any more. I'd have built it in a third building and left both libraries alone.

In this information-seeking America, I can't think of anyone who would elect to build a books-only library." Am I wrong in thinking that you can get information from books? Or that it is higher-quality information than you might get from Wikipedia? Or that a librarian might agree with that?

I also can't really think of a reason to build a books-only library. Even a collection of historical books, or an archival collection, should include online finding aids. Of course information is found in books. But there are many reasons to provide access to the Internet and databases as well. To name two: reliable online sources give breaking news on a topic; and if someone's checked a book out, it's inaccessible until (and if) returned, whereas online/database information can be shared among several users.

Yeah, that "blurred experience" quote is retarded. But someone designing a building to fit a certain need isn't the same as a librarian.

You ask why librarians would be supportive of this trend. If you mean the trend to build bookless libraries, I'd say most librarians -- and certainly all the ones I know -- would be dead set against it, as am I.